That was a really fun one to make, but now I am addicted to the sound! Check out my Patreon for samples & music: patreon.com/hainbach and watch the video on phasing here: ua-cam.com/video/3OEhe8Pf8PI/v-deo.html
Steve Reich had two reel to reels playing the same loop with a microphone swinging about both of them. Eventually both reel to reels went out of sync with each other. The result was amazing
It really is a delight :) great to see you getting into it ! A couple of cool things to maybe add. 1) flip the phase on one side and really work to get the signals as close to zero (fully nulled) as possible. The outputs and inputs are rarely perfectly calibrated so this allows you to use the desk to match gain first. Also leaving one with flipped phase gives a throaty sound. Nice alternative. 2) a good trick for those with only one tape machine (with varispeed) is to record the material on to tape. Rewind. Dump into the computer. Rewind for 2nd pass and add slight varispeed on that pass . Then line up the recordings in the DAW. Nice thing about this is you can time the null for extra drama. On ride cymbals it’s particularly juicy. 3) I got into the idea of multi flange where you take a stereo signal and run it to the flange process for the left side then repeat for the right channel. If you’re subtle the stereo signal sounds absolutely lush. I’ve tried that on Binaural signals and other wide sources and it’s great. A fair bit of work but so fun of course. This is one of my special interests and not to promo on your channel but I did make a full sample pack of the chamberlin M1 that’s up on decent sampler shop with each key run into 2 nagras with the flange. Each key played 5 times each with different flange per key. Was a flange quest !
@ running at 30 IPS would help for the manual flange effect as the hand moves would have less of a dramatic effect. The slower the tape, the more you can violently throw it out.
A middle-aged guy sitting in a room full of weird equipment screaming ''yeah'' after he turns on a switch is the synth-iest thing you'll see on youtube 😆 Great video Hainbach, pleasure to watch!
There's still something special about old school techniques. Tape flanging, tape delay, spring reverb, Leslie cabinets. I tried this decades ago using two mismatched cassette decks and a really cheap portable cassette player to record it on. No adjustment of tape speed. The natural mismatch of replay speed did all the work. Sounded brilliant, particularly at the through zero point.
old school techniques/ agreed. even if you prefer (or can only afford) software emulations. old school techniques can help you understand the sound better. especially if you're a tactile learner. and understanding the sound better is crucial to being able to better manipulate it for your own expressions
I was just thinking if this would be possible on cassette! I’ve got a handheld cassette recorder with its own speed control, so I wonder if the effect could be achieved if I paired it with a duplicate.
@@user-ff1ez5sy5h this is genuinely me - watching all videos like this just to sit on my DAW thats the same as it was years ago with the same plugins i used years ago but being much more inspired
Yeah, i stumbled upon this as a little kid with two tape players. Wow i hadn't thought about that in years. I can't believe that memory is still in there. When i was like 19 or 20, i discovered dub and have been obsessed with it ever since. What they managed to do with basically a couple tape decks, a spring reverb, and some filters is astounding.
@@howtorainbow3216Yes, you certainly can. I spent endless hours doing stuff like this when i was a little kid. Plus, if one of your decks is crappy, u can put the wow and flutter to work for you lol.
I discovered this by accident as a teenager when I decided to play two identical records on turntables into a DJ mixer. It created long, smooth, jet-like phasing that at first had me worried that I might overload circuitry in the mixer or amp. I yelled for my brother to come to my room and hear it…we messed around with it, nudging the speed of the records all night…minds blown.
Sounds incredible on a top end sound system in a nightclub. Used to be quite easy to do on an SL1200 turntable - get the two records in phase, increase the pitch control on one just a fraction and put the lightest touch of a finger on it and and you can get all sorts of flange-type phase effects. Some 70s disco records sounded brilliant due to the wider dynamic range and positioning of instruments in the stereo mix ... you could even make it sound like a jet engine and it amazed many in the venue.
One of the reasons why it will sound different from BBDs is because decent tape, running at high-enough speed, will have more bandwidth than the typical BBD, simply because all the lowpass filtering in many BBD-based circuits (to keep clock noise out as well as for anti-aliasing) will restrict the bandwidth of the wet signal.
another reason is that it's possible for the tape to be both ahead and behind of the signal being modulated whereas with BBDs, they are always behind of the signal by definition.
I enjoyed Alex's video, but thought it was pretty slack he didn't demonstrate actual physical tape flanging too. Only joking. I would have done this myself but I only have one tape machine 😂 One idea I haven't tried yet is to dump a part from computer to tape, wobble it a bit, then record it back in and sync it up with the original digital copy. You'd have less control, but should get a similar sound.
I had no idea that was how "Flanging" worked until Alex's video. It really blew my mind. That sort of thing, like how old effects were done, or learning how old machines work, is so interesting to me. Good stuff, cool video.
This is the original technique. Modern electronic flangers are multiple signals, this effect is now known as phase shifting. It was developed in the 1940s with tape recorders. They used 40 tape recorders on Johnny Weismullers Tarzan calls. Same effyect, just more subtle. Adds thickness.
I heard this in my teens in the 70s. I remember using a reel to reel tape deck and recording something suitable from an LP, then I would play them back together. With some trial and error and tapping the reel to make them both near to in sync, the two would slowly ‘pass each other’ over a few seconds - the effect was truly amazing to hear.
We used to do a lot of that in the studio back in the 70s, on Udo Lindenberg productions for example, it's very easy to do. Another fun thing was cutting a 6ft. piece of recording tape, hanging it in front of the tape recorder on a third reel going around in a circle, thus giving us a literal tape loop to record with. That is where the term tape loop came from. Digital looping machines didn't exist then, but we used this analog method.
Interesting, and how beautyful those old tape players were. The design is a work of art. And the sound is so unique. I think we have lost something with digital. The full bodied resonance of Analogue.......... We must bring it back! Thank you for this experience!
Check out the 1959 US hit single "The Big Hurt" by Miss Toni Fisher, a case of accidental flanging/phasing as the producer tried playing 2 copies of the master simultaneously to fatten up the sound but what happened was the first (?) instance of flanging on a record. Wonderful video!!!!
The analog flanging effect was awesome and seeing your face as you discovered it was very wholesome. Side note: something about the bass in the mix at 4:18 made my little studio monitors shake my whole room in a way that they've never done before lol very impressive
When I first got turntables to "scratch and mix" with, I couldn't stop Flanging, none of my friends even got the term or cared but it sounded so cool. Brings me back to being a 13 yr old. I am 52 now. Thanks Sir have a great day EVERYONE!
Very cool. And I love that "YEAH!" moment ... Hard to explain, but it's that emotional high where there's like a sudden realization that everything clicks into place. Great feeling. Needs to be a word for that feeling. There's gotta be some long german word for it.
@@levvl11 chatgpt gave me those, and they're very close but not exactly. i think we get that same "YEAH!" moment while listening to music too, so it's not exactly discovering something. it's more like uncontrollable excitement.
If recording real musicians playing real instruments without Auto-Tune etc ever makes a comeback, skills and knowledge like this will be needed as well. Great show brother!
Come on man We both know there were plenty of people who said things like that about popular music when you were young Why you gotta bring that energy with you, leave it in the past, let people enjoy what they enjoy
"Nagra means "[it will] record" in Polish, Kudelski's native language." (From the Nagra Wikipedia article) Greatest name for an audio recorder, ever! Love it.
You’re a stallion! I just went to my local music store yesterday and put a reel to reel on layaway. Thanks for being part of the inspiration for buying one!
Some really beautiful sounds there! The live modulated machines obviously won't let the synch go out as wildly, but both have their own merits. Having a pair of Nagras is a headstart, very sweet.
I love the joy in your face when you manage to do it, that was priceless and wonderful to see. Not only that but before you'd even tried you were already thinking of different ways you could get the effect, which is inspiring.
Also wanted to say this inspired me to jump onto my ZOIA to see if I could make anything similar. I don't know if I did or not, really, but I came up with a patch I absolutely love, which uses the audio signal delay to push back one channel by just some dozen or two milliseconds, and then I use an LFO to shift that delay time slowly, and it produces a really cool tape effect - even if it ends up not being the same thing as this flanging at all. Added in some phasor, options to over compress it, and lovely ghost reverb, and you have a really cool sound. Thanks for the inspiration! It made me come up with an effect I don't think I'd have thought about on my own, at all - but I can see it being one I use fairly frequently!
I’m so very glad to see this video! I’m an OLD geezer who experimented with this technique back in the 1970’s doing exactly what you’re doing. MANY people nowadays have no idea how this done, somehow thinking it was done with only one tape deck. Your video will hopefully educate a lot if people. By the way, the letter A in the word “flange” is a short “a”, so it’s pronounced like “a” in “cat”.
This may have been suggested further back, but I would think you could do this with just one recorder and a DAW: Record the track in the DAW. Play back the DAW while recording to tape. Now you have two synced copies regardless of the tape speed. If you recorded a click-track lead-in, you can start the tape playback and sync DAW start to the click. Route the output of the tape back into a track in the DAW and have fun playing with the tape.
I don’t know what’s more fun: seeing how things were done in the middle ages (I like the outro of “Bold as Love”) or the enthusiasm of the Hainmaster……. I don’t think everybody will understand or appreciate what is shown here. Very good stuff!
Incredible video. I finally know why it’s called a flanger. Every pair of tape players have unique designs, so their flanging characteristics would be distinct and unique, and the way you interact with each distinct pair would be slightly different. A Naga 4.2 flange would sound different to a Sony TC 500 flange. Imagine pairing two ReVox A700s and flanging those. Thanks for the upload Hainbach.
Don’t be ashamed - George Martin tells a very differed story, that flanging was a new and entirely electronic effect, and John Lennon being given to inventing improbable, florid names for things came up with a long winded name for it which included the words “multi-flanged”. This was then abbreviated to “flanging”. Years later, Martin asked a young recording engineer if he knew how flanging got its name, and was told the story about two tapes used this way. It was news to him.
The first time I heard flanging was on the song "The Big Hurt" by Miss Toni Fisher. The record was released in 1959 and received a lot of airplay. I'm not sure exactly how the engineers got the sound that long ago, but I'd bet it was done this way with two tape machines. Thanks for an interesting video.
Yes he was actually trying to give the vocal a bit of echo double tracked sound and got the phasing effect which he left on .At the start you can hear him lining up the two tracks and it takes a while till he gets them to line up enough to phase ,so the rhythm is a bit out at the start
Thank you for sharing. While I have read about the theory and seen diagrams, witnessing it in practice is truly satisfying. The ambient quality of the music is also something I greatly appreciate.
Thank you very much for making this video. I'm a guitar player and I've been using a flanger for I don't know how many decades now. I've always wanted to see how the original flanging process worked. Super cool.
I thought I was already subscribe to this magnificent channel of hardware analog experimentation and creation, that makes wonderful sounds and soundscapes. Not forgetting the musical knowledge and talent. I love it, so subscribed, like I should have done years ago. Respect, peace and love. Keep doing your thing, it's fantastic!
Flanger is my absolute favourite effect. There are even southern rock songs with flanger on the drum track. It's the first time I see it produced with physical tape machines, thank you ❤
I still have my Roland MC-8 micro composer from the 70s. I had serial number 13, Tangerine Dream had serial number 9. This was 10 years pre-midi, only control voltages 0 or 5v. Notes, durations, and timing values were all inputted on an old-fashioned telephone type keyboard. C was either 0,12,24,36,48,60 up to (G,127) (logically, one byte size per note) you could store 5000 notes on it, save the project data on a cassette recorder, and it played eight channels at the same time! I made a lot of demos on it for Studio productions here in Germany, productions I did for Udo Lindenberg. It was much more fun for the studio musicians to play with a musical demo than to play with a click track!
Going back 50 years I did same effect with two Garrard 301 turntables, they have +/- a few percent speed control that uses an eddy current brake that gives better control over the turntable speed. Using the same LP record on each turntable, same pickup cartridge, preamp etc ., I was able to get "through the null", phasing where the sound almost completely cancels out then comes soaring back in again, the best phasing effects I've ever heard. Despite owning some of the finest DSP equipment I'm unable to achieve this wonderful effect digitally.
Glorious and beautiful. Incidentally your channel has some of the best-mastered audio on UA-cam. I love that my Moondrop S8's and other full-size headphones are able to reproduce so much of that electronic vitality even through the UA-cam compression!
🤔As a technical person, one eye is crying and the other is laughing! This reel-to-reel tape tensioning game is a damn good idea, but these Nagra tape recorders are all gems...it turned out to be a nice job in the end. Congratulations!!🤞🙋
Brilliant. Thank you for so graphically describing an auditory phenomena and how to manufacture it. Almost trippy to imagine hearing it. Sound Warp. Cool trick, deep idea, great discovery. Awesome experience to be exposed to. "10" on a 10-scale. Well done. Thanks again.
I love the"witch house"/Project records like bit of music youre applying the flanger to at 1130 or so, and the flanged accordion drone is absolutely amazing !
I love this exploration of a technique I've always wanted to try! I think one technique that might help lock in the phase relationship you want (with prerecorded audio) would be to slow down one reel and then if it gets too far out of phase slow down the other one to close the gap instead of trying to speed up the first one. Anyway, I loved this. Thank you!
I had a reel to reel as a kid in the 60s-70s....this is so cool! I read that Geoff Emmerick, the Beatles sound engineer would mess with the tape with his fingers to cause a warble such as on Paperback Writer....very innovative! Your sounds are very trippy!
the best example of this is "Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces. I use to do this many years ago with an old Grundig Tape recorder. I think that I recorded a record and then played them back together . Because it was recorded the speed of the tape and the record should be the same but obviously with old tech there would be a very, very slight shift in speeds between the two machines. The effect would last for a short time but it was magnificent.
A more impressive example is to be found on ‘Hurry Up John’ by the Idle Race, recorded two years after Itchycoo Park. It is so extreme I don’t think you could even replicate it today with a pedal - and anyway flanger pedals didn’t exist then! But I don’t think it is done the way Hainbach does it here - I think it is a two track tape rolled up and down over the heads. The lyrics are interesting too with references to “rolling up”, “a head” “falling off” and going “too near the edge”. 🤔 Check it out here … ua-cam.com/video/hhGxMmqVK4Y/v-deo.htmlsi=HbwvyU6vqFee9IPv
While Hainbach’s version is superior as you can record something and have the flange effect, you can get a very similar result with identical pieces of vinyl. Start them at a specific point and use pitch control on the turntable. Works best with the same song on different records. Like an original release and then the same song from a compilation (greatest hits!) or a movie soundtrack. Wonderful sounds. Great video, as always!
Man you're way down a rabbit hole with this hobby. I had a converted 10 Meter radio to CB radio with over 500 watts, but this is even farther down the rabbit hole. Isnt the internet great lol.
I just sensed the screams of some audiophiles as your jack got caught and gently graced the face of the nagra 😂 you could probably drop one of these down some stairs and it'll still function!
Hey man, I accidentally found this episode and loved it! You are my new favorite lunatic! You need to start wearing a lab jacket...Also, that that thing you did about 5 minutes in was epic!
capo capo capo!!!! en los 90 me volvi loco con diseñar un efecto asi y consegui un TDA1022 (mini analgo delay chip) y trabaje 3 años con eso!! tengo mi chorus flanger y lo uso regularmente. me encanto ver como se hace de modo mecanico!! muchas gracias!!
Doooood! I have wanted to try this for ages! I remember when Smashing Pumpkins released Cherub Rock (93), I read in a guitar magazine this is how they did the guitar solo. 2 mono decks, solo was recorded, then they basically just messed with the tapes when recording it to the master. Still one of the clearest examples I know of to demonstrate what true tape flanging sounds like. I have a couple flanger pedals, along with a few multi-effect devices, but they don’t really sound like using tapes. Oh, incidentally- running a gentle LFO on one motor basically just does what a flanger pedal does.
I love these! I remember "re-discovering" the tape echo in a studio I worked in, when I managed to control a feedback loop. At the time I thought I was a genius lol. Well, obviously I wasn't but it was a fun thing to discover none the less.
Elegant video sir . I love 101 Strings Astro Sounds from beyond the year 2000 flanging of the Strings - it gets completely bonkers ! . It takes Jerry Cole and the Spacemen to another level.
It's one of those 'how did they do it' sounds (first appearing in the late 60's) that is un-matched by digital simulations. The temporal shift of phase is the important part.. pre and post relative to the reference. I tried it out when I got my Fostex X-15 4-track, by recording the same source material twice whilst using slight varispeed. Deep phasing resulted, very pleased! :)
Damn that tape sounds dope - thick and lush! Cool demo. We used to do this with two records on two turntables. It sounds amazing in the club. When I was dj-ing I would always want two copies of my favorite tracks to do these delay tricks. Being able to do it with tape decks is cool AF. I really love how it sounds with the piano.
Awesome video, as always. Do you have any tips on getting a cheap tape recorder these days, so it is easily connected to a computer and tinkered with? Thanks!
I think the classic tape flange method @AlexBallMusic described was only intended to be done on playback of identical tapes-not the live method, monitoring the playback heads while in record. Because if you think about it, manipulating the speed of the reels in this situation will only create a momentary modulation as the signal is disturbed and then catches up, plus aberrations as the tape guides bounce around etc. Not a long smooth flange of two decks playing the same material at slightly different speeds.
Wow very nice vid. Excellent demonstration of how this process works. Interesting that even the name "flanging" comes from the rim of the tape reel. Thank you for posting!
I modded a pair of Boss BF-1 flangers to produce ONLY delayed signal (nothing special; I just lifted the resistor on each that normally mixes in dry with wet). But since that particular model of flanger can achieve very short fixed delays, I could use one as my "clean" signal that the modulated delay could now move "ahead of" in time, and pass through the zero point on the way there. This, of course, requires that I split the signal in order to feed each flanger the same thing, and then mix them back together again. What's also interesting is that if I let BOTH of them modulate their delay time independently, the through-zero point moves around in unpredictable fashion. I posted a demo of this as a UA-cam, findable by the name "Dual flanger thru-zero". Just note that, for some reason - likely the shared power supply - I have to keep turning the flanger pedals off and on. But you still get plenty of instances of that delicious thru-zero phenomenon.
Right around 2 milliseconds? I had an old DOD that was the first digital unit I ever used. It had an ok chorus range just above that section I don't remember how long the chorus wet was delayed though. 30-ish?
Discovered phasing or flanging with vinyl's on my teenage DJ years, had to perfectly synchronized both records at the same time, the new DJ consoles have the effects button, that's not fun. Thanks for the video you are so natural.
Real thru zero flanging! Beautiful! Most people associate flanging with the feedback flavor that stomps gave us since the mid 70s But real flanging requires no feedback or regen
Fabulous - I noticed your piano flange experiment sounded a lot like the intro treated piano of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes", and was that a little "Trans Europe Express" there?. Love the manual distortion, so interesting, I figured "flanging" had it's roots in some analog process - thanks for surfacing it's origins.
If you have a pair of Stellavox SP7 or SP8, the ASV speed controller allows continuously variable speed control. A variable capacitor can be used in place of the ASV as they are somewhat rare. Not certain of what range of capacitance is required.
I would be very interested in something like that speed control box for my IV-S. Please let us all know if it ever moves past "prototype" and into production. Thank you!
I've jist stumbled across this and the piano reminds me of the start of David Bowie's "Ashes to ashes" which sounds just like that. Did he use the flangeing technique?
Cool! But did you know that Deep Purple was used in the chorus of the 1973 album "Who Do You Think We Are!" in the song "Super Trouper"? Was it some kind of flanger effect? Thanks
I have a Yamaha djx2b just a basic beat machine, it has a digital effector with a phaser and flanger, I didn't know this is where the flanger effect came from, so awesome, great video!
That was a really fun one to make, but now I am addicted to the sound! Check out my Patreon for samples & music: patreon.com/hainbach and watch the video on phasing here: ua-cam.com/video/3OEhe8Pf8PI/v-deo.html
Steve Reich had two reel to reels playing the same loop with a microphone swinging about both of them. Eventually both reel to reels went out of sync with each other. The result was amazing
It really is a delight :) great to see you getting into it ! A couple of cool things to maybe add. 1) flip the phase on one side and really work to get the signals as close to zero (fully nulled) as possible. The outputs and inputs are rarely perfectly calibrated so this allows you to use the desk to match gain first. Also leaving one with flipped phase gives a throaty sound. Nice alternative. 2) a good trick for those with only one tape machine (with varispeed) is to record the material on to tape. Rewind. Dump into the computer. Rewind for 2nd pass and add slight varispeed on that pass . Then line up the recordings in the DAW. Nice thing about this is you can time the null for extra drama. On ride cymbals it’s particularly juicy. 3) I got into the idea of multi flange where you take a stereo signal and run it to the flange process for the left side then repeat for the right channel. If you’re subtle the stereo signal sounds absolutely lush. I’ve tried that on
Binaural signals and other wide sources and it’s great. A fair bit of work but so fun of course. This is one of my special interests and not to promo on your channel but I did make a full sample pack of the chamberlin M1 that’s up on decent sampler shop with each key run into 2 nagras with the flange. Each key played 5 times each with different flange per key. Was a flange quest !
Cool tips, gotta try the phase inversion now!
Im thinking back in the day they were using large diameter reels this would result in finer speed control with your thumb on the flange
@ running at 30
IPS would help for the manual flange effect as the hand moves would have less of a dramatic effect. The slower the tape, the more you can violently throw it out.
A middle-aged guy sitting in a room full of weird equipment screaming ''yeah'' after he turns on a switch is the synth-iest thing you'll see on youtube 😆 Great video Hainbach, pleasure to watch!
When you witness some young dude calling someone else "middle-aged" and you feel the proxy pain. 😂
Hooked me. I immediately subscribed to the feed…. Being a 54 year old male.
Yeah ! But he was raising his voice not screaming. Yeah !
✌️😺👍 🎉
I was thinking, he should buy a bike and see the world.
There's still something special about old school techniques. Tape flanging, tape delay, spring reverb, Leslie cabinets. I tried this decades ago using two mismatched cassette decks and a really cheap portable cassette player to record it on. No adjustment of tape speed. The natural mismatch of replay speed did all the work. Sounded brilliant, particularly at the through zero point.
old school techniques/ agreed. even if you prefer (or can only afford) software emulations. old school techniques can help you understand the sound better. especially if you're a tactile learner. and understanding the sound better is crucial to being able to better manipulate it for your own expressions
I was just thinking if this would be possible on cassette! I’ve got a handheld cassette recorder with its own speed control, so I wonder if the effect could be achieved if I paired it with a duplicate.
@@user-ff1ez5sy5h this is genuinely me - watching all videos like this just to sit on my DAW thats the same as it was years ago with the same plugins i used years ago but being much more inspired
Yeah, i stumbled upon this as a little kid with two tape players. Wow i hadn't thought about that in years. I can't believe that memory is still in there.
When i was like 19 or 20, i discovered dub and have been obsessed with it ever since. What they managed to do with basically a couple tape decks, a spring reverb, and some filters is astounding.
@@howtorainbow3216Yes, you certainly can. I spent endless hours doing stuff like this when i was a little kid. Plus, if one of your decks is crappy, u can put the wow and flutter to work for you lol.
I discovered this by accident as a teenager when I decided to play two identical records on turntables into a DJ mixer. It created long, smooth, jet-like phasing that at first had me worried that I might overload circuitry in the mixer or amp. I yelled for my brother to come to my room and hear it…we messed around with it, nudging the speed of the records all night…minds blown.
Sounds incredible on a top end sound system in a nightclub. Used to be quite easy to do on an SL1200 turntable - get the two records in phase, increase the pitch control on one just a fraction and put the lightest touch of a finger on it and and you can get all sorts of flange-type phase effects. Some 70s disco records sounded brilliant due to the wider dynamic range and positioning of instruments in the stereo mix ... you could even make it sound like a jet engine and it amazed many in the venue.
Careful, some UA-camrs don't consider scratching to be "real" music
@richinoable That's because it isn't.
Yeah, no; I'm calling BS on that story.
@@Joe-mz6dc I see you're just an easily triggered racist
This is so outrageously cool. Sounds amazing, somewhat different to BBD chips as you were saying.
Not surprised that you're here since you made a video on the Eventide Flanger a few days ago
One of the reasons why it will sound different from BBDs is because decent tape, running at high-enough speed, will have more bandwidth than the typical BBD, simply because all the lowpass filtering in many BBD-based circuits (to keep clock noise out as well as for anti-aliasing) will restrict the bandwidth of the wet signal.
another reason is that it's possible for the tape to be both ahead and behind of the signal being modulated whereas with BBDs, they are always behind of the signal by definition.
Nice to see these two videos come together.
I enjoyed Alex's video, but thought it was pretty slack he didn't demonstrate actual physical tape flanging too.
Only joking. I would have done this myself but I only have one tape machine 😂
One idea I haven't tried yet is to dump a part from computer to tape, wobble it a bit, then record it back in and sync it up with the original digital copy. You'd have less control, but should get a similar sound.
I had no idea that was how "Flanging" worked until Alex's video. It really blew my mind. That sort of thing, like how old effects were done, or learning how old machines work, is so interesting to me. Good stuff, cool video.
This is the original technique. Modern electronic flangers are multiple signals, this effect is now known as phase shifting. It was developed in the 1940s with tape recorders. They used 40 tape recorders on Johnny Weismullers Tarzan calls. Same effyect, just more subtle. Adds thickness.
Check out the Beatles. All done on four track tape machines.
I heard this in my teens in the 70s. I remember using a reel to reel tape deck and recording something suitable from an LP, then I would play them back together. With some trial and error and tapping the reel to make them both near to in sync, the two would slowly ‘pass each other’ over a few seconds - the effect was truly amazing to hear.
We used to do a lot of that in the studio back in the 70s, on Udo Lindenberg productions for example, it's very easy to do. Another fun thing was cutting a 6ft. piece of recording tape, hanging it in front of the tape recorder on a third reel going around in a circle, thus giving us a literal tape loop to record with. That is where the term tape loop came from. Digital looping machines didn't exist then, but we used this analog method.
I used to do it as well, with a Studer A80 and a Studer mono machine. They were built to the same dimensions so it worked. We called it "Phasing".
0:19 Showing something as if it was on an oscilloscope is such an on-brand way to quote another video.
Interesting, and how beautyful those old tape players were.
The design is a work of art.
And the sound is so unique.
I think we have lost something with digital.
The full bodied resonance of Analogue..........
We must bring it back!
Thank you for this experience!
Check out the 1959 US hit single "The Big Hurt" by Miss Toni Fisher, a case of accidental flanging/phasing as the producer tried playing 2 copies of the master simultaneously to fatten up the sound but what happened was the first (?) instance of flanging on a record. Wonderful video!!!!
Thanks!
The analog flanging effect was awesome and seeing your face as you discovered it was very wholesome.
Side note: something about the bass in the mix at 4:18 made my little studio monitors shake my whole room in a way that they've never done before lol very impressive
Thank you! That was the strange sub kick from the Eko Dream Machine - really odd how low it goes for an organ accompaniment
When I first got turntables to "scratch and mix" with, I couldn't stop Flanging, none of my friends even got the term or cared but it sounded so cool. Brings me back to being a 13 yr old. I am 52 now. Thanks Sir have a great day EVERYONE!
Same here! Same story (only I'm now 53)!
Der Pullover Mann ist sympatisch und intelligent. Viel Spaß mit der Technik und alles Gute !
Dankeschön!
The Sweater Man
Very cool. And I love that "YEAH!" moment ... Hard to explain, but it's that emotional high where there's like a sudden realization that everything clicks into place. Great feeling. Needs to be a word for that feeling. There's gotta be some long german word for it.
Tonbandverzauberung maybe 🤔
"Eureka-Moment" or "Aha-Moment" maybe? :)
_Aha-Erlebnis_
@@levvl11 chatgpt gave me those, and they're very close but not exactly.
i think we get that same "YEAH!" moment while listening to music too, so it's not exactly discovering something. it's more like uncontrollable excitement.
@@kevrasxsomething like “tone-band-fer-tsow-ber-ung.
If recording real musicians playing real instruments without Auto-Tune etc ever makes a comeback, skills and knowledge like this will be needed as well. Great show brother!
Come on man
We both know there were plenty of people who said things like that about popular music when you were young
Why you gotta bring that energy with you, leave it in the past, let people enjoy what they enjoy
5:05 That ambiance is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I see myself trying to play drums and guitar on this.
at 5:09 it sounds a bit like welcome to the pleasuredome.
The harmona sounds awesome through that. Very soundtrack like!
Yeah, sound like on Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Fury(CD Edition, track after Two Tribes)
"Nagra means "[it will] record" in Polish, Kudelski's native language." (From the Nagra Wikipedia article)
Greatest name for an audio recorder, ever! Love it.
You’re a stallion! I just went to my local music store yesterday and put a reel to reel on layaway. Thanks for being part of the inspiration for buying one!
Some really beautiful sounds there!
The live modulated machines obviously won't let the synch go out as wildly, but both have their own merits. Having a pair of Nagras is a headstart, very sweet.
I love the joy in your face when you manage to do it, that was priceless and wonderful to see. Not only that but before you'd even tried you were already thinking of different ways you could get the effect, which is inspiring.
Love these cross-pollination videos between these great channels.
How marvellous it sounds on saw waves (which is usually not my favourite waveform).
Yeah the collabs are one of my absolute favs, even if its a simple bouncing off as its here.
Sawtooth waves have all those harmonic frequencies going on. It's similar to why distorted guitar sounds so cool through a flanger or chorus pedal.
Also wanted to say this inspired me to jump onto my ZOIA to see if I could make anything similar. I don't know if I did or not, really, but I came up with a patch I absolutely love, which uses the audio signal delay to push back one channel by just some dozen or two milliseconds, and then I use an LFO to shift that delay time slowly, and it produces a really cool tape effect - even if it ends up not being the same thing as this flanging at all.
Added in some phasor, options to over compress it, and lovely ghost reverb, and you have a really cool sound.
Thanks for the inspiration! It made me come up with an effect I don't think I'd have thought about on my own, at all - but I can see it being one I use fairly frequently!
That is so beautiful and something I always hope for when I make a video. Thank you for sharing!
@@Hainbach likewise! Honestly, many of your experiments lead me to do my own experiments as well - this one turned out really usable!
I’m so very glad to see this video! I’m an OLD geezer who experimented with this technique back in the 1970’s doing exactly what you’re doing. MANY people nowadays have no idea how this done, somehow thinking it was done with only one tape deck. Your video will hopefully educate a lot if people.
By the way, the letter A in the word “flange” is a short “a”, so it’s pronounced like “a” in “cat”.
That "yeaaah" at the very beginning was kind of adorable lol. Thanks for cheering me up on a day when I can definitely use it.
This may have been suggested further back, but I would think you could do this with just one recorder and a DAW:
Record the track in the DAW. Play back the DAW while recording to tape. Now you have two synced copies regardless of the tape speed. If you recorded a click-track lead-in, you can start the tape playback and sync DAW start to the click. Route the output of the tape back into a track in the DAW and have fun playing with the tape.
I don’t know what’s more fun: seeing how things were done in the middle ages (I like the outro of “Bold as Love”) or the enthusiasm of the Hainmaster……. I don’t think everybody will understand or appreciate what is shown here. Very good stuff!
2:55 the sound made me think of the Eurythmics " sweet dreams" intro.
Incredible video. I finally know why it’s called a flanger. Every pair of tape players have unique designs, so their flanging characteristics would be distinct and unique, and the way you interact with each distinct pair would be slightly different. A Naga 4.2 flange would sound different to a Sony TC 500 flange. Imagine pairing two ReVox A700s and flanging those.
Thanks for the upload Hainbach.
Never knew why they named that effect "flanging". Duh, thanks for clearing that up. Spent years with tape, I am ashamed.
Don’t be ashamed - George Martin tells a very differed story, that flanging was a new and entirely electronic effect, and John Lennon being given to inventing improbable, florid names for things came up with a long winded name for it which included the words “multi-flanged”. This was then abbreviated to “flanging”.
Years later, Martin asked a young recording engineer if he knew how flanging got its name, and was told the story about two tapes used this way. It was news to him.
What about "phasing"? How did it get its name? I may have missed it in this video🤷
The first time I heard flanging was on the song "The Big Hurt" by Miss Toni Fisher. The record was released in 1959 and received a lot of airplay. I'm not sure exactly how the engineers got the sound that long ago, but I'd bet it was done this way with two tape machines. Thanks for an interesting video.
Yes he was actually trying to give the vocal a bit of echo double tracked sound and got the phasing effect which he left on .At the start you can hear him lining up the two tracks and it takes a while till he gets them to line up enough to phase ,so the rhythm is a bit out at the start
Thank you for sharing. While I have read about the theory and seen diagrams, witnessing it in practice is truly satisfying. The ambient quality of the music is also something I greatly appreciate.
10:59 what's the name of the track?
Boss made the purple Flanger pedal and The Cure made whole albums out of that pedal! haha. Great sounds, Herr Hainbach.
That looks seriously satisfying. i didnt realise ahead of time how cool this would be !!
Thank you very much for making this video. I'm a guitar player and I've been using a flanger for I don't know how many decades now. I've always wanted to see how the original flanging process worked. Super cool.
I thought I was already subscribe to this magnificent channel of hardware analog experimentation and creation, that makes wonderful sounds and soundscapes. Not forgetting the musical knowledge and talent. I love it, so subscribed, like I should have done years ago. Respect, peace and love. Keep doing your thing, it's fantastic!
Flanger is my absolute favourite effect. There are even southern rock songs with flanger on the drum track. It's the first time I see it produced with physical tape machines, thank you ❤
I still have my Roland MC-8 micro composer from the 70s. I had serial number 13, Tangerine Dream had serial number 9. This was 10 years pre-midi, only control voltages 0 or 5v. Notes, durations, and timing values were all inputted on an old-fashioned telephone type keyboard. C was either 0,12,24,36,48,60 up to (G,127) (logically, one byte size per note) you could store 5000 notes on it, save the project data on a cassette recorder, and it played eight channels at the same time! I made a lot of demos on it for Studio productions here in Germany, productions I did for Udo Lindenberg. It was much more fun for the studio musicians to play with a musical demo than to play with a click track!
I love how much fun this guy is having. That stuff is infectious
13:37 loved this whole song. Sounds like Thom Yorke and Massive Attack making music for Sim City.
3:56 David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes! 😄
So simple yet so unforgettable.
Brian Eno’s finest, I think.
@@theeniwetoksymphonyorchest7580Eno also did it on Roxy Music “For Your Pleasure” back in ‘73.
8:35 - that piano solo. Gorgeous, and such a mood!
Thank you Brice! Just played what fell into my head
It's amazing how the limitations and quirks of a technology like magnetic tape can become the cornerstone of desirable sounds
Seeing someone get inspired to write an epic music, this is top tier…thank you for sharing this with the world. So good.
Going back 50 years I did same effect with two Garrard 301 turntables, they have +/- a few percent speed control that uses an eddy current brake that gives better control over the turntable speed. Using the same LP record on each turntable, same pickup cartridge, preamp etc ., I was able to get "through the null", phasing where the sound almost completely cancels out then comes soaring back in again, the best phasing effects I've ever heard. Despite owning some of the finest DSP equipment I'm unable to achieve this wonderful effect digitally.
Glorious and beautiful.
Incidentally your channel has some of the best-mastered audio on UA-cam. I love that my Moondrop S8's and other full-size headphones are able to reproduce so much of that electronic vitality even through the UA-cam compression!
It's great to see how these effects we take for granted in our DAWs were originally produced with tape machines and other analog methods....cheers!
🤔As a technical person, one eye is crying and the other is laughing! This reel-to-reel tape tensioning game is a damn good idea, but these Nagra tape recorders are all gems...it turned out to be a nice job in the end. Congratulations!!🤞🙋
Nagra by the beach is my happy place
Brilliant. Thank you for so graphically describing an auditory phenomena and how to manufacture it. Almost trippy to imagine hearing it. Sound Warp. Cool trick, deep idea, great discovery. Awesome experience to be exposed to. "10" on a 10-scale. Well done. Thanks again.
I love the"witch house"/Project records like bit of music youre applying the flanger to at 1130 or so, and the flanged accordion drone is absolutely amazing !
I switched off after your claim to have never tried flanging any of the tape players you have. Absolutely incredible!
May God bless you for flanging these reels with so much skill.
So many correct uses of screwdrivers in this one! 🤩
Superb! 👏 Shared on Sonicstate today
Thank you!
I love this exploration of a technique I've always wanted to try! I think one technique that might help lock in the phase relationship you want (with prerecorded audio) would be to slow down one reel and then if it gets too far out of phase slow down the other one to close the gap instead of trying to speed up the first one. Anyway, I loved this. Thank you!
The piano part arond 8:20 gave me chills down my spine...
At 5:10 - am I right to say that the oscillating tension pulley is the analog LFO? 🙂
Yes!
I had a reel to reel as a kid in the 60s-70s....this is so cool! I read that Geoff Emmerick, the Beatles sound engineer would mess with the tape with his fingers to cause a warble such as on Paperback Writer....very innovative! Your sounds are very trippy!
the best example of this is "Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces. I use to do this many years ago with an old Grundig Tape recorder. I think that I recorded a record and then played them back together . Because it was recorded the speed of the tape and the record should be the same but obviously with old tech there would be a very, very slight shift in speeds between the two machines. The effect would last for a short time but it was magnificent.
A more impressive example is to be found on ‘Hurry Up John’ by the Idle Race, recorded two years after Itchycoo Park. It is so extreme I don’t think you could even replicate it today with a pedal - and anyway flanger pedals didn’t exist then!
But I don’t think it is done the way Hainbach does it here - I think it is a two track tape rolled up and down over the heads.
The lyrics are interesting too with references to “rolling up”, “a head” “falling off” and going “too near the edge”. 🤔
Check it out here … ua-cam.com/video/hhGxMmqVK4Y/v-deo.htmlsi=HbwvyU6vqFee9IPv
While Hainbach’s version is superior as you can record something and have the flange effect, you can get a very similar result with identical pieces of vinyl. Start them at a specific point and use pitch control on the turntable. Works best with the same song on different records. Like an original release and then the same song from a compilation (greatest hits!) or a movie soundtrack. Wonderful sounds. Great video, as always!
Man you're way down a rabbit hole with this hobby. I had a converted 10 Meter radio to CB radio with over 500 watts, but this is even farther down the rabbit hole. Isnt the internet great lol.
I just sensed the screams of some audiophiles as your jack got caught and gently graced the face of the nagra 😂 you could probably drop one of these down some stairs and it'll still function!
Very sturdy indeed!
Sounds terrific! Love that slow movement that must be impossible using a pedal. Track at the end of the video is so good 👌🏻
Hey man, I accidentally found this episode and loved it! You are my new favorite lunatic! You need to start wearing a lab jacket...Also, that that thing you did about 5 minutes in was epic!
capo capo capo!!!!
en los 90 me volvi loco con diseñar un efecto asi y consegui un TDA1022 (mini analgo delay chip) y trabaje 3 años con eso!!
tengo mi chorus flanger y lo uso regularmente.
me encanto ver como se hace de modo mecanico!!
muchas gracias!!
Doooood! I have wanted to try this for ages! I remember when Smashing Pumpkins released Cherub Rock (93), I read in a guitar magazine this is how they did the guitar solo. 2 mono decks, solo was recorded, then they basically just messed with the tapes when recording it to the master. Still one of the clearest examples I know of to demonstrate what true tape flanging sounds like. I have a couple flanger pedals, along with a few multi-effect devices, but they don’t really sound like using tapes. Oh, incidentally- running a gentle LFO on one motor basically just does what a flanger pedal does.
best channel on youtube, always a delight when you upload !
I love these! I remember "re-discovering" the tape echo in a studio I worked in, when I managed to control a feedback loop. At the time I thought I was a genius lol. Well, obviously I wasn't but it was a fun thing to discover none the less.
Elegant video sir . I love 101 Strings Astro Sounds from beyond the year 2000 flanging of the Strings - it gets completely bonkers ! . It takes Jerry Cole and the Spacemen to another level.
This sounded so good and that sound you got was that perfect organic flange was very cool. Cheers
It's one of those 'how did they do it' sounds (first appearing in the late 60's) that is un-matched by digital simulations.
The temporal shift of phase is the important part.. pre and post relative to the reference.
I tried it out when I got my Fostex X-15 4-track, by recording the same source material twice whilst using slight varispeed.
Deep phasing resulted, very pleased! :)
Damn that tape sounds dope - thick and lush! Cool demo. We used to do this with two records on two turntables. It sounds amazing in the club. When I was dj-ing I would always want two copies of my favorite tracks to do these delay tricks. Being able to do it with tape decks is cool AF. I really love how it sounds with the piano.
Awesome video, as always. Do you have any tips on getting a cheap tape recorder these days, so it is easily connected to a computer and tinkered with? Thanks!
Hell yeah, Nagra are, still, the bleeding edge of reel tape electronics! Awesome video on cool musical technique!
I like your delight in playing around with this stuff.
I think the classic tape flange method @AlexBallMusic described was only intended to be done on playback of identical tapes-not the live method, monitoring the playback heads while in record. Because if you think about it, manipulating the speed of the reels in this situation will only create a momentary modulation as the signal is disturbed and then catches up, plus aberrations as the tape guides bounce around etc. Not a long smooth flange of two decks playing the same material at slightly different speeds.
You might want to watch the video a bit longer…
It always amazes me how many effects we now see as "basic" within electronic music have very humble roots from analogue.
Wow very nice vid. Excellent demonstration of how this process works. Interesting that even the name "flanging" comes from the rim of the tape reel. Thank you for posting!
This may have been mentioned but does this work when mixing two records that are the same using turntables. Great film.
I modded a pair of Boss BF-1 flangers to produce ONLY delayed signal (nothing special; I just lifted the resistor on each that normally mixes in dry with wet). But since that particular model of flanger can achieve very short fixed delays, I could use one as my "clean" signal that the modulated delay could now move "ahead of" in time, and pass through the zero point on the way there. This, of course, requires that I split the signal in order to feed each flanger the same thing, and then mix them back together again. What's also interesting is that if I let BOTH of them modulate their delay time independently, the through-zero point moves around in unpredictable fashion. I posted a demo of this as a UA-cam, findable by the name "Dual flanger thru-zero". Just note that, for some reason - likely the shared power supply - I have to keep turning the flanger pedals off and on. But you still get plenty of instances of that delicious thru-zero phenomenon.
Right around 2 milliseconds?
I had an old DOD that was the first digital unit I ever used. It had an ok chorus range just above that section I don't remember how long the chorus wet was delayed though. 30-ish?
Discovered phasing or flanging with vinyl's on my teenage DJ years, had to perfectly synchronized both records at the same time, the new DJ consoles have the effects button, that's not fun.
Thanks for the video you are so natural.
I love seeing analogue make a small comeback. I know it’s never left but people are making it come back..
Real thru zero flanging! Beautiful!
Most people associate flanging with the feedback flavor that stomps gave us since the mid 70s
But real flanging requires no feedback or regen
Fabulous - I noticed your piano flange experiment sounded a lot like the intro treated piano of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes", and was that a little "Trans Europe Express" there?. Love the manual distortion, so interesting, I figured "flanging" had it's roots in some analog process - thanks for surfacing it's origins.
Yeah that was Ashes to Ashes, as Alex explored that in his video.
@@Hainbach yeak, ok - not so dissimilar to the keyboard treatment of the piano in parts of Blade Runner also
If you have a pair of Stellavox SP7 or SP8, the ASV speed controller allows continuously variable speed control. A variable capacitor can be used in place of the ASV as they are somewhat rare. Not certain of what range of capacitance is required.
Good to know, thanks!
Beautiful. We used cart machines with adjustable capstan rates for this effect "back in the day" in radio.
I love your passion for experimentation with gear
I’ve only got one Nagra 4, but I’m really intrigued by the speed jack! What’s the voltage range? Has Bartoš published a schematic for his box?
I would be very interested in something like that speed control box for my IV-S. Please let us all know if it ever moves past "prototype" and into production. Thank you!
I've jist stumbled across this and the piano reminds me of the start of David Bowie's "Ashes to ashes" which sounds just like that. Did he use the flangeing technique?
Check Alex video linked at the end, there he shows the unit Bowie used
That song you make with is so good. Reminds me of Jan Hammer, Miami vice or something. It's superb.
Very cool! I love the sound and the fact that it changes every time to make it even more interesting.
Cool! But did you know that Deep Purple was used in the chorus of the 1973 album "Who Do You Think We Are!" in the song "Super Trouper"? Was it some kind of flanger effect? Thanks
Love it? What is meant by “Through zero flanging”? From what I understand it was used on Jimi Hendrix’s Bold as Love album.
I have a Yamaha djx2b just a basic beat machine, it has a digital effector with a phaser and flanger, I didn't know this is where the flanger effect came from, so awesome, great video!
Super cool tech work bro . I really enjoy people with extraordinary talents in the music field . Keep up the good work .
All of your experiments are great. This one is an absolute favourite!
You always have the coolest, most unique & informative videos…bravo!