Useful Notes / Voyager Golden Record

To the makers of music — all worlds, all times.^note Top: the record itself. Bottom: the cover for the record. Not pictured: the platter it is set on or the stylus used to play it.

As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.

—Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General of the United Nations

Hello from the children of planet Earth.

—Nick Sagan, son of Carl Sagan, aged six

In the 1970s, NASA was preparing their first missions to the outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Pioneer 10 visited Jupiter before making its way out to the edge of the Solar System, and Pioneer 11 used Jupiter's gravity to swing it over the top of the Sun all the way to Saturn. The mission planners knew that these spacecraft would never return to the Solar System, so they carried two identical plaque featuring the image of a human male and female, a map of pulsars to locate the probe, and a schematic of their trajectories through the Solar System^note Pioneer 11's diagram did not show it visiting Saturn—NASA only diverted it toward Saturn to test out flyby procedures for the upcoming Voyager probes.

Shortly thereafter, the Voyager probes, 1 and 2, were created to take advantage of a specific once-in-two-centuries alignment of planets that would allow consecutive flybys of all five outer planets with a single launch^note Voyager 1 flew by Saturn's moon Titan and thus out of the plane of the Solar System, but it could have flown by Pluto if Titan wasn't so valuable. These were intended to carry replicas of the Pioneer Plaques originally, but given that these could return further science than the Pioneer probes, a simple plaque was not enough. After a few weeks of brainstorming with another person, Carl Sagan came up with the idea of a 12-inch record containing sounds, music, and images of Earth.

With only a brief six-week time frame and a paltry $25,000 budget, Sagan and his team still managed to illustrate the diversity of humanity. The record, titled The Sounds of Earth, contained greetings from people in 55 languages, whale songs, a sonic essay about the formation of Earth and the development of humanity, images from across the Solar System involving chemistry and humanity, a selection of 27 compositions from around the world, and the brainwaves of a woman newly in love^note this woman was Carl Sagan's future wife Ann Druyan; the two had just confessed their love for each other mere days before the recording, despite both being married to other people at the time. The record was cast in gold-plated copper instead of vinyl to withstand the harsh conditions of space, and designed to be spun at half the rate of a regular record to fit as much information as possible on twelve inches of grooves. The cover, made of uranium-plated aluminum, showed how to play it with the included needle and cartridge, as well as how to decode the included images.

In 1977, the Voyagers were launched toward Jupiter, slingshotting them out of the Solar System toward Saturn and beyond. The probes would discover many things about the outer planets before taking the famous "Pale Blue Dot" image and entering interstellar space in the 2010s. Being powered by radioactive decay, the probes will no longer be able to power themselves by 2025, after which their main purpose will be carrying these Golden Records to whoever will find them. While neither is targeted toward a specific star, they both will pass within 2 light-years of separate stars about 400,000 years into the future^note and even if they ceremonially used all the rest of their fuel to direct them there, they would only fly as close as 1 light-year from those stars.

Only ten copies of the original pressing remain on Earth, making it then the rarest album ever made^note until the release of Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. However, in 2017, forty years after the Voyagers' launch, Ozma Records funded a Kickstarter campaign to (metaphorically) bring the musical portion of the Records back to Earth as a vinyl box set. While they only needed $198,000 to fund the project, they managed to raise $1.36 million^note 54 ½ times more money than was allocated for the records themselves!, making it the most successful musical crowdfunding campaign to date. They are currently available for sale as either a 3-LP box set or as a 2-CD compilation. The audio portion of the record as a whole (minus a song and an image) can be viewed for free on YouTube here.

Friends of space, how are you all? Have you listened yet?

Side A

1. Images of Earth^note includes excerpt from Beethoven's "Cavatina" (8:32)
2. Greetings from Kurt Waldheim, Secretary General of the United Nations (0:44)
3. Greetings in 55 Languages (3:46)
4. United Nations Greetings/Whale Songs^note excerpts from Songs of the Humpback Whale (4:04)
5. "The Sounds of Earth" (12:26)
   1. Harmonices Mundi — Johannes Kepler, realized by Laurie Spiegel (0:00-0:42)
   2. Volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder (0:42-1:14)
   3. Mud pots (1:14-1:29)
   4. Wind, rain, surf (1:29-2:43)
   5. Early animals^note Crickets and frogs (2:43-4:43)
   6. Later animals^note Birds, hyena, elephant, dolphins (3:20-5:13)
   7. Chimpanzee (4:30-5:27)
   8. Wild dog (4:51-5:05)
   9. Wind (5:27-6:08)
   10. Footsteps, heartbeat, Carl Sagan's laughter (6:00-6:50)
   11. Fire, speech^note in !Kung (6:25-6:35)
   12. The first tools (6:33-6:50)
   13. Tamed dog (6:45-6:52)
   14. Agriculture and construction (6:52-7:49)
   15. "Per aspera ad astra" [Morse code] (7:49-8:18)
   16. Transportation^note ship, horse and cart, train, airplane, rocket (7:54-11:09)
   17. Mother and child^note kiss, baby crying, mother speaking (11:09-11:34)
   18. Vital signs^note brainwaves of Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife (11:29-12:05)
   19. Pulsar (12:00-12:26)
6. Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 — Johann Sebastian Bach (4:44)
7. "Ketawang: Puspawarna" — Prince Mangkunegara IV (4:47)
8. "Cengunmé" — Mahi musicians from Benin (2:11)
9. Alima Song — Mbuti tribe of Congo (1:01)
10. "Barnumbirr"/"Moikoi Song" — Tom Djawa, Mudpo, and Waliparu (1:29)
11. "El Cascabel" — Lorenzo Barcelata (3:20)
12. "Johnny B. Goode" — Chuck Berry (2:41)
13. "Mariuamangɨ" — Pranis Pandang (1:25)
14. "Sokaku Reibo" — Goro Yamaguchi (5:04)
15. Partita for Violin No. 3: "Gavotte en Rondeau" — Johann Sebastian Bach (2:58)

Side B

1. The Magic Flute: "Der Hölle rache kochtin meinem Herzen" — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (3:00)
2. "Chakrulo" — Georgian State Merited Ensemble of Folk Song and Dance (2:21)
3. Roncadoras and drums — Musicians from Ancash (0:55)
4. "Melancholy Blues" — Louis Armstrong (3:06)
5. Mugham — Kamil Jalilov (2:35)
6. The Rite of Spring: "Sacrificial Dance" — Igor Stravinsky (4:38)
7. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: "Prelude and Fugue in C Major" — Johann Sebastian Bach (4:51)
8. Symphony No. 5 — Ludwig van Beethoven (8:49)
9. "Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin" — Valya Balanska (5:04)
10. Yeibichai Dance — Ambrose Roan Horse, Chester Roan, and Tom Roan (1:01)
11. "The Faerie Round" — Anthony Holborne (1:19)
12. "Naranaratana Kookokoo (The Cry of the Megapode Bird)" — Maniasinimae and Taumaetarau Chieftain Tribe of Oloha and Palasu'u Village Community in Small Malaita (1:15)
13. Wedding Song — Young girl from Huanavelica (0:42)
14. "Liu Shui" — Guan Pinghu (7:36)
15. "Jaat Kahan Ho" — Kesarbai Kerkar (3:34)
16. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" — Blind Willie Johnson (3:32)
17. String Quartet No. 13: "Cavatina" — Ludwig van Beethoven (6:41)

---

We cast these tropes into the cosmos:

• African Chant: Represented by the Alima song by the Mbuti tribe.
• Andean Music: "Roncadoras and Drums" and the Wedding Song from Huancavelica are both made my indigenous peoples of Peru.
• Avian Flute: "Sokaku Reibo" and "Naranaratana Kookokoo" both represent the cries of native birds to the region via wind instruments; "Sokaku Reibo" for cranes and "Naranaratana Kookokoo" for the megapode bird.
• Baroque Music: All three of Bach's compositions, which were chosen in part to display the more mathematical nature of music.
• Blind Musician and Deaf Composer: Blind Willie Johnson and Ludwig van Beethoven close the audio portion of the record.
• Book Ends: The images end with an excerpt from Beethoven's "Cavatina." The full piece also closes the record.
• "Bringer of War" Music: While Theatre/The Rite of Spring predated and inspired Holst's "Mars," Stravinsky's "Sacrificial Dance" was selected because it sounded like humans picking a fight with each other.
• Classical Music: Of the 27 songs on the record, 8 are classical pieces^note while "Jaat Kahan Ho" is Indian classical music, only European classical is considered classical, taking up half the runtime of the music portion of the record^note the European folk music further adds to the runtime, with a total of 47 out of 70 minutes allotted to music being European in origin. Johann Sebastian Bach alone has three songs to his name, one of which opens the music portion of the record.
• Cut Song: According to Carl Sagan, The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" was seriously considered for the record because of its witty title, but the record label EMI refused unless they paid $50,000—twice the budget of the record. Ann Druyan suggested Sagan substitute "Johnny B. Goode" despite his personal distaste for the song, which helped revitalize Chuck Berry at a low point in his career.
  • Reportedly, Miles Davis' "Summertime" could have also been included, but it was scrapped from the tracklist very early on in the decision process.
• Epic Rocking: "Liu Shui," Beethoven's contributions, and "The Sounds of Earth" all breach the six-minute mark, with an uncharacteristically slow first movement of Beethoven's 5th clocking in at 9 minutes.
• Electronic Music: Represented in "The Sounds of Earth" via Laurie Spiegel's rendition of Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi.
• Foreshadowing: Since the images are encoded first in the record, a 20-second excerpt from Beethoven's "Cavatina" is played after the image of the violin and sheet music is shown.
• Greatest Hits Album: Functions as this for humanity in case any interstellar travelers (including future humans) come across it.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: "The Sounds of Earth" features a heartbeat among its giant collage of sounds. The recording of Ann Druyan's thoughts also includes a recording of her heartbeat.
• Icon of Rebellion: "Izlel ye Deylo Haydutin" is sung about Deylo, a rebel against the Ottoman Islamicization of Bulgaria in the 17th century who, according to legend, could only be killed with a silver bullet. In the song, he is immortalized as a warning against the grief of families of those forcibly converted to Islam.
• Limited Lyrics Song: "Dark Was the Night" only features, amid all of Blind Willie Johnson's wailing, "Alive," "Aware," and "Alone," as its lyrics.
• Mood Whiplash: Some of the compositions tend to flow choppily together, such as following a Beethoven symphony with Bulgarian bagpipes, or following folk songs from Australia with a mariachi song. Scientists have even stated that if aliens were to find the Golden Record, they would likely interpret the conflicting styles of music as arguments between each other instead of a collective friendly greeting.
• Naked First Impression: Double Subverted. The Pioneer Plaques featured crude sketches of a naked man and woman, for which the designers of the record wanted to include an image of a nude man and a pregnant woman to show the differences between them. However, the controversy surrounding the Pioneer Plaques' designs forced them to replace it with a traced-over diagram showing a fetus within the female body. This also forced them to use diagrams for the sexual organs instead of drawings. However, the included picture of a newborn baby left their genitalia uncensored.
• Ode to Family: The wedding song by the girl from Huanavelica is a song about the girl learning to appreciate her family.
• Signature Song: The songs most associated with the record are "Johnny B. Goode," "Dark Was the Night," and "El Cascabel." Beethoven's 5th symphony would count, but is more of an inversion as, while many people know it, its inclusion is not as well-known.
  • "Cavatina" was tied most to the identity of the record, appearing three times throughout the record—on an image (as sheet music), immediately after that as an audio excerpt, and then as the final piece of music.
• Spiritual Successor: Sadly subverted. The New Horizons probe, launched in January 2006, did not carry a message to the stars out of fear of controversy. However, after its successful flyby of Pluto, interest increased in giving New Horizons its own message to interstellar travelers uploaded to its hard drive. The project—the One Earth message—never reached its goal of funding, despite being proposed by one of the producers of the Golden Record.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: The Sensory Abuse "Sacrificial Dance" is followed by a slow, gentle Bach prelude.
• Textless Album Cover: The Golden Record's protective sleeve only includes ideographs that show how to play the record and decode the included images. Justified, since whoever discovers it probably won't understand any contemporary human language.
• Time Capsule: The golden records are intended to serve this purpose, an archive in the universe that is proof we existed and likely to be found by alien civilizations long after the destruction of earth.
• Title Track: "The Sounds of Earth."
• Uncommon Time: Displayed through Stravinsky's "Sacrificial Dance," which changes between short bursts like 2/8, 3/8, and 5/16 seemingly at random.
• Work Info Title: The Sounds of Earth is literally a collection of sounds from Earth.
• The World Is Just Awesome: The Golden Record captures the best of what humanity has to offer; greetings and messages of peace in as many languages as possible, the sound of laughter and wildlife and some of the most beautiful music ever written, and photographs of our forests, oceans, monuments, and people. Hell, in the context of showcasing all that we are to any aliens that may find it one day, even the photos of things like rush hour and a supermarket are beautiful.

References in other media

Film — Live-Action

• The focus of the 2017 documentary The Farthest
• Troop Zero's plot revolves around a ragtag group of children forming a Girl Scout group for the chance to have their voices recorded on the Golden Record.

Literature

• In Battlefield Earth, a Psychlo mentions that they found the way to Earth when the Voyager probe reached them; they also note that the gold record on board "was worth a clanking fortune".
• In Fate/Requiem, Erice hears muffled, poor quality music and voice recordings in a variety of languages she doesn't understand just before she meets "Prin", a golden-haired Servant who is deeply fascinated by space. The reveal that Prin is none other than the Anthropomorphic Personificiation of Voyager 1 makes those noises are an allusion to the sounds on the Golden Record.
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate, a sci-fi novella about four astronauts exploring the galaxy to observe alien life, takes its title from the opening speech.

Live-Action TV

• Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage features music from the Record, and even briefly discusses it in one episode.
• Saturday Night Live featured a sketch in which intelligent life discovered the Voyager Golden Record in space and sent a simple four-word message to Earth: "Send more Chuck Berry!"
• Discussed on the Vsauce episode “Messages For The Future” and also mentioned in Michael’s series Mind Field episode "How to Talk to Aliens".
• The X-Files: In the game-changing episode "Little Green Men," the Voyagers and their Golden Record are commonly mentioned. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto is even played in the episode.

Music

• Joywave's third studio album Possession features a copy of the Golden Record on the cover, with its label altered to read "THE SOUNDS OF POSSESSION". Fittingly, multiple audio samples from the actual record are interwoven throughout the album.
• The cover of the record appears on the cover of Mini Mansions' 2015 album The Great Pretenders.

Video Games

• In Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, when Sasha Nein found himself in a Psilirium sickness-induced hallucination and under the analysis of his captors, he mistook said captors as aliens in a spaceship when Raz used Clairvoyance to see his point of view and sees a familiar record nearby. The solution involves having to play the music from said record in order to snap Sasha out of that hallucination, and a more lucid Sasha reveals that the craft is a fake spaceship designed to cause confusion and panic among foreign countries in the Space Race.
  Raz: Hey, a gold record! I'm rich!
  Sasha: That is a collection of our music and sounds, which we sent to space many years ago, to say hello to the cosmos!
• In Splatoon, an Inkling version of the Voyager Golden Record can be found in the story mode.
  "From the depths of the sea we emerged long ago, seeking the light of the surface. In search of still greater lights, we now send this message into outer space, sealed in a disk. Perhaps one day, we will meet others like ourselves..."

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: The focus of "SCP-1342 - To the Makers of Music" is a replica of the Voyager 1 probe (SCP-1342-1), including a golden record (SCP-1342-2) featuring the residents of an alien planet around Gliese 445. Around 40,000 years in the future, the Gliscians (SCP-1342-3) discovered radio waves from Earth and reverse engineered radio technology to contact humans. The ensuing relations brought about a cultural and technological renaissance for the Gliscians, until shortly after inventing Time Travel, humans unleashed cataclysmic weapons on Gliese 445-C that doomed the remaining Gliscians to extinction. Initially planning revenge, the Gliscians recovered the original Voyager and was reminded by the Golden Record of what they loved of humanity, and opted instead to send their own back from the year 42,412 to 1982 to give a warning of their bleak future and offer peace for a new timeline.
  From one maker of music to another, across all worlds, all times, no matter what you do or what you become: You are nothing less than beautiful.

Western Animation

• One of the major MacGuffins in Beast Wars is the Voyager Golden Record, called the "Golden Disk". Apparently, the G1 Megatron used a Voyager probe as a Trojan horse to sneak out critical information.
• Inside Job (2021): The cover of the record is shown in the background of the local bar, McUltra's, alongside other American memorabilia.
• Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline has an instance of Aliens Steal Cable where a rich alien who collects unique specimens recovered a golden record from a space probe launched before the Earth disappeared. He builds a holographic recreation of the Old West from it for his entertainment^note partly justified, considering Monument Valley was one of the images included on the record—which he strands Valerian and Laureline in after realizing they're the only Earthlings still around.

---

Send more Chuck Berry!