Types of farts
A field guide to eleven kinds of fart, with a button for each. Every press builds a new take from real public-domain recordings, so you hear the type, not one recording of it.
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1. The Tuba
The baseline of the genre. A low, round note with enough pressure to be heard across a room and no interest in hiding. Slow vibration, steady flow, a bit of grit.
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2. The Squeaker
High and very short. Tension is high and the gas has nowhere to go but up the scale. Often over before anyone can prove who did it.
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3. Silent But Deadly
The quietest of the eleven: a breathy hiss around a thin buzz that keeps cutting out. Our research program calls this the field's biggest open problem, because what makes it famous is the one thing a sound file cannot hold.
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4. The Motorboat
Rough and rattling, with a loose, uneven buzz. High rasp, low tension. It sounds like it has somewhere to be.
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5. Machine Gun
A run of short bursts instead of one long note. The flow keeps breaking up, so each flap lands on its own. Take cover.
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6. The Long Goodbye
Five seconds or more, with a sputtering finish where the pressure runs out before the fart does. The end is the hardest part to get right.
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7. The Question
Short, with a pitch that climbs through the middle like it is asking for forgiveness, then trails off. Rising pitch means rising tension.
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8. Board Meeting
A short fart on a wooden chair. The seat joins in with two loud bumps of its own, so the room hears more than was released.
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9. Bathtub Bubbler
Wet, bubbling and bounced off tile. Water muffles the start; the bathroom does the rest.
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10. Elevator Incident
A small, hard room with a ringing middle and nine floors to go. Not loud, but impossible to explain.
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11. Sunday Service
Full pressure in a cathedral, with an echo of about four seconds. The loudest place to do the quietest thing.
What makes one fart different from another
Every fart in this guide comes from the same few things. Tension sets the pitch: tighter means higher. Pressure sets how loud it is and how long it can last. Rasp is how rough the buzz is, sputter is how often the flow breaks into bursts, and wetness is exactly what it sounds like. Then the room takes over. A wooden chair adds two resonant bumps; a cathedral adds four seconds of echo.
The Super Fart Lab turns those into nine sliders and five rooms, and stores the result in 12 bytes. That is enough to describe every fart on this page, and the one you are about to make in the fart sound generator. The FB1 research program explains how, with a straight face.
Questions
- What are the different types of farts?
- Most farts can be sorted by a few things you can hear: pitch (low like The Tuba or high like The Squeaker), length, how rough or rattly they are, whether they break into bursts, how wet they sound, and the room they happen in. This guide plays eleven common kinds.
- Why do some farts make no sound?
- Sound comes from something vibrating as gas passes. If the gas moves slowly through a relaxed opening, little vibrates and there is little to hear. The Silent But Deadly is the closest this guide gets.
- Why do some farts squeak?
- Higher tension and faster flow make the vibration quicker, and a quicker vibration is a higher note.
- Can I download these fart sounds?
- Yes. Every type here is on the free fart sound effects page as a public-domain WAV, and any take you play here can be saved with Save this one as WAV.
- Can I make my own type?
- Yes. Open any type in the fart sound generator and move the sliders. The lab names it for you; if it is good, press Send this fart.