Where do laugh tracks come from?

April 30, 2007 5:16 AM

Where do "laugh tracks" come from? Are they recorded especially or stolen from a genuine performance? Would it be possible to track laugh tracks in the same way that, for example, the Wilhelm Scream has been?
posted by twine42 to media & arts (14 comments total)

A short history of the laugh track.
posted by sexymofo at 5:24 AM on April 30, 2007

Harlan Ellison has a short story about an aunt whose laugh is captured on a laugh track and he hears it in show after show years after she's dead. Pretty sure it was fiction, though.
posted by dobbs at 5:43 AM on April 30, 2007

In answer to your second question, I know there are some laughs that I recognize from episode to episode in certain shows. What's confusing to me, are the examples I can think of are all filmed live. For example, on I Love Lucy, there is one woman's laugh I would always hear in the background. It caught my ear because it is so melodic and it always followed the same pattern. Similarly, I hear the exact same whistle during applause in episodes of SNL and Kids in the Hall. Again, the whistle has a pattern to it that is very consistent from show to show. What all of this means, I have no idea.

Don't even get me started on stock children's laughter. They often use the same clip, and it drives me insane, since I want to know the story behind it so badly
posted by piratebowling at 5:47 AM on April 30, 2007

Wait, I see in the link above: Even 'I Love Lucy's sound engineer regularly peppered many of the episodes with a handful of easy-to-recognize laughs.

I guess SNL and KITH also pepper their cheering with that same whistle. That explains why I'd hear a laugh track in with a live show.
posted by piratebowling at 5:49 AM on April 30, 2007

The Business had some coverage on this recently.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 5:59 AM on April 30, 2007

I used to have an entire vinyl album full of crowds laughing and cheering -- about 60 tracks, all maybe 15-20 seconds. We'd put it on and stand around and tell bad jokes in the space between tracks. Good times. It's typical sound-effect stuff, I'm sure available by the metric ton on CD these days.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:09 AM on April 30, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I was at the live taping of a show once as a child (Newton's Apple on PBS, if anyone cares), and part of the time between bits of taping the actual show, they recorded laugh tracks from us. Some guy would tell us to laugh a little, now laugh a lot, now laugh like it's the funniest thing ever, now tone it down a bit. I always assumed they added bits of that track in when necessary during the editing of the show. I guess part of it was that the studio audience was comprised of maybe 30-40 people, but I remember thinking it looked like several bleachers-full when watching the show on TV. So maybe they played our laugh track OVER our real laughter, to improve the illusion that there was a large crowd in attendance.
posted by vytae at 7:51 AM on April 30, 2007

NPR's "wait wait ... don't tell me!" had a bit this week about how groucho marx made the comment "i like my cigar, but i take it out every once in a while" to a woman who explained that her love for her husband was the reason she had so many children. as the tale goes, the exchange was cut from the broadcast version of whatever show it was, but the response laughter was retained and used for laugh tracks afterward.

not terribly enlightening, but an amusing story.
posted by the luke parker fiasco at 7:51 AM on April 30, 2007

There was one laugh I remember distinctly from childhood as being used in lots of shows I watched (Brady Bunch type stuff)... a man's voice with deep raspy ascending hoo-hoo-hoo. I'd love to have a sound file of that.
posted by bink at 9:06 AM on April 30, 2007

The familiar I Love Lucy laugh may well have been Lucille's mom, DeDe Ball, who attended every taping of the show. Hers is the "uh-oh" often heard when a precarious situation arose on the show.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:04 AM on April 30, 2007

On M*A*S*H, there was always this yuk yuk yuk voice on the laugh track. Kinda deep sounding, but always recognizable.
posted by smcniven at 12:13 PM on April 30, 2007

I know there are both a baby's laugh and a baby's cry that I've heard in various shows.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:16 PM on April 30, 2007

A Google Answer.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 3:07 PM on April 30, 2007

I heard from my uncle that they came from some of Red Skeletons pantomime bits.
posted by magikker at 4:49 PM on April 30, 2007