how to make a sound swirl around your head

[christiannokes]

I was using a single track panned hard left, and then also sent that track thru a tremolo unit and panned that hard right. When I adjusted the speed to be just a tad slower or a tad faster than the dry track, it would make the guitar part swirl around from left to right, front to back, and around again. Does anyone have any specific ways that they have perfected this "swirling" effect? I think I noticed this effect on the guitar solo in "smells like teen spirit". I haven't been able to get the phasers I have to really pull this off like I've wanted them to. They just sound like phasers to me, not really a realistic movement of the sound around my tiny head. Peace

[douglas baldwin]

I've played with this idea in my head, but never took the time to actually set up the patch. If a sound is moving around like a kid on a merry-go-round (traveling colckwise) and you're the parent standing at the fence, it's gonna go 1) LOUD AND DRY, panned center, when the sound is right in front of you 2)Doppler pitch shift down, decrease in volume, rise in reverb, pan left as it moves away 3) pitch stable, max reverb, panned back to center as it reaches its maximum distance 4) Doppler shift up, panned right, and less and less reverb as it gets closer 5) Back to LOUD AND DRY, panned center as it returns to you. I imagine setting up an auto-pan, tremolo, reverb, and pitch shift with the appropriate low frequency sine wave controls would do it. Or you could have your sound source play in one spot and you could ride around in a circle while recording. Or you could have your sound source move around while you record. One of the guitar magazines recently mentioned that some of the woozy stereo pans on Jimi Hendrix's first sessions were created by moving headphones playing back audio around a mic re-recording the track.

Send me $1,000 and give me two days to generate audio files and write a full report ;-)
dB, coyote in residence

[MoreSpaceEcho]

$1,000? you should know the going rate is $35.

[KennyLusk]

On smells like teen spirit wasn't that just a small stone pedal?

[Ben Logan]

John Lennon once proposed the idea of recording his vocal whilst spinning from a rope hung from the ceiling, tied to his feet. I think he hoped that circling the mic would give him a Leslie effect or something. The engineer pointed out that hanging the mic from the ceiling and spinning IT might be safer.

Take the Beatle approach!

[lyman]

On smells like teen spirit wasn't that just a small stone pedal?

doesn't sound like a phaser. it's probably a Small Clone or the Poly Chorus.

[@?,*???&?]

This is an incredibly easy effect to create. You'll think Jimi Hendrix walked into the room.

Take the guitar amp or just the cabinet and lay it on it's back. 2 x12" or 4 x 12" cabs work best for this. Take two mics and route them to two different tracks. Pan the tracks hard left and hard right.

In the tracking room, have another member of the band (not the guitar player) stand on a chair over the cabinet dangling the mics- one from each hand over the speakers of the cabinet. As the player plays and you record, have the 2nd band member slowly swing the mics over the speakers to the cabinet. As the mics and speakers go from off-axis to on-axis to off-axis, you'll get this amazing sweep from left-to-right. The signal goes from a bassier sound to one with more treble and back.

I only pull this trick out when the track needs that "Holy Crap!" sound to fill a certain space, so I don't overuse this, but when I do, "Holy Crap!" AND everyone says it-

Always.

But my question is, "What would Joel Hamilton do?"

[joel hamilton]

This is an incredibly easy effect to create. You'll think Jimi Hendrix walked into the room.

Take the guitar amp or just the cabinet and lay it on it's back. 2 x12" or 4 x 12" cabs work best for this. Take two mics and route them to two different tracks. Pan the tracks hard left and hard right.

In the tracking room, have another member of the band (not the guitar player) stand on a chair over the cabinet dangling the mics- one from each hand over the speakers of the cabinet. As the player plays and you record, have the 2nd band member slowly swing the mics over the speakers to the cabinet. As the mics and speakers go from off-axis to on-axis to off-axis, you'll get this amazing sweep from left-to-right. The signal goes from a bassier sound to one with more treble and back.

I only pull this trick out when the track needs that "Holy Crap!" sound to fill a certain space, so I don't overuse this, but when I do, "Holy Crap!" AND every says it-

Always.

But my question is, "What would Joel Hamilton do?"

Use a turntable and a wireless mic in front of a small tube amp.... combine with another mic for the sickest rotating phase ever... Pan hard left and right. Double track with one track using the turntable at 33, then pitch the turntable up slightly for the overdub that will go hard left. Place the "static mic" in the center. compress only the cenermics via a bus together, they will sum in weird ways, leave the rotating mics out of the buss, but place them right where they REALLY cancel with the mics up the center. Mult the rotating mics to the opposite side of the stereo image, flip the polarity, send to a stereo buss comp.... use a phaser on the polarity flipped pair, pan opposite each other.... EQ the mids just right....

Guitar flying around you in multiple directions and one or two "arriving" in the back corner of the room, all over the place. It will freak you out when you get it just right. Tucked into some "normal" guitar stuff in a chorus, can make things seem much more exciting than they actually are...

I love stuff like this. Use it all the time "inside" more pedestrian mixes....just for excitement.

[Marc Alan Goodman]

You're a sick man Joel. A sick man.

I use the inverse lock on a Mutronics Mutator all the time. However it definitely leads to a more "controlled" sound. Think the version of Radiohead's "Morning Bell" on Amnesiac.

-marc

[KennyLusk]

I love this board. You guys rawk!

Joel's idea is a little complicated for me to throw together today but I'm going to use Jeff's suggestion today in a little re-amping session.

[christiannokes]

kurt did use the electro harmonix small clone chorus, but im talking about the way the mixing engineer made the chorused guitar solo move around your head without sounding like a phasing effect. 'Cause phasers typically sound like an effect to me- not like a sound realistically moving around my head. Thanks for the posts

[@?,*???&?]

Does anyone have any specific ways that they have perfected this "swirling" effect? I think I noticed this effect on the guitar solo in "smells like teen spirit".

As that was an an Andy Wallace SSL mix, I can almost guarantee that there was very little groundbreaking sound-getting going on. SSL Mix= stock studio equipment for the most part. Listening to that song repeatedly for the past 12 years or more, I'd almost bet my life on the effect being a preset (with slight modding) in the Eventide H3000.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Paint thinner soaked rag.

[nick_a]

joel's method:

1) do something totally raw
2) do something sick on top of that
3) add another step
4) multiply awesomeness by 7
5) mess it up a lot
6) blow nick anderson's mind

[Harry]

SWEET!!!
Great thread......I was just going to say "a little modulation and ride the pan" But now I'm reminded that I really should try to be more creative.

good stuff!