“Like an electrical gong bath”

When you’ve got an ear for music, you start picking it up everywhere – even in the freezer aisle at the supermarket.

In fact, the freezers in a Co-Op on Sheffield’s Ecclesall Road have garnered viral attention for sounding so soothing, and have not only received radio play, but have also been turned into a 10-hour long loop on YouTube, so you can fall asleep to sweet sounds of cold and crisp freezer hum.

This all originates with a post in the Sheffield subreddit, where a user suggested how nice they sound, comparing them to an “electrical gong bath”, and suggested that anyone with decent field recording equipment should head over to capture the music in all its glory.

Ecclesall road co-op freezers
byu/yaxu insheffield

Another post was shared some weeks later, this time with a video that was ultimately reposted on X and went viral. What’s even more amusing is that commenters then began debating what note could be heard across the hum.

The Eccy road Co-op freezer section does indeed sound heavenly
byu/Lukeautograff insheffield

“The dominant note you hear is the C# and that is the lowest frequency with the octave very prominent (140Hz approx – C# is actually 138.5Hz), but there is a very strong E# (177Hz) a major third up from the low C# which does not occur there in the standard harmonic pattern, neither is its occurrence an octave above that…” says a Redditor.

“The 5th (G#) occurs where expected (416Hz) but the 7th is much closer to a major 7th (B#, 527Hz) which is odd (it should be the flattened 7th around 493Hz) and the upper octave above that. There is a faint A# too, above the 5th (459Hz, A# is actually 466Hz), again not where it occurs in the harmonic spectrum.”

They conclude, “None of this is unusual with engines like this as various things will be causing resonances, adding into the harmonic series pitches… Personally I hear it as C# major.”

You can catch a snippet of these musical freezers in the clip below, or drift off to the 10-hour ASMR version on YouTube aptly titled ‘The Eccy road Co-op freezer Symphony’. Magical.

Rachel is a DIY musician who began learning guitar and keyboard from her bedroom at 14. She has written news and features for MusicTech since 2022, and also has bylines across Kerrang!, Guitar.com, and The Forty-Five. Though a lover of heavy music, her guilty pleasure is 2000s pop.