How far back do you want to go? I mean, chances are people were punctuating stories with mouth- and hand-generated sound effects as long as there have been people (and probably even before there was formal language). But that's going back too far. After all, we don't want to slog through 14 chapters before we finally get to the first paid needle drop on an FX record.

But it is illuminating to discover that sound effects have been part of organized theater dating back literally thousands of years. Back in the time of Aeschylus and Euripedes (trust me, that's a long time ago) performances of plays were often punctuated by offstage sound effects. A popular way to create the rumbling sound of thunder, for example, was to bounce leaden balls together on a piece of stretched leather. By the time Shakespeare was plying his craft, that same effect was made by rolling cannon balls down a trough onto the head of a drum. Variations on this method—some quite sophisticated—were used for centuries. In fact, drums have been used forever, it seems, for dramatic purposes: to simulate sounds of nature, gunshots, even animal cries. The same goes for flutes: lotsa non-musical stuff you can do with flutes. (What about the tried-and-true metal sheet thunder effect, you rightly ask? That was invented in 1708 by a gentleman named John Dennis. When other producers of plays began incorporating Dennis' invention, he accused them of "stealing his thunder," hence the famous expression. Honest, I don't make this stuff up!)

We have the long tradition of the legitimate theater as well as vaudeville and music hall acts to thank for the meteoric rise in sound effects creation for entertainment in the decades before film became universally popular. Comedians had long employed pit musicians to provide accompaniment for their pratfalls, whether it was a rim-shot, a slide-whistle, a blast from a tuba, or the mocking slide of a trombone. Indeed, the drummers in music hall and vaudeville bands—often borrowing from theater techniques—devised ever more elaborate means of providing comic accompaniment, and might have an entire table of effects at their disposal, from coconut horses, to door chimes, to cap blasts. Similarly, staged melodramas used all manner of more serious effects to convey the appropriate emotions.

Is it any wonder, then, that when silent films became the rage, some theaters, in addition to hiring musicians to play the score for movies, also hired a separate effects person, who might sit behind the screen punctuating the action in the film with riotous (or frightening) effects from a table of unseen props? Sometimes the score itself would have effect notations in it, in the sense that instruments would occasionally be called upon to be FX more than music (Carl Stalling would master this later in his incredibly creative score for Warner Bros. cartoons). But even organ-only scores for silent films offered latitude for the player to employ some of the sound effects that were built into the big cinema Wurlitzers.

Next time: Talkies and the early days of recorded SFX.

Originally formed about 20 years ago by musicians Randy Horton and Bryan Hofheins, the company got its feet wet contributing music to the Winter Olympics telecasts from Calgary. Since then, it has grown into a multi-faceted operation that utilizes the talents of dozens of composers and fine studio musicians and keeps a steady stream of work flowing into their inhouse production facility, dubbed L.A. East.

"The studio is in a renovated turn-of-the-century church and we have several rooms to record in," says Non-Stop's Mike Hicks. "The main room was the chapel, so it's big room that you can fit a whole orchestra in and it sounds wonderful. We do every kind of recording date imaginable, from one or two players, to rock bands, to orchestras." Recording is primarily to Pro Tools these days (with ADAT, DAT and analog formats also available), and the consoles in the primary control rooms are a Quad 8 and a Euphonix. There is also a small digital editing studio.

Hicks says the library wing of the company was formed in 1996 "and has become a very important part of the company. Even though we're not the biggest library, we like to think we're the best. We have a very high caliber of both composers and players doing music for us." Non-Stop's main library consists of some 120 discs, with more constantly in production. But the company has also grown its library stock through acquisition. For instance, the British company Cavendish has around 200 library discs under the Non-Stop umbrella, and they've also taken on such specialized concerns as the Point library, which Hicks says is "the world's largest Chinese music library," and another whose focus is Celtic music. Online browsing and selection is, of course, available in addition to CDs.

Hicks notes that Non-Stop's own library has proven to be a tremendous source for makers of film trailers. "It's become one of our biggest growth areas," he says, and that has, in turn, led to the creation of a new library series: the Non-Stop Premiere Library, which is due to be released within the next month. "It's been very exciting around here," Hicks says, "because we've really been putting a lot of time and effort into recording these powerful orchestral trailer cues. I believe we just finished mixing it this week. What makes them a little different is they were all recorded in surround sound, so this release is going to have a CD with a stereo mix and also a DVD which will have stems so people can work on their own surround mixes. I think it's going to raise the bar for movie trailers."

We thought we'd start out in San Francisco, where Crescendo Studios, in the heart of the city's bustling financial district, has been a major player in commercial recording for many years. It's quite a studio environment, too. Far from being some bland, utilitarian facility, it is an exquisitely beautiful complex of studios and mix suites with an overriding Italian theme—indeed they boast names such as Roma, Firenze, Venezia and Capri. Of course if Crescendo didn't have the new equipment to match the old world ambience, nobody would record there. Its blend of Pro Tools workstations, the Fairlight MFX3 system, an Otari Status console, and plenty of fine outboard gear and plug-ins has it comfortably on the technological cutting edge. And primary mixers Craig Helmholz and Dave Baker each bring years of experience to the (Tuscan marble) table. It's no wonder that they attract work from some of the biggest agencies around for clients that include the likes of Taco Bell, Budweiser, Electronic Arts, Zima, and many others.

When I contacted studio manager Jason Plunkett about which music and effects libraries he has inhouse currently, he replied: "There are six music libraries we have a relationship with: L.A. Music, Killer Tracks, Opus 1, Groove Addicts, Extreme Music, and Associated Production Music/APM. APM has several libraries under its banner including KPM, Bruton, Sonoton Carlin, and Kosinus. We do more with the APM libraries than all the other libraries combined. APM has a wonderful online service that makes it easy to search for music using any number of parameters: tempo, style, keyword, etc. We don't do a lot of music licensing, as the type of clients/projects we work with for the most part bring music composed specifically for their projects. The general thought here is that radio projects, because of their smaller budgets, are more likely than television to license music. Some recent projects we have licensed music for are 'Advanced Micro Devices' [spot] for radio for McCann-Erickson, and 'Grand Opening' radio [spot] for Old Navy, both through APM. We have licensed some Subway TV [spots] for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners with L.A. Post Music. Also, back in November we licensed music for a Hispanic PG&E [spot] for Headquarters Advertising with Killer Tracks.

"The two sound effects libraries we use are Sound Ideas and Hollywood Edge. Because those libraries are operated on a buy-out basis, we don't have to report useage. We use SFX from both libraries all the time; however, our clientele often times will have sound design specific to their spots, and if anything we would simply supplement SFX from our libraries on those projects."