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July 31, 2018 02:10 am

Doug Grindstaff, 'Star Trek' Sound Effects Maestro, Dies At 87

Doug Grindstaff, a five-time Emmy Award winner behind Star Trek's Tribble coos, communicator beeps, and Enterprise bridge door whooshes, has died at 87. The Hollywood Reporter looks back at Grindstaff's contributions to the Star Trek universe: [Grindstaff] received 14 Emmy nominations in all -- including one for Star Trek in 1967 -- and won for his editing on The Immortal in 1970, Medical Story in 1976, Police Story in 1978, Power in 1980 and Max Headroom in 1987. Working with Jack Finlay and Joseph Sorokin, Grindstaff created the background sounds and effects used on NBC's Star Trek. These sounds included red alert klaxons, the whoosh of Enterprise bridge doors opening/closing, heartbeats, boatswain whistles, sickbay scanners and communicator beeps and the acoustics that invoked phasers striking deflector shields and transporter materialization (and dematerialization). In a 2016 interview for the Audible Range blog, Grindstaff noted that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry "wanted to paint the whole show [with sound] like you were painting a picture. "And he wanted sounds everywhere. One time I asked him, 'Don't you think we're getting too cartoony?' Because I felt it should be a little more dignified, but he wanted sound for everything. For example, I worked on one scene where [Dr. McCoy] is giving someone a shot. Gene says, 'Doug, I'm missing one thing. The doctor injects him and I don't hear the shot.' I said, 'You wouldn't hear a shot, Gene.' He said, 'No, no, this is Star Trek, we want a sound for it.' "So I turned around to the mixing panel and said, 'Do you guys have an air compressor?' And they did. I fired up the air compressor, squirted it for a long enough period by the mic, went upstairs, played with it a little bit and then put it in the show. And Gene loved it. So, that's how Gene was. He didn't miss nothing!" Grindstaff said he created Tribble coos by manipulating the sound of a dove.

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