It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since sometime in the early 1990s. Back then, we were in Disneyland, fresh off Star Tours, when someone in the souvenir shop gave off a full-throated Wookiee roar. Wow, I thought, I wish I could do that. Later attempts — always in private, of course — would sound rather less than Chewbaccesque, and left me with only a sore throat. It seemed I would never be able to roar like a Wookiee.

Until now.

Thanks to a few tips from AskMetafilter, plus a couple of hours’ practice, I can now produce something approximating a Wookiee roar. To do it, one simply needs to tilt his head back and gargle a tiny quantity of his own spit while executing the start of a yawn. The roar is helped by cracking the voice a bit at the start of the gargle.

It’s nowhere near the original sound effect, which, according to this sound design article, was based on various animal sounds, but it’s close enough to impress little kids at Star Tours.

Here’s the MP3 of me Chewbaccing. Download it and use it for anything you like.

Also see the Chewbacca costume resource.