One of the first things you do when you buy a new phone is go through the settings and find the ring tone that suits you. Those ring tones are carefully crafted and fine-tuned to sound just perfect, and that’s why the Sound Design team at Nokia chose the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra to play the music when creating 25 amazing classical ring tones.
When you think of design, you probably imagine what something looks like. However, there’s more to design than meets the eye. Sound design is just as important as hardware or software design and when it comes to mobile phones, it’s all about being able to design a whole package.
Based on a preference study a few years ago on what kind of music or genre people would like to have as a ring tone, classical music ring tones were the second most popular.
“The 25 original pieces, called ‘miniatures’ were composed by five Nokia Design in-house sound designers. We started exploring the idea through contemporary classical and film music, However, the final result was original pieces that are distinctively ring tones: they are short, and they all have a functional sounds element,” explains Aleksi Eeben from the Sound Design team at Nokia, who was the creative lead for the project.
With 55 members in the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, lead by David Hernando Rico, and a recording team at the ready, the finished original audio masterpieces resemble something you might expect to hear in a video game or in a movie.
Some of these beautiful ring tones can be found already preinstalled on the new Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820. The plans for the rest of the tones is that they’ll be available in certain upcoming device models over the coming few months, and onwards into the new year.
Although these tones were created internally within Nokia Sound Design, the team worked with Epic Sound who worked on some of the composing and arranging. Asbjoern Andersen, from Epic Sound, says:
“Nokia has one of the most recognizable brand sounds in the world and has done lots of pioneering work to innovate and evolve sound on mobile phones. And I think bringing in a living, breathing orchestra really takes this to the next level.”
When it comes to ring tones, they’re usually created in a studio using a synthesiser to produce a wide variety of sounds. While this does produce great results, Nokia wanted to bring the audio experience to life:
“There’s a lot of thought, effort and new ideas put into the devices – not only in terms of the hardware, but also in the overall user experience and design of the products,”
Explains Asbjoern.
“The Nokia mobile sounds are heard around a billion times a day, so a lot of work is put into ensuring that they would stand repeated listening in a lot of different environments and to give the products a unique, organic sound you don’t normally hear on mobile devices.”
When it comes to audio, hearing really is believing. Pop in some headphones and press play on the embedded ring tones below to experience some of them for yourself.
You’ll be able to use some of these ring tones for yourself when you purchase the new Nokia Lumia 920 or Nokia Lumia 820 or over the coming months and year when they become available.
What do you think of the tones? Let us know, in the comments below.
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