@@ScottWozniak my favourite too. And what an interesting track - from its 4-bar melodies over 3-bar progressions, to the subliminal vocals, to the mix that puts slap bass into the same space as flanged piano melody … genius on every front, not to mention Bowie’s incredible vocals
i usually watch youtube on my tv with audio via my atmos surround amp, and good grief, every time that flanger kicked in, my lounge was surrounded with wibbly wobbly awesomeness. love it.
Yes you can't fully appreciate what is going on here without listening on good headphones or sound system. I have a friend who is an audiophile snob and believes that the recording should be true to the musician and/or the instrument. I, on the other hand, believe that a recording should take you farther than that. It should take you to a place that is beyond our day to day reality. Put you in a different "headspace".
That wistful piano wobble is so captivating, no matter how many times I hear it . I thought Visconti could have been misremembering the Instant Flanger, but it sounds spot on here. Great video Alex.
With an effect like this is makes sense to “print” to tape instead of recording dry and applying the effect in the mix. The flanger has a prominent free-running LFO which would be in a different phase every time you play it back, which could influence your mix decisions. By recording the piano with the effect, the same notes will get slurred or accentuated the same way every time. And assuming the player heard it, it would also have affected the way they played the part.
Very timely - a couple weeks ago Moritz Klein did a video where he explains the BBD, builds one from discrete components and shows off its workings, and then builds a reverb & flanger using a BBD chip :)
@@brimans3092 The analogy is like a line of people passing buckets of water down a line to put out a fire. I think that was even called the "bucket brigade".
Finally somebody who still listens to the music he is doing and not watching it on purple software screens! +1 Music is still alive as long as people like you exist. Thanks to people like you!
Love this. I own one of these - bought it for £150 years ago. It’s been pretty solid ever since. My favourite flanger aside from tape flanging. I love it so much I ended up buying a 910 and 949 as it was looking lonely. The guy who fixed them for me offered me his instant phaser too. I dare not! 😬 Brilliant machines. So much character and so much fun!! The sign of a good flanger unit is when it gives the signal more power. So many flangers I’ve used weaken it but the FL201 adds so much power.
I still have mine!......A fabulous piece of gear that has never failed! Been sitting in the studio rack for many years and sounds as good today as it did in the 70's when I bought it new!
Is there anything better in life than getting hold of some weird creation from 50 years ago and plugging into your studio and finding out what it does?
Immensely enjoyable video, as an old duffer still eking a miserly crust outa the business, it's good to know your sharing this knowledge with the latest generation of muscians, the tidbit about the pianist recording his parts with the effect on is good solid advice to any young players hoping to achieve the elusive " feel " of those classic tracks, be confident enough to put it down as you " feel" it, simple stuff but crucial if you want to break out of the over produced norm that currently seems all pervasive on the airwaves, so thanks for putting it out there.
I bought the single when I was 12 loving the sound of the electronically altered piano hook, and now I see how it was achieved. Excellent man! Thank you!
Alex, I always had the understanding that it was phasing rather than flanging that had equally spaced notches. I think the notches in flanging are spaced harmonically, this is why flanging in a sense sounds more 'musical'. A flanger uses delay and a phaser uses an all-pass filter.
@@EatItLikeSheDoes ‘The age of Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%)’ Source: "Age of the Earth". U.S. Geological Survey. 1997
On one of My latest projects I did the exact same effect on My strings in the final chorus to make it stand out in the mix ass every goes in at the end in a crescendo.
@@cicada8790 I’ve literally been obsessed with that sound for the past 40 years! I love the way that melody seems to be partly the slap bass - like the first three 8th notes of the song are piano notes, the 4th note is bass - am I the only one who hears it this way?
Mid 80's I used a single TDA 1022 BBD chip to create a similar effect, a triangular waveform with amplitude and offset controls set the clock frequency and sweep range (hence the delay time) via a VCO and there was a control for feedback also. The sound would break up and become crunchy when the clock frequency was too low, loads of fun - nowadays I use a Kyma system that is incredibly clean and dynamic but I do miss that characteristic BBD sound.
I remember using the 1022 chip in a kit built chorus effect back in the late 1970s. It sounded a bit rubbish if I'm honest. And oddly enough, I too have Kyma now.
@@David_K_Booth The original Philips/Valvo datasheet for the TDA1022 would even recommend replacing the standard 47k load resistor with a constant-current source. This would eliminate the intrinsic attenuation (and therefore improve the signal-to-noise ratio, I guess).
I first remember hearing of a ‘flanger’ in the ads for guitar effects pedals in 70’s Creem magazine-flangers, phasers, Big Muff etc. Since we didn’t know what they ACTUALLY sounded like we used our imaginations and tried to pick them out in recorded songs. In fact, there is a Kiss song called STRANGE WAYS that has a wild effect on Ace Frehley’ s guitar solo. As kids we could never figure out where that crazy tone came from-I,always thought it was something called a Noise Envelope😂
SPOTLIGHT: That manual is a brilliant share (link in the description) - you will get a lot more insight than you might expect, and it's very well written. Notably quality vid, this really was actually brilliant. Top marks.
@AlexBallMusic I actually learned something. The inherent time delay will allow through transients at the phase cancellation frequencies, before the repeat happens. Which is obvious, but never occured to me. The thinking behind, if the mods in the book (like a feedback knob!) were done well, they wouldn't void your warrantee. I like. Also, it's very much on the cusp of the technology, so it's alive to the possibilities of what a flanger is, could do, before the 'use case' definition became more clamped down. I might actually go and read it again.
Back in the 1980s when I used to DJ, I stumbled across flanging when mixing back and forth between two of the same song. I ended up using this live as a means to spice things up and sometimes cut out unwatned mismatching frequencies in a crossover mix. Plus I couldn't afford a flanger then so I kind of had to do it live.
I hadn't thought of that, but that would totally work, as you say. Mechanical flanging sounds smoother than BBD flanging I think, from the tiny experience I have of it. Was that your experience?
@@AlexBallMusic Yup pretty much. I obviously found it easier if I used two turntables versus turntable and a CD player because of control. Just gently gripping the central post of a turntable (like Norman Cook does) to gently slow things is far more instinctive and controllable than doing it on the outside of a tape reel. Plus I found it easy because it was the same sort of shit I was doing with mixing anyway.
What a great overview and exploration of the workings of beautiful-sounding vintage equipment. Also, a clear explanation of the process involved in the making of classic track. I relished this excellent video!
Exactly! This one, thankfully explained by master Alex now. Still remaining Nenas "Leuchtturm" (original version from '83) intro as a sonic mystery. Perhaps something for an upcoming video, @AlexBall?
I was just making the joke about everything in the 70's had a flanger slapped on it. Like even creepy kids shows. I had no idea that "Flanging" was done with 2 tape machines. That's really interesting, I love old gear and how they created, and pulled off, effects. Good stuff, I love these types off videos. Top shelf content sir.
Used to do it myself in the early 70's with a sony reel to reel and a turntable ,phasing is one of my favourites effects ,works well on tracks with a lot of well recorded drums ...
I always described the effect on Itchycoo Park as phasing, but Wikipedia states that it was done manually at Olympic Studios with the engineer manually slowing the tape reels by pushing on the flanges.
@@philipbrougham6360 I always liked the effect as it sounded like an aircraft taking off. I used to do it with two copies of a record on turntables. It had no real use to me as an aspiring DJ, but I found it endlessly fascinating how I could manipulate sounds just by pressing with my fingers. And then I discovered synthesisers!
@AlexBallMusic I believe so. It was either that or the liner notes to Isao Tomita’ The Planets… I was a young boy, and time is a harsh mistress. Both albums listed all the gear and started my journey.
@@AlexBallMusic @horizontalblanking 'Out of the Blue' used 2 flangers: one from MXR, one from Systec. Eventide supplied the Harmonizer used on the album.
I remember playing with "flanging" back in high school VTR Club, mid-70's. Didn't know what it was called but we had a lot of fun messing with the few pieces of equipment we did have. That sound has stuck with me for a long time. Fascinating to hear how Ashes to Ashes was really done.
hands down best musician for any gear demonstration. probably the best talent on the platform! its so obvious that your a great songwritter in these snapshots.
Aha! Glad to be able to answer that one. It's similar to how we still use words relating to physical film in digital editing software. The meaning gets lost, but the terminology sticks.
I always thought it was the perfect word for the effect, even if I didn’t know why it was called that. It almost feels like an onomatopoeia, even though it isn’t.
I have heard that the reason described in the video was not correct. Flange was just a word that The Beatles and George Martin used to describe anything, like a whatsit or doohicky... Pretty sure it was George Martin saying this. Not that it matters much...
Heh. I had a similar thought. I always wondered, and somehow never wandered onto the answer. And here, Alex just pops in with it, and I'm watching it, going, "Oooh..! Okay!"
@@simongregory3114 It's a nice story, but as it was being called flanging by other engineers, it's probably just a coincidence and they believed they'd invented it because the same word was being used broadly in the industry.
Love the pronunciations/language.... in the Narrative... GOLD! (edit: Thank you YT algo! Cant believe Ive never known about your channel.. Im a very happy man)
Having worked in a recording studio with some music industry leg-ends I have been fortunate to learn many of the early methods for affecting sounds with effects. My colleague and I once made an entire soundtrack using nothing more than the analogue noise from older gear as a source then running it through an analogue MTA console and adding some effects on aux sends and even feeding the fx returns back on themselves. As always, great vid, keep em coming
About 15 years ago I was trying out a budget price Yamaha analog mixer [no onboard FX]. When I surprised myself by accidentally creating a slap back echo after randomly connecting up a patch cable between jack sockets. I neglected to write down how I did it, and by next day forgot how I"d done it. So never since been able to replicate that result. Is this a well known trick in pro studio engineer circles ???
@@garycrant4511 It depends on the engineer I guess. One of the producers I worked with was as much an experimenter as me so we used to muck around quite a lot :D It is unusual for a mixer without FX to introduce enough of a delay to create a slapback let alone usable delay so maybe there is some sort of FX built in there somewhere ;)
@shauntronics Definitely no FX built in that mixer. That's why the slapback was a real WTF surprise, and still remains such a mystery.. A freak result of the right combination of 'have a go and see what happens' incompetence and dumb luck. I guess some kind of accidental feedback loop created by connecting up the wrong inputs and outputs ??? Similar to the sort of fun we can have like when we first stumble into discovering we can make fuzz boxes with nothing plugged in the input jack self oscillate into howling pitchable notes.
Never gave that sound a second thought because I forgot how long ago it was recorded! Amazing Eventide magic outboard gear making history once again. Great video and walk through of this wondrous bit of outboard gear.
Great insight, Thank you Alex! I love David Bowie's music and Ashes to Ashes is one of my favourite songs. If you have any insight on the spaced out, otherworldly lead at the end of the song maybe you could do another video (it's my favourite sound by far). I thought maybe it was done on a Prophet-5 or a Polymoog?! Anyways keep it up!! Cheers
I mentioned in another reply - Chuck Hammer gets credited with “Guitarchitecture” which was a setup he used I think based on a Roland GR-500 guitar synth - but I don’t know whether that’s the pad sounds or the solo as well - would be good to know for sure !
The single best synth channel on the you tubes. Always giving such interesting context to the topics covered. Thanks for all your content! I’m surprised how little like the flanging sound of the 80s that I grew up with (Think almost anything by the Cure in the early 80s) this machine sounds. A much more subtle and varied effect that was so often used.
Absolutely brilliant presentation of the principles AND the real-world applications. Phlanging (see what I did there?) has always been my favorite effect. Thank you for putting this together.
Some clarifications.. the "Depth" knob is a wet/dry blend control. It allows the dry signal to blend with the wet either in phase or out of phase depending on whether you've turned it clockwise from center or counter-clockwise. The Bounce control adds a short burst of ripple (approximately 3Hz) triggered at the bottom of the LFO sweep, it is not particularly evident (if at all) unless the sweep Oscillator is engaged (push button below the rate knob).
Excellent video! I always thought that sound was a synth with an LFO on the pitch. Little did I know it was a piano with a modulated flanger on it. Thanks Alex!
Although phasing and flanging ARE different processes and are sonically very different , there ARE circumstances in which it's hard to tell them apart. A friend demoed for me some white noise, processed through a 24-stage phaser he built, and it was pretty much indistinguishable from flanging. That blurring of boundaries likely came from several sources: 1) having MANY more notches in the comb filtering than we get in the usual phasers, 2) having an ultra-wide sweep (wider than we normally hear in many phasers) that "starts" waaaayyyy up high, and 3) using white noise, instead of a single instrument. The benchmark flanging sounds typically use a mix of several instruments to provide content where the moving notches can be heard. One of the unique, and "special" things about the Eventide Flanger, was its inclusion of what came to be known as "theta processing". This involves using a number of fixed phase-shift stages that apply additional phase shift to the *lower* frequencies. The result is that any notches created, as the sweep moves into the lower range, are spaced somewhat differently, resulting in less of a "standing wave" tone. YOu cab find more mathematical descriptions of it on the Electronotes site, but also see an implementation in the late Jurgen Haible's *Stormtide* and *Son of Stormtide* flanger projects. I still can't quite tell whether the fixed phase-shift stages are added to the dry signal or the wet. I recently put up a sloppy, but still informative, UA-cam (look for "Dual flanger thru-zero") involving a pair of Boss BF-1 flangers, and a splitter-mixer, that fed them a common signal and mixed their parallel outputs back together. The BF-1 pedals had been modded to omit the dry signal and only provide delay. Because they include a "manual" delay control, and can be set for ONLY fixed delay, I could set one for just a msec or two of delay, as my "dry" signal, and have the other one sweep past it, passing the "thru-zero" point. Even more exotic, if *both* units were set to modulate independently, the thru-zero point would occur in unpredictable fashion.
There’s a flanging effect on ‘Moss Garden’ from “Heroes” that always sounded like it was kind stepped to me - almost like it was a sort of comb filter ‘arpeggio’. I wonder if that’s what the ‘remote’ socket did - let you feed a CV from a keyboard to affect the comb filter frequency.
Hello Alex: Firstly, thank you for a very clear explanation of flanging. I think I read in a book by David Hepworth that is was John Lennon who coined the term "flanging". Finally, it was amazing to see "Ashes to Ashes" re-created in a couple of minutes. Have a really lovely day.
Great video! I always loved the part of this song where he is echoing the main vocal and even does the "whoa-oa-whoa" part. I have no idea how to write that out.
From the start, I love the video.
In your wheelhouse!
Me too.
Me three. Alex and Hainbach in the same comment section. Im amongst audio royalty!
Well it is an Alex Ball video. ;)
Now for Neu and conny planck
Ashes To Ashes is probably my favorite Bowie song. Seeing what they used on it is a real treat! 🧡
Yeah, it's wonderful. I didn't actually know it was this effect until I borrowed it and looked it up, so then I had to try it for myself!
@@AlexBallMusic Wicked sounding unit! Thanks for your enlightening videos, mate!
@@ScottWozniak You any relation to Steve?
@@leepshin no but he's the GOAT sold me a JX3P years back and it's still kicking. Man's got tunes.
@@ScottWozniak my favourite too. And what an interesting track - from its 4-bar melodies over 3-bar progressions, to the subliminal vocals, to the mix that puts slap bass into the same space as flanged piano melody … genius on every front, not to mention Bowie’s incredible vocals
Brilliant explanation of actual flanging.
Nice video
I love how Röyksopp uses that flanging effect. This was very educational to me as well. Thanks m8
i usually watch youtube on my tv with audio via my atmos surround amp, and good grief, every time that flanger kicked in, my lounge was surrounded with wibbly wobbly awesomeness. love it.
Excellent. 😀
wibbly wobbly awesomeness 🤩
Brilliant!
Yes you can't fully appreciate what is going on here without listening on good headphones or sound system. I have a friend who is an audiophile snob and believes that the recording should be true to the musician and/or the instrument. I, on the other hand, believe that a recording should take you farther than that. It should take you to a place that is beyond our day to day reality. Put you in a different "headspace".
~😵💫~
I recognised that sound straight away.
Ashes to Ashes is one of Bowie's masterpieces.
Jesus Christ, it's like you're making content specifically for me. Speechless!
Impeccable audio on this one-sounds utterly fantastic.
Hey thanks guys for releasing all those beautiful sample packs for free. I particularly liked the moded 909 one 😊
Was your favourite part when I added.....the Reverb?
@@AlexBallMusic haha, always
As born in 62 I really love all these phaser & flanger stuff --- thanks Alex! Great video again!
Marvelous presentation, historical reference and musicianship. Gratitude.
Did you just say Bavid Dowie?
yes he did
Wait...what?
😉
0:29
Avid Owie?
I sense another running gag on Alex's channel, like how he says dates in German.
That wistful piano wobble is so captivating, no matter how many times I hear it . I thought Visconti could have been misremembering the Instant Flanger, but it sounds spot on here. Great video Alex.
With an effect like this is makes sense to “print” to tape instead of recording dry and applying the effect in the mix. The flanger has a prominent free-running LFO which would be in a different phase every time you play it back, which could influence your mix decisions.
By recording the piano with the effect, the same notes will get slurred or accentuated the same way every time. And assuming the player heard it, it would also have affected the way they played the part.
Very timely - a couple weeks ago Moritz Klein did a video where he explains the BBD, builds one from discrete components and shows off its workings, and then builds a reverb & flanger using a BBD chip :)
I watched the entire video! He's a star.
And I saw a short using plugins to do that just yesterday. 😀 But it may have been old.
Ive just seen your comment after my first... Why is it called bucket brigade?
@@brimans3092 The analogy is like a line of people passing buckets of water down a line to put out a fire. I think that was even called the "bucket brigade".
@@AlexBallMusic
No it's to water pot plants in remote locations.
Finally somebody who still listens to the music he is doing and not watching it on purple software screens! +1 Music is still alive as long as people like you exist. Thanks to people like you!
In high school in the late 70:s our electronics teacher talked and demonstrated bucket brigade circuits for a whole lesson.
Just seen your comment after i commented above... Go read it...
This is the only synth reviewer worth watching.
A goldmine of valuable information and superb reviews
Best explanation of flanging I've ever heard.
Realy enjoyed watching your re creation of ashes to ashes intro . Had no idea it was piano . Thankyou for sharing
Love the flanger on a 303 bass line. Really adds to the acid sound.
Yeah, gonna flange my 303 more in future.
Bavid Dowie is one of my favorite artists! 🤣 Your videos are so well made, informative, and funny. Thanks for continuing to produce them!
😉
Exactly! I thought he said that!😂
Love this. I own one of these - bought it for £150 years ago. It’s been pretty solid ever since. My favourite flanger aside from tape flanging. I love it so much I ended up buying a 910 and 949 as it was looking lonely. The guy who fixed them for me offered me his instant phaser too. I dare not! 😬
Brilliant machines. So much character and so much fun!!
The sign of a good flanger unit is when it gives the signal more power. So many flangers I’ve used weaken it but the FL201 adds so much power.
I still have mine!......A fabulous piece of gear that has never failed! Been sitting in the studio rack for many years and sounds as good today as it did in the 70's when I bought it new!
@@theoriginaldanalogue I know what you’re saying and I haven’t used this unit but I’ve pulled off some killer sounds with the Yamaha E1010
@@michaelteems5813ever had it in the shop for repair since you bought it?
I simply Adore Eventide!🌹
Love the smile at 8:40 ish, it sums up music making & messing about with vintage tech in one expression. Nice bit of rack gear, thanks, as always.
Is there anything better in life than getting hold of some weird creation from 50 years ago and plugging into your studio and finding out what it does?
I noticed the smile a split second before reading this comment! Spooky.
Sounds like the soundtrack for Last Emperor/Riyuchie Sakamoto?
Immensely enjoyable video, as an old duffer still eking a miserly crust outa the business, it's good to know your sharing this knowledge with the latest generation of muscians, the tidbit about the pianist recording his parts with the effect on is good solid advice to any young players hoping to achieve the elusive " feel " of those classic tracks, be confident enough to put it down as you " feel" it, simple stuff but crucial if you want to break out of the over produced norm that currently seems all pervasive on the airwaves, so thanks for putting it out there.
I bought the single when I was 12 loving the sound of the electronically altered piano hook, and now I see how it was achieved. Excellent man! Thank you!
Alex, I always had the understanding that it was phasing rather than flanging that had equally spaced notches. I think the notches in flanging are spaced harmonically, this is why flanging in a sense sounds more 'musical'. A flanger uses delay and a phaser uses an all-pass filter.
Correct! That is also why flangers 'ring' more when you turn their resonance right up
"comb-filtering" ± about time someone handed me an explanation that made sense ± thanks Alex!
If you're ever sad, just remember that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and you were here at the same time as David Bowie. 😊
Dang. Just changed my whole outlook. Thanks!
Great frikkin quote. So true. Thx
Where did you learn your history at? 😂 the Earth is wayyyyyy younger than 4.5 billion years
@@EatItLikeSheDoes ‘The age of Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%)’
Source: "Age of the Earth". U.S. Geological Survey. 1997
…and at the same time as Alex Ball 😉
Wow - that is amazing sleuthing and work to recreate the uniqe sound from one of my favorite Bowie songs.
Really loved the jam and the outro.
Damn, that thing sounds glorious. The bit where you added it to strings: enough to make a grown man cry.
On one of My latest projects I did the exact same effect on My strings in the final chorus to make it stand out in the mix ass every goes in at the end in a crescendo.
Except your comment leaves no room for progress of music next 10,000 yrs.
@ I have absolutely no idea what you’re on about. Not that I care, mind.
I swear only yesterday I got so obsessed with the sound of ashes to ashes piano motiff and this comes up
@@cicada8790 Spooky! (I said that with flange activated)
@@cicada8790 I’ve literally been obsessed with that sound for the past 40 years!
I love the way that melody seems to be partly the slap bass - like the first three 8th notes of the song are piano notes, the 4th note is bass - am I the only one who hears it this way?
Those brass stabs! Instant smiles.
Pow! 🎺
Very shexy brass stabs indeed.
Alex, you are such an excellent teacher! I absolutely love every time you post! All the best to you.
Mid 80's I used a single TDA 1022 BBD chip to create a similar effect, a triangular waveform with amplitude and offset controls set the clock frequency and sweep range (hence the delay time) via a VCO and there was a control for feedback also. The sound would break up and become crunchy when the clock frequency was too low, loads of fun - nowadays I use a Kyma system that is incredibly clean and dynamic but I do miss that characteristic BBD sound.
I remember using the 1022 chip in a kit built chorus effect back in the late 1970s. It sounded a bit rubbish if I'm honest. And oddly enough, I too have Kyma now.
@@David_K_Booth The original Philips/Valvo datasheet for the TDA1022 would even recommend replacing the standard 47k load resistor with a constant-current source. This would eliminate the intrinsic attenuation (and therefore improve the signal-to-noise ratio, I guess).
Thank you for this!!!!! That piano sound is soooooo intoxicating
You really do treat us with all this stuff! Thanks loads, Alex!
Cheers Andy
I first remember hearing of a ‘flanger’ in the ads for guitar effects pedals in 70’s Creem magazine-flangers, phasers, Big Muff etc. Since we didn’t know what they ACTUALLY sounded like we used our imaginations and tried to pick them out in recorded songs. In fact, there is a Kiss song called STRANGE WAYS that has a wild effect on Ace Frehley’ s guitar solo. As kids we could never figure out where that crazy tone came from-I,always thought it was something called a Noise Envelope😂
I love a bit of flange! Great video Alex.👍🏻
SPOTLIGHT: That manual is a brilliant share (link in the description) - you will get a lot more insight than you might expect, and it's very well written. Notably quality vid, this really was actually brilliant. Top marks.
Yeah, it's got some funny lines in it! I enjoyed reading parts of it.
@AlexBallMusic I actually learned something. The inherent time delay will allow through transients at the phase cancellation frequencies, before the repeat happens. Which is obvious, but never occured to me.
The thinking behind, if the mods in the book (like a feedback knob!) were done well, they wouldn't void your warrantee. I like.
Also, it's very much on the cusp of the technology, so it's alive to the possibilities of what a flanger is, could do, before the 'use case' definition became more clamped down.
I might actually go and read it again.
Back in the 1980s when I used to DJ, I stumbled across flanging when mixing back and forth between two of the same song. I ended up using this live as a means to spice things up and sometimes cut out unwatned mismatching frequencies in a crossover mix.
Plus I couldn't afford a flanger then so I kind of had to do it live.
I hadn't thought of that, but that would totally work, as you say. Mechanical flanging sounds smoother than BBD flanging I think, from the tiny experience I have of it. Was that your experience?
@@AlexBallMusic Yup pretty much. I obviously found it easier if I used two turntables versus turntable and a CD player because of control.
Just gently gripping the central post of a turntable (like Norman Cook does) to gently slow things is far more instinctive and controllable than doing it on the outside of a tape reel.
Plus I found it easy because it was the same sort of shit I was doing with mixing anyway.
What a great overview and exploration of the workings of beautiful-sounding vintage equipment. Also, a clear explanation of the process involved in the making of classic track. I relished this excellent video!
Holy smokes, been wondering what made this sound since 1980! Thanks!
Exactly! This one, thankfully explained by master Alex now. Still remaining Nenas "Leuchtturm" (original version from '83) intro as a sonic mystery. Perhaps something for an upcoming video, @AlexBall?
This is a great video. The tones and effects sound superb.
I was just making the joke about everything in the 70's had a flanger slapped on it. Like even creepy kids shows. I had no idea that "Flanging" was done with 2 tape machines. That's really interesting, I love old gear and how they created, and pulled off, effects. Good stuff, I love these types off videos. Top shelf content sir.
Used to do it myself in the early 70's with a sony reel to reel and a turntable ,phasing is one of my favourites effects ,works well on tracks with a lot of well recorded drums ...
I always described the effect on Itchycoo Park as phasing, but Wikipedia states that it was done manually at Olympic Studios with the engineer manually slowing the tape reels by pushing on the flanges.
@@pablowentscobar that is phasing ,just how l used to do it but l used a turntable and a reel to reel ,they did it on two reel to reels
@@AutPen38 that's phasing similar to how l used to do it ,it's not that hard to put phasing on any recording !!
@@philipbrougham6360 I always liked the effect as it sounded like an aircraft taking off. I used to do it with two copies of a record on turntables. It had no real use to me as an aspiring DJ, but I found it endlessly fascinating how I could manipulate sounds just by pressing with my fingers. And then I discovered synthesisers!
That orchestral breakdown/coda was bloody lovely. Fact!
Fabulous! I first heard of the Flanger in the liner notes of ELO’s Out of the Blue album. I blame that album for starting my “curiosity” around gear.
They used this flanger too? Interesting.
I need to do an ELO video at some point.
@AlexBallMusic I believe so. It was either that or the liner notes to Isao Tomita’ The Planets… I was a young boy, and time is a harsh mistress. Both albums listed all the gear and started my journey.
@@AlexBallMusic @horizontalblanking
'Out of the Blue' used 2 flangers: one from MXR, one from Systec.
Eventide supplied the Harmonizer used on the album.
I remember playing with "flanging" back in high school VTR Club, mid-70's. Didn't know what it was called but we had a lot of fun messing with the few pieces of equipment we did have. That sound has stuck with me for a long time. Fascinating to hear how Ashes to Ashes was really done.
I believe Vangelis also used this effect on Memories of Green from Balde Runner soundtrack.
It's how he achieved the "drunk"piano sound. I believe it was EHX Electric Mistress
That is one *sick* flanger. Doesn't sound like *any* other flanger I've used. Brilliant video. Loved your playing and groove in general. Thank you
well there you go, my old Instant Flanger! glad its found a good home...
You've made possibly one of the more uninteresting of effects incredibly interesting and educational. Nice one.
every one informative, everyone a banger!
Cheers!
hands down best musician for any gear demonstration. probably the best talent on the platform! its so obvious that your a great songwritter in these snapshots.
Thank you!
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is a fucking banger!!
That string part around minute 12 is gorgeous. Great video, as always.
For over 40 years I've wondered: why the hell is it called a "flanger"? And now I know. Thank you, Alex Ball. Thank you, thank you!
Aha! Glad to be able to answer that one.
It's similar to how we still use words relating to physical film in digital editing software. The meaning gets lost, but the terminology sticks.
I always thought it was the perfect word for the effect, even if I didn’t know why it was called that. It almost feels like an onomatopoeia, even though it isn’t.
I have heard that the reason described in the video was not correct. Flange was just a word that The Beatles and George Martin used to describe anything, like a whatsit or doohicky... Pretty sure it was George Martin saying this. Not that it matters much...
Heh. I had a similar thought. I always wondered, and somehow never wandered onto the answer. And here, Alex just pops in with it, and I'm watching it, going, "Oooh..! Okay!"
@@simongregory3114 It's a nice story, but as it was being called flanging by other engineers, it's probably just a coincidence and they believed they'd invented it because the same word was being used broadly in the industry.
Love the pronunciations/language.... in the Narrative... GOLD!
(edit: Thank you YT algo! Cant believe Ive never known about your channel.. Im a very happy man)
How many bedroom producers with an Apollo and $10K monitors just pooped when they saw a dude with $50k of synths coming out of M-Audio monitors? 😂
LOL I know! ...now where are my man wipes...
I keep it real. 😉
@@AlexBallMusic😂
What s model of this sinths? 😮
@@Ambientnautsclogging your pipes maybe lol
Having worked in a recording studio with some music industry leg-ends I have been fortunate to learn many of the early methods for affecting sounds with effects. My colleague and I once made an entire soundtrack using nothing more than the analogue noise from older gear as a source then running it through an analogue MTA console and adding some effects on aux sends and even feeding the fx returns back on themselves. As always, great vid, keep em coming
About 15 years ago I was trying out a budget price Yamaha analog mixer [no onboard FX]. When I surprised myself by accidentally creating a slap back echo after randomly connecting up a patch cable between jack sockets. I neglected to write down how I did it, and by next day forgot how I"d done it. So never since been able to replicate that result. Is this a well known trick in pro studio engineer circles ???
@@garycrant4511 It depends on the engineer I guess. One of the producers I worked with was as much an experimenter as me so we used to muck around quite a lot :D It is unusual for a mixer without FX to introduce enough of a delay to create a slapback let alone usable delay so maybe there is some sort of FX built in there somewhere ;)
@shauntronics Definitely no FX built in that mixer. That's why the slapback was a real WTF surprise, and still remains such a mystery.. A freak result of the right combination of 'have a go and see what happens' incompetence and dumb luck. I guess some kind of accidental feedback loop created by connecting up the wrong inputs and outputs ??? Similar to the sort of fun we can have like when we first stumble into discovering we can make fuzz boxes with nothing plugged in the input jack self oscillate into howling pitchable notes.
stereo shenanigans, you speaking my language. PS in awe of the sound of this. Eventide did it like no other back in the 70s!
Eventide actually was the only name for digital rack delay etc period. And super dupr expensive
Never gave that sound a second thought because I forgot how long ago it was recorded! Amazing Eventide magic outboard gear making history once again. Great video and walk through of this wondrous bit of outboard gear.
Great insight, Thank you Alex! I love David Bowie's music and Ashes to Ashes is one of my favourite songs. If you have any insight on the spaced out, otherworldly lead at the end of the song maybe you could do another video (it's my favourite sound by far). I thought maybe it was done on a Prophet-5 or a Polymoog?! Anyways keep it up!! Cheers
I mentioned in another reply - Chuck Hammer gets credited with “Guitarchitecture” which was a setup he used I think based on a Roland GR-500 guitar synth - but I don’t know whether that’s the pad sounds or the solo as well - would be good to know for sure !
Great video! I love flangers, Bowie, Eventide and old gear in general, so I landed here. You got a new follower.
Cound Grontol to Tajor Mom.
The single best synth channel on the you tubes. Always giving such interesting context to the topics covered. Thanks for all your content! I’m surprised how little like the flanging sound of the 80s that I grew up with (Think almost anything by the Cure in the early 80s) this machine sounds. A much more subtle and varied effect that was so often used.
8:06 Björk called; she'd like her string section back. xD
Every time I hear the OG hardware it reminds me that limitations can be a great thing for the creative process. As always, nice work Sir.
Definitely! The best balance is a simple idea with endless combinations to try. This is exactly that.
ashes sounds like something from blade runner "memories of green"
Yeah, I was thinking that too.
Great video!
What is a flanger?
"it f***s with the fabric of time"
Nice. The harmonizer is on my video list too btw. 😀
Excellent and detailed explanation.
Bavid Dowie? Are you trying to gaslight us? 😂
That isn't what gaslighting is. You sound like a crazy person.
Always.
Dyslexic joke
Some decent jams there. I like that! Thanks for the demo. 😎🤘
I absolutely love that the pinnacle of digital drum machines keeps making its way into your videos.
Refuses to die! 😂
I always wondered what made that sounds in Ashes to Ashes. Now I can finally sleep at night. Love your videos!
Excellent Alex , always wondered how that effect was achieved, thanks 👍🏻
Great demo Alex and yet again great music, thankyou.
Absolutely brilliant presentation of the principles AND the real-world applications. Phlanging (see what I did there?) has always been my favorite effect. Thank you for putting this together.
I so love modulation effects, Alex. Great video on an awesome device!
Yeah, love them too!
Some clarifications.. the "Depth" knob is a wet/dry blend control. It allows the dry signal to blend with the wet either in phase or out of phase depending on whether you've turned it clockwise from center or counter-clockwise. The Bounce control adds a short burst of ripple (approximately 3Hz) triggered at the bottom of the LFO sweep, it is not particularly evident (if at all) unless the sweep Oscillator is engaged (push button below the rate knob).
Marvelous - thank you!
Wow! It's absolutely incredible how technology has moved on over the years in the right hands. It's absolutely awesomely wonderful! 100%!!!
There are hundreds of thousands of words, but every time I come back to this channel, all I can think of are words of praise. 🤷🏼♂️
Thank you!
Man. Makes me respect quality flangers even more.
Another Alex Ball classic, informative and full of amazing music.
Cheers!
Just brrrrrrrriliant! Thanks for another really internering and professionally laid out video.
Toni Fisher's "The Big Hurt" from 1959...
...often cited as the first major musical release to feature the "flanging" effect.
Excellent video! I always thought that sound was a synth with an LFO on the pitch. Little did I know it was a piano with a modulated flanger on it. Thanks Alex!
Brother that effect on the piano: is gorgeous!!
Yeah, tempted to leave it setup permanently!
That sequence with the flanger has a very nice DAF vibe to it.
Awesome self-jam!
Brilliant, per usual.
Although phasing and flanging ARE different processes and are sonically very different , there ARE circumstances in which it's hard to tell them apart. A friend demoed for me some white noise, processed through a 24-stage phaser he built, and it was pretty much indistinguishable from flanging. That blurring of boundaries likely came from several sources: 1) having MANY more notches in the comb filtering than we get in the usual phasers, 2) having an ultra-wide sweep (wider than we normally hear in many phasers) that "starts" waaaayyyy up high, and 3) using white noise, instead of a single instrument. The benchmark flanging sounds typically use a mix of several instruments to provide content where the moving notches can be heard.
One of the unique, and "special" things about the Eventide Flanger, was its inclusion of what came to be known as "theta processing". This involves using a number of fixed phase-shift stages that apply additional phase shift to the *lower* frequencies. The result is that any notches created, as the sweep moves into the lower range, are spaced somewhat differently, resulting in less of a "standing wave" tone. YOu cab find more mathematical descriptions of it on the Electronotes site, but also see an implementation in the late Jurgen Haible's *Stormtide* and *Son of Stormtide* flanger projects. I still can't quite tell whether the fixed phase-shift stages are added to the dry signal or the wet.
I recently put up a sloppy, but still informative, UA-cam (look for "Dual flanger thru-zero") involving a pair of Boss BF-1 flangers, and a splitter-mixer, that fed them a common signal and mixed their parallel outputs back together. The BF-1 pedals had been modded to omit the dry signal and only provide delay. Because they include a "manual" delay control, and can be set for ONLY fixed delay, I could set one for just a msec or two of delay, as my "dry" signal, and have the other one sweep past it, passing the "thru-zero" point. Even more exotic, if *both* units were set to modulate independently, the thru-zero point would occur in unpredictable fashion.
Always on point, always inspiring!
Cheers!
I loves me some phase effects.
And those are very nice new specs, too, Alex.
There’s a flanging effect on ‘Moss Garden’ from “Heroes” that always sounded like it was kind stepped to me - almost like it was a sort of comb filter ‘arpeggio’. I wonder if that’s what the ‘remote’ socket did - let you feed a CV from a keyboard to affect the comb filter frequency.
I’ve always wondered that too! The flanging on Heroes is epic, as is the phasing on Low.
Hello Alex: Firstly, thank you for a very clear explanation of flanging. I think I read in a book by David Hepworth that is was John Lennon who coined the term "flanging". Finally, it was amazing to see "Ashes to Ashes" re-created in a couple of minutes. Have a really lovely day.
This one of the best sound demos I’ve ever seen
Cheers!
Great video! I always loved the part of this song where he is echoing the main vocal and even does the "whoa-oa-whoa" part. I have no idea how to write that out.
Another super informative and funny video! My dad loves Bavid Dowie!
And the Miders from Spars.