When I saw Prince a few years ago his keyboard player had a B-3/ Leslie combo but the wood panelling had been replaced with see-thru acrylic/ plexiglass material. You could watch the leslie whirl around or I suppose, watch Prince.
Leslie is a type of speaker. A big wooden box with a spinning woofer in the bottom and a spinning horn in the top. The box has slats cut into it, so when the speaker spins, sound shoots out of the slots. This causes the doppler effect for listeners. Leslie speakers were used in association with the Hammond, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes pianos/organs back in the day. In fact, Portishead's song "Rhodes" is, as the title implies, a Rhodes piano played through a Leslie cabinet.
another beautiful use of a rotating leslie: the backup vocals on Big Star's "Thirteen"
Leslie is a type of speaker. A big wooden box with a spinning woofer in the bottom and a spinning horn in the top. The box has slats cut into it, so when the speaker spins, sound shoots out of the slots. This causes the doppler effect for listeners. Leslie speakers were used in association with the Hammond, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes pianos/organs back in the day. In fact, Portishead's song "Rhodes" is, as the title implies, a Rhodes piano played through a Leslie cabinet.
another beautiful use of a rotating leslie: the backup vocals on Big Star's "Thirteen"
And the guitar lines on the New Colony Six's "I Confess."
Thanks for the Wikipedia-worthy tremolo primer. Please school me on electroplates.
Forgive me, I must have been multi-tasking when I wrote that sentence. That is actually a "plate reverb." (I was reading about Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) of vinyl (there are no "all analog" presses left in the U.S., so it seems), and I inadvertantly imposed the name of the stamper made from a "mother" -- aka positive electroplate -- into this thread.)
Is it just me, or does the sight of such a beautiful plate reverb tickle others in their special places?
So sexy, right? (File Under: Unattainable Studio Devices, aka Audio Nerd Boobies)
You may recognize the term "plate reverb" from settings in your digital effects units. Those settings are emulations of the above pictured device, which is, an actual plate of steel.
The Broadcast Technical Institute in Nuremberg, Germany (and later at the Institute for Broadcast Engineering in Hamburg, West Germany), developed the first reverberation plates. EMT (in Germany) patented and made the only available units until the patents ran out in the '80s. Since then, several companies have come out with newer units.
Plate reverbs work by suspending a sheet of metal under tension within a rigid frame (using springs or clamps attached at the corners). A transducer, similar to a loudspeaker cone voice-coil, is used to inject audio energy into the plate. Two or more contact microphones, usually Piezoelectric, are attached to the surface of the plate, and pick up the vibrations from the plate and feed them to preamplifiers connected to the console (in the studio). You can create a psuedo stereo plate by feeding the different contact mics to left and right channels.
Since the plate is sensitive to sound pressure, it is usually housed in a soundproof box (see above). Dampers need to be added to the device as well, so you can fine tune the decay. Plates can produce a natural decay of several seconds. This is perfect for those long throw reverbs typical for snares or voices, but can be overwhelming in other circumstances. The damper, then, controls the vibration of the plate, thereby lessening the decay. Throw some wheels on that bitch, and you got a portable plate reverb that will make you the "go-to-guy" for all things reverberating.
Plate reverbs are often used on snare drums, vocal, and in the early days of radio drama similar plates were used to create "thunder." A plate hanging loosely with a handle on the bottom was shaken by the engineer ("shook ones") to create that weirdo metal sound (similar to jiggling a saw) that was substituted for thunderstorms.
Other interesting audio effects: THE ECHO CHAMBER[/b]
Above is a photo of EMI's Abbey Road Studios (the Beatles, dog) echo chamber. It was one of the first specially built for studio recordings. It remains in Studio 2 today. (By the way, Abbey Road is one of the (if not the) best recording studios in the world, and houses one of the only lathes capable of Direct Metal Mastering for vinyl. Records that are recorded, mixed, and mastered entirely in the analog domain are often done at Abbey Road.)
The echo chamber is simply a large room with hard surfaces. Sound is projected into the room from the studio console (much like you would route a signal to an effects unit). The signal (say, a voice) is fed into a large loudspeaker located at one end of the chamber. One or more microphones are placed along the length of the chamber and record the voice as it bounced around. Depending on the configurations, the mics can pick up the sound, and the reflections, as the voice goes through the chamber (when the mics are placed in succession through the chamber).
The signal from the microphone is fed back to the console where it is mixed with the "dry" voice.
As an aside, I saw my first echo chamber when recording at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. The engineer asked if I wanted to see "the chamber." All cool-like, I said, "yea... sure, I guess." (Inside I was all emotional, I mean, this was, after all, "that real shit.") He opened the door to what looked like a huge walk-in closet with 25-foot ceilings. There was some debris on the floor, and an old guitar stand sitting disabled in the corner. It was like a big, cold, stone silo. I saw the mics and the loudspeaker, and thought, is that all there is? Trust me, though, they sound a lot cooler than they look.
Beautiful use of the echo chamber can be witnessed on records made at Abbey Road. The Beatles, obviously. Radiohead, Elliot Smith, for more current stuff. Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The Boxer" have wonderful echo sounds on them (I think they used an elevator shaft). David Bowie's "Heroes" is a great example of natural echo/reverberation. The particular engineer, Tony Visconti, who worked on that record is widely known for the technique he used. Visconti recorded Bowie's voice by placing three microphones along the length of a concert hall. Bowie sang each verse progressively louder during the recording. As he increased volume throughout the song, Visconti engaged each of the three microphones, from closest to farthest. The effect? Bowie's voice sounds close and warm in the first verse, and by the end of the song the reverb is swelling all around.
Led Zeppelin also employed groundbreaking techniques on Physical Graffiti. The drums were recorded using several microphones placed throughout the room. This created that big drum sound that is so well loved among sample operators. Steve Albini, the punk icon/recording engineer, has taken the torch of big drum sound and run with it. His studio in Chicago is one of the best (and should be noted, the cheapest) professional facilities in the United States. There has been much written about Albini's microphone techniques, and with good reason. I find his recordings to be most representative of the real experience of listening to a drummer. For example, listen to "Il Porno Star" and tell me those aren't truer than most. (Sing along: "Porno star arrives/ No English, no money/ Two things: a cock like a stallion, and iron will.")
Albini will use microphones on individual drums, which is the most common way. He will, as well, place microphones all over room to pick up natural ambient sounds; reflection, decay, reverberation. (Studio B of Albini's facility is pictured above.) By mixing these other microphones in with the "close" mics, it produces a tremendous sound. This is not an easy task. Depending on the microphone configuration, there are issues of polarity, phase, and cross-cancellation that come into play. Most engineers can't be bothered. What else, 99% of the current records you listen to have the drums compressed to death, thereby killing any natural dynamics present. Most of the Albini recordings have a natural dynamic range that is both realistic and refreshing to my ears, albeit hard to listen to on "shuffle" with other shitty recordings because it sounds so quiet in comparison. Nirvana's In Utero
/em> is a common example of Albini's "sound," if you're interested.
(As another aside, I toured the dam at Shasta Lake, California, one summer and we took this elevator way the fuck down to the bottom of the dam and walked along this long stone corridor that stretched the length of the dam. When I was near the end, a friend of mine got out of the elevator at the other side, and when talking to another friend, his voice traveled all the way down the stone tunnel reaching me in this crazy, echoing ring. It was just like a ring modulator. The bright reflective nature of the dense stone allowed a quiet speaking voice to be transported (and even amplified) all the way down the length of the tunnel. When the dude giving the tour noticed my face melting, he looked at me and said, "pretty cool, huh?" Then he snapped his fingers, which made this totally fucked up heavy psych sound than I've yet to hear again. In fact, when I walk into churches, cathedrals, parking garages, or large halls, I'll often snap just to check it out. My girlfriend, bless her heart, will make fun of me, walking around snapping and making the audio O-Face and asking me, "can you hear the natural decay of this room... amazing, isn't it?" Seriously, though, try it some time.)
SPRING REVERB[/b]
Spring reverb is the poor man's solution to plate reverb. It is the most common, and least realistic. Similar to plate, a spring reverb uses - as the name would lead you to believe - a spring to create reverberations. The sound is driven through a spring and microphones are placed along the length of the spring to pick up varying degrees of reverberation before being sent back into the console.
Most old guitar amps have a spring unit built into them. If you have an oppurtunity, look in the back of the amp and you can see a slim metal box stretching along the length of the amp. If you look inside the box you'll see a little spring. It's pretty cute, I think. If you've ever dropped or tripped over a guitar amp (when it's on) and heard that crazy sound, than you know what a spring reverb does.
Unfortunately, the massive amount of gain required to retrieve the minute vibrations of the spring can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of a spring unit, making isolation a problem as well. As a result, they can be noisy.
I remember reading an interview with the folks who engineered the Radiohead album (6 or 7 years ago) and they built a spring reverb for vocal effect out of a slinky. Stretching the slinky across the ceiling, using hooks to keep it from sagging, and shooting the voice through one end and placing a microphone at the other. I don't follow Radiohead, so I can't remember the specifics, but it's a great idea.
TAPE LOOP ECHO[/b]
Tape echo, in my opinion, is the greatest of all. (See every dub song, ever.) From the Sound on Sound article, where the above Figure 5 is stolen from, explaining how it works:
. . . a loop of tape passes around a series of heads starting with an erase head, followed by a record head fed from the signal to be treated. Playback heads are positioned after the record head to provide the echoes, and some of the delayed signal is fed back into the record circuitry to create decaying echoes. Delay time is varied by switching heads or varying the tape speed, and models with multiple heads usually have switching systems for setting up different delay patterns (See Figure 5).
It's a fantastic sound. Something that I've yet to hear in the digital realm. Analog delay has a degenerative quality that is so sexy. There are units -- namely the Echoplex, Roland's RE201 Space Echo, the Watkins Copicat, and the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man -- that can be used in place of a tape machine. I think most folks are familiar with the sound of analog delay. If you're interested in hearing it used (albeit, a little too much!), my Reachin' mix features the Memory Man, for example.
Tape can also be used in reverse, combined with reverb, to create a reverse delay. The idea is, if you play a tape backwards, and record the signal (let's say voice, again) as you run it through reverb, when you play it back the reverb effect is introduced to the listener before the actual voice. It sounds like a swelling "ramp-up" of voice.
My main man (above), we'll call him "Smokey," recently mixed a song that employs tape delay. Listen to this song, and pay critical attention to the voice. Specifically, the sound of the echo on the voice just before the singer starts each line. It's one of my favorite effects. For example of extreme reverse tape delay, check out Robert Smith's voice on "End" from The Cure's Wish album (like anyone here owns it?). Shit is crazy. When he screams "please stop loving me," it's like 14 of him screaming it before he actually does...
"Handle It" by the Soul Suspects isn't DOMINATED by tremelo, but when one of the guitarists takes a solo on this funk classic, it's pure Pop Staples/Leslie speaker action all the way...in case you're not Dante C. and don't have an OG of this classic soul instrumental, it's on a bootleg CD comp called The Get It!.
Comments
I thought that shit was
another beautiful use of a rotating leslie: the backup vocals on Big Star's "Thirteen"
great post bam
And the guitar lines on the New Colony Six's "I Confess."
Forgive me, I must have been multi-tasking when I wrote that sentence. That is actually a "plate reverb." (I was reading about Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) of vinyl (there are no "all analog" presses left in the U.S., so it seems), and I inadvertantly imposed the name of the stamper made from a "mother" -- aka positive electroplate -- into this thread.)
Is it just me, or does the sight of such a beautiful plate reverb tickle others in their special places?
So sexy, right? (File Under: Unattainable Studio Devices, aka Audio Nerd Boobies)
You may recognize the term "plate reverb" from settings in your digital effects units. Those settings are emulations of the above pictured device, which is, an actual plate of steel.
The Broadcast Technical Institute in Nuremberg, Germany (and later at the Institute for Broadcast Engineering in Hamburg, West Germany), developed the first reverberation plates. EMT (in Germany) patented and made the only available units until the patents ran out in the '80s. Since then, several companies have come out with newer units.
Plate reverbs work by suspending a sheet of metal under tension within a rigid frame (using springs or clamps attached at the corners). A transducer, similar to a loudspeaker cone voice-coil, is used to inject audio energy into the plate. Two or more contact microphones, usually Piezoelectric, are attached to the surface of the plate, and pick up the vibrations from the plate and feed them to preamplifiers connected to the console (in the studio). You can create a psuedo stereo plate by feeding the different contact mics to left and right channels.
Since the plate is sensitive to sound pressure, it is usually housed in a soundproof box (see above). Dampers need to be added to the device as well, so you can fine tune the decay. Plates can produce a natural decay of several seconds. This is perfect for those long throw reverbs typical for snares or voices, but can be overwhelming in other circumstances. The damper, then, controls the vibration of the plate, thereby lessening the decay. Throw some wheels on that bitch, and you got a portable plate reverb that will make you the "go-to-guy" for all things reverberating.
Plate reverbs are often used on snare drums, vocal, and in the early days of radio drama similar plates were used to create "thunder." A plate hanging loosely with a handle on the bottom was shaken by the engineer ("shook ones") to create that weirdo metal sound (similar to jiggling a saw) that was substituted for thunderstorms.
Other interesting audio effects: THE ECHO CHAMBER[/b]
Above is a photo of EMI's Abbey Road Studios (the Beatles, dog) echo chamber. It was one of the first specially built for studio recordings. It remains in Studio 2 today. (By the way, Abbey Road is one of the (if not the) best recording studios in the world, and houses one of the only lathes capable of Direct Metal Mastering for vinyl. Records that are recorded, mixed, and mastered entirely in the analog domain are often done at Abbey Road.)
The echo chamber is simply a large room with hard surfaces. Sound is projected into the room from the studio console (much like you would route a signal to an effects unit). The signal (say, a voice) is fed into a large loudspeaker located at one end of the chamber. One or more microphones are placed along the length of the chamber and record the voice as it bounced around. Depending on the configurations, the mics can pick up the sound, and the reflections, as the voice goes through the chamber (when the mics are placed in succession through the chamber).
The signal from the microphone is fed back to the console where it is mixed with the "dry" voice.
As an aside, I saw my first echo chamber when recording at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. The engineer asked if I wanted to see "the chamber." All cool-like, I said, "yea... sure, I guess." (Inside I was all emotional, I mean, this was, after all, "that real shit.") He opened the door to what looked like a huge walk-in closet with 25-foot ceilings. There was some debris on the floor, and an old guitar stand sitting disabled in the corner. It was like a big, cold, stone silo. I saw the mics and the loudspeaker, and thought, is that all there is? Trust me, though, they sound a lot cooler than they look.
Beautiful use of the echo chamber can be witnessed on records made at Abbey Road. The Beatles, obviously. Radiohead, Elliot Smith, for more current stuff. Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The Boxer" have wonderful echo sounds on them (I think they used an elevator shaft). David Bowie's "Heroes" is a great example of natural echo/reverberation. The particular engineer, Tony Visconti, who worked on that record is widely known for the technique he used. Visconti recorded Bowie's voice by placing three microphones along the length of a concert hall. Bowie sang each verse progressively louder during the recording. As he increased volume throughout the song, Visconti engaged each of the three microphones, from closest to farthest. The effect? Bowie's voice sounds close and warm in the first verse, and by the end of the song the reverb is swelling all around.
Led Zeppelin also employed groundbreaking techniques on Physical Graffiti. The drums were recorded using several microphones placed throughout the room. This created that big drum sound that is so well loved among sample operators. Steve Albini, the punk icon/recording engineer, has taken the torch of big drum sound and run with it. His studio in Chicago is one of the best (and should be noted, the cheapest) professional facilities in the United States. There has been much written about Albini's microphone techniques, and with good reason. I find his recordings to be most representative of the real experience of listening to a drummer. For example, listen to "Il Porno Star" and tell me those aren't truer than most. (Sing along: "Porno star arrives/ No English, no money/ Two things: a cock like a stallion, and iron will.")
Albini will use microphones on individual drums, which is the most common way. He will, as well, place microphones all over room to pick up natural ambient sounds; reflection, decay, reverberation. (Studio B of Albini's facility is pictured above.) By mixing these other microphones in with the "close" mics, it produces a tremendous sound. This is not an easy task. Depending on the microphone configuration, there are issues of polarity, phase, and cross-cancellation that come into play. Most engineers can't be bothered. What else, 99% of the current records you listen to have the drums compressed to death, thereby killing any natural dynamics present. Most of the Albini recordings have a natural dynamic range that is both realistic and refreshing to my ears, albeit hard to listen to on "shuffle" with other shitty recordings because it sounds so quiet in comparison. Nirvana's In Utero /em> is a common example of Albini's "sound," if you're interested.
(As another aside, I toured the dam at Shasta Lake, California, one summer and we took this elevator way the fuck down to the bottom of the dam and walked along this long stone corridor that stretched the length of the dam. When I was near the end, a friend of mine got out of the elevator at the other side, and when talking to another friend, his voice traveled all the way down the stone tunnel reaching me in this crazy, echoing ring. It was just like a ring modulator. The bright reflective nature of the dense stone allowed a quiet speaking voice to be transported (and even amplified) all the way down the length of the tunnel. When the dude giving the tour noticed my face melting, he looked at me and said, "pretty cool, huh?" Then he snapped his fingers, which made this totally fucked up heavy psych sound than I've yet to hear again. In fact, when I walk into churches, cathedrals, parking garages, or large halls, I'll often snap just to check it out. My girlfriend, bless her heart, will make fun of me, walking around snapping and making the audio O-Face and asking me, "can you hear the natural decay of this room... amazing, isn't it?" Seriously, though, try it some time.)
SPRING REVERB[/b]
Spring reverb is the poor man's solution to plate reverb. It is the most common, and least realistic. Similar to plate, a spring reverb uses - as the name would lead you to believe - a spring to create reverberations. The sound is driven through a spring and microphones are placed along the length of the spring to pick up varying degrees of reverberation before being sent back into the console.
Most old guitar amps have a spring unit built into them. If you have an oppurtunity, look in the back of the amp and you can see a slim metal box stretching along the length of the amp. If you look inside the box you'll see a little spring. It's pretty cute, I think. If you've ever dropped or tripped over a guitar amp (when it's on) and heard that crazy sound, than you know what a spring reverb does.
Unfortunately, the massive amount of gain required to retrieve the minute vibrations of the spring can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of a spring unit, making isolation a problem as well. As a result, they can be noisy.
I remember reading an interview with the folks who engineered the Radiohead album (6 or 7 years ago) and they built a spring reverb for vocal effect out of a slinky. Stretching the slinky across the ceiling, using hooks to keep it from sagging, and shooting the voice through one end and placing a microphone at the other. I don't follow Radiohead, so I can't remember the specifics, but it's a great idea.
TAPE LOOP ECHO[/b]
Tape echo, in my opinion, is the greatest of all. (See every dub song, ever.) From the Sound on Sound article, where the above Figure 5 is stolen from, explaining how it works:
. . . a loop of tape passes around a series of heads starting with an erase head, followed by a record head fed from the signal to be treated. Playback heads are positioned after the record head to provide the echoes, and some of the delayed signal is fed back into the record circuitry to create decaying echoes. Delay time is varied by switching heads or varying the tape speed, and models with multiple heads usually have switching systems for setting up different delay patterns (See Figure 5).
It's a fantastic sound. Something that I've yet to hear in the digital realm. Analog delay has a degenerative quality that is so sexy. There are units -- namely the Echoplex, Roland's RE201 Space Echo, the Watkins Copicat, and the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man -- that can be used in place of a tape machine. I think most folks are familiar with the sound of analog delay. If you're interested in hearing it used (albeit, a little too much!), my Reachin' mix features the Memory Man, for example.
Tape can also be used in reverse, combined with reverb, to create a reverse delay. The idea is, if you play a tape backwards, and record the signal (let's say voice, again) as you run it through reverb, when you play it back the reverb effect is introduced to the listener before the actual voice. It sounds like a swelling "ramp-up" of voice.
My main man (above), we'll call him "Smokey," recently mixed a song that employs tape delay. Listen to this song, and pay critical attention to the voice. Specifically, the sound of the echo on the voice just before the singer starts each line. It's one of my favorite effects. For example of extreme reverse tape delay, check out Robert Smith's voice on "End" from The Cure's Wish album (like anyone here owns it?). Shit is crazy. When he screams "please stop loving me," it's like 14 of him screaming it before he actually does...
Dont get ME started man. I been bidding on EMT's for like, 10 years now.
Bullshit. Can a motherfucker win a bid?
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game = best video ever.
Not me.
The part @ 2:10 is cool. The whole album has good tremelo on it.
I always think of "Loveless", My Bloody Valentine, as essential.