How I Created the Iconic iPhone Sound
Kelly Jacklin (via James Thomson):
At some point, Jeff and I were chatting about his disc burning feature, and he said he needed some way to inform the user that the burn was done. DAS being a sound-making app, he wanted a sound to alert the user, something simple. Since I’m a hobbiest musician, and had a recording setup, I told him I’d tinker around and see if I could some up with something.
[…]
So imagine my surprise when the iPhone ships, and the default text message tone is… “158-marimba”, now going by the clever (and not actually accurate, from a music theory perspective) name “Tri-Tone”. Time goes by, and this sound becomes iconic, showing up in TV shows and movies, and becoming international short-hand for “you have a text message”…
