Comments on: 7 Songs That Show Off Flangers & Phasers

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:09:00 +0000

I am doing a project for an electronics class on guitar effects. I stumbled across your site. The Kashimir citation is interesting to see someone put a sustained signal time modulted effect on drums. The most staccato instrument there is! You can only really tell that they are there during a long drum roll where the input is sustained, and a cymbal crash that is allowed to resonate for a while before the signal dies and the effect cuts out. I listened to the entire song. The most highlighted points being at 7:19, drum roll crash, 7:42,drum roll crash. Also especially at 8:06, Listen to that. It almost sounds as if the band played the song with the effect throughtout and during mixing they rocked the tape and overdubbed to make the fill longer. It seems to stay in time. Or maybe they manually played with the phaser parameters while recording? What do you think? Is that the phaser going through zero? Is there post recording manipulation going on at 8:06?

By: Thom

Thom — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:01:00 +0000

Another awesome phaser effect is on You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate. They used it on bongos and it sounds amazing.

By: ann

ann — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:02:44 +0000

interesting… not to mention that most of those songs are among my all-time favorites

By: PartiallyDeflected

PartiallyDeflected — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:14:29 +0000

Aren’t both of these in some way the offspring of Les Paul’s Paulverizer?

I second Stewart’s request for Leslie, but you have to include video because a leslie is fun to watch.

By: John W

John W — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:54:39 +0000

@Randy Kindy

The most popular of the pitch-correcting products is Antares Auto-Tune. The effect you describe is actually a “misuse” of the software, it’s original purpose was to bring slightly out of tune singing to the correct pitch. I find both the effect and the overuse of the software in most pop music offensive.

A similar technology but with different aims is a vocoder. Don’t know if that effect will be covered in a future post, but it would be interesting. Even more interesting would be to talk to Jeff Lynne how he got the vocoder effect on the piano in “Mr. Bluesky”. I read somewhere (liner notes, maybe?) that he did it before a vocoder was available, using the studio technology available at the time. Still scratching my head over how he pulled that off.

By: Mercade

Mercade — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:34:10 +0000

@Randy Kindy

I believe what you are referring to is a editing program called Pitch Perfect, or something like that. It allows the sound engineer to “correct” a singer’s voice if they hit a note off key. It’s most noticeable in that god-awful, ear assaulting Cher song, “Believe”.

And I agree, it’s awful.

By: ChinoBrown

ChinoBrown — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:52:55 +0000

Two great examples come to mind…
“Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” -Van Halen is another prime example in addition to Robert Plant’s vocals in (Led Zeppelin’s) “What is What Should Never Be”

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:06:23 +0000

If you refer to the Beatles Anthology book as well as Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles: Recording Sessions,” this is discussed at length. This was initially called ADT or Artificial Double Tracking, invented by an Abbey Road engineer named Ken Townsend. The story goes that the Beatles hated having to double-track their voices (essentially sing harmonies of themselves). Townsend came up with a machine which takes the original signal is fed into a separate machine and then fed back to the first machine to cmbine with the original signal. The second machine has an oscillator on it that allows for the slowing up or speeding down of the signal.

Apparently, John Lennon asked how it worked and was told it used a “double vibrocated sploshing flange.” Lennon thought Townsend was joking, but forever after called it “Ken’s flanger.” The term “flanging” thereafter stuck.

By: Brooklynperson

Brooklynperson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:06:09 +0000

John Lennon supposedly made up the word “flanging” to describe this effect to an engineer in the studio in 1966 during one of The Beatles’ sonic experiments, at least according to Mark Lewisohn (The Beatles: Recording Sessions, New York: Harmony Books, 1988, page 70).

As much as a huge John fan as myself would love for that to be true, I don’t think it is. After all, how did people at, say, the BBC Radiphonic Workshop describe it when they wanted it done on a recording?

By: Randy Kindy

Randy Kindy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:17:39 +0000

Good article. I’ve done a bit of audio production, and until now, I would have called all of those “phasing.” I didn’t know the term “flanging.”

I hope you’re planning to cover one of the more annoying current trends that’s infected pop music and made it even more unlistenable. I don’t know what it’s called, but it makes the singer’s voice sound electronic from time to time. My term for it is “pinching the vocal.” It’s awful, and it’s everywhere.