citystompers1:

Given the unnatural origins of Toho’s new beast, Ifukube decided it should possess an equally unnatural voice. Upon scouring the studio’s on-site instrument collection, he dug up a beat-to-hell contrabass missing its entire back frame. He detuned the E-string, donned a pair of leather gloves, and instead of drawing of a bow across the strings like any respectful musician, proceeded to wrench his hands up and down the instrument’s neck as if strangling the woodwind. After suitably abusing the contrabass, sound technician Ichiro Minawa took the recordings and processed them at various speeds, predating Houston’s chopped-and-screwed sound by about half a century. Garnished with a few additional zoo animal noises and echo effects, Godzilla issued its first chest-rattling roar not long afterwards.