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The Plan to Turn NYC’s Turnstiles Into Musical Instruments
February 29, 2016
There’s a lot of noise pollution down in the New York City subway—subway cars screeching to a halt, bad EDM leaking from people’s headphones, busking musicians trying to catch a break or make a buck. But the most criminal of these sounds, according to former LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, are the turnstiles. When riders swipe their yellow cards through the machine, the turnstile emits a flat, crabby beep. Murphy has a plan to change that.
The would replace that irksome sound with something more like wind chimes than the drone of a droid. You might have heard about Murphy’s idea early last year when . Now, with Heineken’s Open Your City initiative onboard as a production and financial partner, Murphy’s campaign has legs. The underpinning philosophy is pretty straightforward: If the turnstiles must make noise—and they do, partly to aid subways riders with disabilities—why shouldn’t it be a pleasant sound?
The sound profile is taking shape largely within a Brooklyn studio, where something of a skunkworks team of sound designers and engineers from and are working with Murphy on turnstile prototypes. Much of this comes down to rethinking the sonic wayfinding signals used underground; right now, subway turnstiles play a flat beep to let you through, and a double flat beep if you have insufficient fare. Problem is, that extra beep tends to go unnoticed by harried commuters, so even seasoned subway riders discover their card doesn’t work by whacking the turnstile.
Subway Symphony will need to present a chord progression of seven or eight tones. This involves more than just harmonizing.
These noises must be easily distinguished so visually impaired riders have a sense of what’s going on. To cover all the necessary cues, Subway Symphony will need to present a chord progression of seven or eight tones. This involves more than just harmonizing—Bill Washabaugh, founder of Hypersonic design studio, says much of the design comes from selecting tones that can stand out against other subterranean sounds. “When you’re down in the subway, and the rumble of the train is approaching, and people are talking—all of those have different frequency ranges, and the goal of the tone is to cut through it so you definitely hear it,” he says. To do that, he’s been spending quite a bit of time in the subway with a sound meter.
For a public demo held in New York, Murphy and the Hypersonic team gleaned data on the frequency of turnstile use from the MTA’s website and used it to create a symphony of the newer, more pleasant sounds—as if the turnstiles were “in player piano mode,” Washabaugh says. The demo helped him and his team realize that the system should use one note per turnstile, rather than an algorithm-powered medley of notes. Timing is key, so a rider gets the sonic cue exactly when expected.
Making Subway Symphony a reality is far more convoluted. The MTA has made it clear , citing tonal requirements set in place by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The agency concedes Subway Symphony is cool, but it can’t interrupt a service used by 6 million people daily for “an art project.”
This has not deterred Murphy or his partners at Heineken, who aren’t interested in adding any burden to the MTA’s operations. Instead, they hope to piggyback Subway Symphony onto the to upgrade to a digital Tap-and-Ride turnstile system in 2019. When the new hardware is installed, they say, programming it with Murphy’s music shouldn’t be tough. All the Subway Symphony team has to do is hand over the code that determines the new sonic frequencies and their correct volumes. Heineken will even cover the cost, says Quinn Kilbury, senior brand director at Heineken. “We’re completely aware [the MTA] have bigger fish to fry,” he says, but “since it’ll be new, you just program the code in to make the nice noises. It would cost the same to put in a bad noise as a good noise. Right now we’re trying to package this up so there’s no work to be done.”
Besides campaigning on- and offline, Murphy and his team are studying the ADA requirements, which will help them better lobby the MTA. As they see it, they must ensure any obstacle the MTA cites as a reason to dismiss the project is removed. “We want to make sure they can feel comfortable that we’ve done the homework,” Kilbury says.
Company: 
Boon Edam Inc.
Of: Margaret Rhodes
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