Why Horses Fart In Our Library

Our Horses library contains some unexpected sounds. In fact, there are four files including the word “Fart” in their name. Although we usually cover all sorts of different aspects in our libraries, you might find this a bit unusual. And so did @20korg on Twitter:

The account represents Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast hosted and produced by Dallas Taylor in which the founder of Defacto Sound “reveals the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds”.

Check out the podcast: megaphone.link/20k

In our libraries you can always find a whole variety of sounds. When it comes to the Horses, there is everything you would expect: breathing, grunts, neighs and of course endless recordings of different movements. But farts?

Being one of our earlier libraries, I expected the memory of that recording to be a bit fainted. Horses was released in 2013, since then we recorded and released so much more. But Patrice Börding, the first recordist I asked, seemed to immediately know what I am talking about. He chuckled a lot while remembering the story. Although unsure if he is responsible for that sound particularly, Patrice recalls recording many farts for that library.

“the horse has to tense its muscles quite a bit”

They had scheduled a multiple recording session with the same horse. After having recorded some ride bys and different vocals, the last point on their list was to record the horse pulling a carriage. From standing in a stable for half a day, many gases have accumulated in the horse’s stomach. When pulling a carriage loaded with three people, the horse has to tense its muscles quite a bit. This ultimately leads to it releasing all the flatulence and can last for a few minutes.

The horse keeper seemed unimpressed as this is a completely natural behavior. Our Sound Designers however were highly amused. You do not get to experience that very often and big screen productions seem to not include that fact into their sound design.