I've asked questions about effect adjectives in past, like what makes a drive or amp sound "woody". Since that time, we've seen a veritable explosion of ambient-music pedals, and especially devices that play with delay and reverb in unusual ways. For instance, this morning, I was looking at a demo of the Alexander Pedals Superball, which is a modulated reverb/delay. But plenty such devices these days aim for the ambient category even without bringing in anything weird. Many reverbs incorporate shifting reflections that morph to some degree.
In the synth universe, such things tend to be called "pads" or "washes" (almost in the same sense as water-colours). It would be a mistake to lump everything geared towards ambient sounds/music as "dreamlike" because there are tones/sounds in many forms of ambient or meditative musics that are simply repetitive. That is, the individual sound is not dream-like, only the overall effect of all the sounds and instruments combined. What I am inquiring about here is what sorts of effect sounds, on their own, regardless of the context they might eventually be used in, give you that dream-like sensation. That is, you strum a chord, and you just want to lean back and drift away. Or, perhaps you strum a chord and lapse/stumble into a world where everything is upside down and nothing seems to make sense anymore; a world with the unpredictability of dreams.
So, I ask the musical question: for you, what makes a tone best described as "dream-like" or "dreamy"? You can either respond with specific pedals and settings, or simply list/describe tonal qualities that give you that feeling.
For me, it's usually reverb or delay drenched. Recently I've described My latest Deadastro build as dreamy. Delay with modulation. Not surprisingly, Rob called it the Dreamtime delay.
Of course, what you play has a major influence on 'dreamy' but any pedal that influences you to play that way must count?
The thin, distant sound of a wah pedal at its narrowest setting combined with a touch of short, soft delay.
Also, the sound of plucking strings at the headstock behind the nut. There was a Pearl Jam song that ended with several such notes, but I can't recall which one it was (perhaps I will figure it out later).
Reverb/delay is the easy answer, but for me it's modulation. On anything, not just delay. Anything that makes a parameter ebb and flow. Especially if you have multiple modulation sources and destinations.
Also add in a slow attack pedal or volume pedal to remove the hard attack from a note and make it more of a pad/wash of sound.
Quote from: DIY Bass on February 24, 2020, 04:01:47 PM
Also add in a slow attack pedal or volume pedal to remove the hard attack from a note and make it more of a pad/wash of sound.
+1 agree. I was going to say a softer attack too.
From a theoretical standpoint I believe you can quantify dreaminess as smearing, either time-domain smearing (delay, reverb), frequency-domain smearing (chorus, distortion even), or both. The dreamiest effects combine these.
Along the lines of what has already been mentioned, I would say that a dreamlike effect is one that makes the note less tangible, less concrete by blurring our perception of when it starts, when it stops and what pitch it is. In my dreams, I often know that there is something just outside my field of view, which I would like to see but I somehow cannot turn my head or cannot focus on it or it turns out to be behind milk glass windows. So soft attack, blurry decay (heavy reverb and/or delay) and wobbly pitch (vibrato) sound very dreamy *to me*.
I would also mention the element of unpredictability that is introduced for example by interference of two or more LFO controlled effects. The simplest case would be two tremolos set to speeds that do not have a simple mathematical relation to each other, producing a kind of a-rhythmic wobbling. This sort of thing throws us off because our "intuitive prediction" of what should come next is not really used to this sort of thing, although it is not even that outlandish. Non-obvious relations between tremolo speed, phaser speed and delay time are another option. Works best with long, drawn out chords or notes and the speeds set to relatively similar values but something like 10-40% off or so.
Andy
I'll have to ask our greyhound Dreamy!!
(https://i.postimg.cc/3dKpzKKJ/2-A8-ED15-A-95-BA-4-D31-BA19-281-DF18-BDE8-F.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/3dKpzKKJ)
Usually my playing is plenty dreamy - no additional effects necessary. I'm just that good. :P
Seriously though, in my case it starts with lush reverb (Hardwire RV-7 on plate) and includes warmish analog delay (Strymon Brigadier) not too loud and 2 repeats (second one very faint). I often use a compressor, and find this adds some flavor to the dreaminess, but it isn't necessary as sometimes attack can be part of the dreamy sound - however it's important to not have too spiky of a sound after the attack. I rarely use modulation (even on the delay and reverb) - for me it's about broadening the "space" around and depth of your sound, not about "fattening" the notes.
Reverb. And motion. Lots of reverb and modulation. Lfos gently modulating osc pitch/pulse width, the vcf, and/or vca. Could be any number of other effects but reverb is ever present.
For your question about woody amp sounds, things sound woody when there is an abundance of odd harmonics. Woodwinds with a reed usually have a pronounced third, fifth, seventh etc. harmonic and nowhere near as much of even harmonics. Odd harmonics can come from balanced clipping where the high side of the signal is cut the same amount as the low side of the signal.
Dreamy sound may be from a number of things:
1. Reverb gives the sensation of sound being reflected off walls where the sounds may add or subtract depending on whether the reflection is in phase or out of phase. This is dependent on frequency.
2. A phaser may give the same sensation of sounds being added or subtracted from the original sound. This is also dependent on frequency but is more of a shimmering sound.
3. Flanging may give an interesting sound that can be harsh but can be dreamy in itself.
4. Never underestimate the effect of fingering technique - it can make things harsh or dreamy just by changing the modulation of the sound.
There may be more, but this is a good starting point.
To me, "dreamy" means diffuse, as opposed to articulate. Swirling modulation, delays (often modulated delay) and the use of shimmer reverb are typical, often connected with feedback loops to further diffuse the overall tone. Slow attack on notes helps to further soften the overall sound. Diffuse sound field and slow harmonic motion characterize the overall timbre. I've used a 20 second clip of a jet plane flying overhead as an impulse response with great effect in the past.
i once dreamed of playing through a filter with a sample and hold type random step thing. I had never listened to a pedal like this before or given it much thought, but had run across a description. I remember thinking "That must be a FSH!" I did end up building a couple of these. They sound just like that dream.
Quote from: idy on February 25, 2020, 12:44:20 AM
i once dreamed of playing through a filter with a sample and hold type random step thing. I had never listened to a pedal like this before or given it much thought, but had run across a description. I remember thinking "That must be a FSH!" I did end up building a couple of these. They sound just like that dream.
Mark's original question got me wondering what it would sound like to to have three or four S&H filters in parallel, ideally panned across the stereo field. Or with the stereo position also S&H modulated. Would that be dreamy? Or downright *weird*? Sometimes my dreams are just plain weird, so does that count?! ;)
I think complex modulations that your brain can't quite get a grip on are a part of it, especially for dreamy synth sounds. With pedals it's a slightly different story, since you have a different tool set.
Not a filter, per se, but a bit back I made a stereo version of the Magnavibe circuit, with independent LFOs for each side/channel. The Magnatone amps that provide "stereo" also include semi-independent vibrato, but both channels are linked to a common LFO, with each side being counterswept by that single LFO, in a manner similar to the way the two chorusing BBDs in a Dimension-C pedal are counterswept by an inverted version of the same LFO.
Having the gentle pitch modulation of the Magnavibe NOT simply moving from side to side, but the two copies moving around independently, occasionally syncing, then unsyncing, was just incredibly immersive, Even through small crappy speakers, you just wanted to move in there and live there.
I note this in response to Tom's hypothetical multi-stereo S&H idea. Not that "immersive" = "dream-like" all the time, but they overlap a bit, conceptually. If you ever saw the movie Avatar, you'll likely remember the early scenes wandering through that unusual forest on Pandora, completely surrounded by stuff so different it made your attentional focus just flit around all over. That, too, had a dream-like quality to it. I mention it because I think we're maybe starting to get at what gives an effect a dream-like quality. It's not the category of processing, per se. That is, yes you can do it with filters, with reverb, with delay, with pitch wobble, etc. What they all share in common seems to be what it does to one's attention. Maybe that's why we describe it as "dream-like". Dreams can have "plot", but they rarely have focused attention. Random associations bring in unexpected content that continues to fragment attention in a way that makes one's mental focus feel like a pile of Lego or jigsaw pieces scattered on the floor.
Consider: if I play a note into a digital delay, and crank up the repeats so that it just keeps on going and going, without any audible change, that's not especially immersive or dreamy. If the repeats change over time, however, that tends to draw us in. Certainly what appeals about many of the more recent reverb pedals are those options that yield very different reflections over time, or make octaves emerge, and such. There has to be change, rather than sameness, and a degree of uncertainty and unpredictability, to grab and fragment our attention. Stereo, of course, just enhances that, because our attention now has to be divided between what's going on over here and what's going on over there.
I think we're getting somewhere. :icon_biggrin:
The opposite of dry signal.
Reverse reverb + massive distortion + woozy microtonal pitch drifting from a fender jaguar/jazzmaster tremelo arm
Yes modulation, especially of delay and reverb is something i'd describe as dreamy. When that modulation becomes too much, dissonant or too uneven to remain comfortable or easy for my mind to understand, my description would veer toward nightmare
Quote from: StephenGiles on February 24, 2020, 06:19:02 PM
I'll have to ask our greyhound Dreamy!!
(https://i.postimg.cc/3dKpzKKJ/2-A8-ED15-A-95-BA-4-D31-BA19-281-DF18-BDE8-F.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/3dKpzKKJ)
Dog dreamy is easy: two screeching squirrels chasing each other round the bird feeder to the Benny Hill theme. At least that's how I interpret my dogs noises and galloping movements when she dreams.
Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 25, 2020, 09:47:54 AM
...
I think we're getting somewhere. :icon_biggrin:
OK, now I'm intrigued. Where are we getting ant what are we going to do when we get there. I don't wanna come unprepared.
@nocntelli
Yes, good point. Gazing at ones shoes non-stop for 90 minutes in front of a wide open Marshall full stack on a stage with flashing lights in a small underground club with the worst boomy acoustics on account of being an old bunker in a decade when chain smoking was not only excepted but expected behavior for concert goers might, nay will, produce a somewhat hazy feeling between the ears. And some shoegaze bands actually managed to conserve that (to a degree) on record.
Andy
Quote from: Fancy Lime on February 25, 2020, 02:54:54 PM
Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 25, 2020, 09:47:54 AM
...
I think we're getting somewhere. :icon_biggrin:
OK, now I'm intrigued. Where are we getting and what are we going to do when we get there. I don't wanna come unprepared.
Well, Andy, I guess the destination is to provide some basic
perceptual design principles for the desired outcome. As a psychologist, I think first in terms of what the effect does with respect to our thinking, perception, and attention. These aren't just "sounds". I can make different sounds by just turning the knobs on the amp or on the pedals I already have. These are quarter twists to how we
think about what we hear. That said, it's a bit like saying "Hey, let's go for a trip to the country!" or "Let's go on vacation!". There are a million directions one could go in from where you are.
In the early '80s, there was an article in either JASA or JAES, by Bernie Hutchins I believe, on what makes a synth sound "fat". Keep in mind that the article was likely submitted to the journal a year or two earlier, as such things go. And while 1981 or so was not the dark ages, it was well before many of the aspects of sample manipulation, aftertouch, velocity sensitivity, and other things we've become accustomed to, came into being, or at least were found in consumer-grade products. So Bernie's question was in response to people's comments about this or that synth sounding "fat"; just what was it that people liked about that sound, and what sorts of manipulations resulted in that perception?
It's a long time ago, so don't quote me, but I think "fatness" maxed out at around 3-5 kinds of modulation imposed on a note. NO modulation of any sort was what led to organs being labelled as bland-sounding and boring. Once you got to around 5 or more sources of modulation (e.g., ADSR + LFO for amplitude and filter, and sub-octave fade-in), subjective evaluation went from "fat" to distracting and too busy. The sound had to be just busy enough, but not too much.
I'm kind of aiming for the same sort of deconstruction here. As for preparation, bring a change of clothes, and maybe a pillow.
Dreamy is our greyhound's name, formerly known as Only Dreaming in her racing days!
> If the repeats change over time, however, that tends to draw us in.
There is a piece, "Come Out To Show Them", c.1970 tape manipulation, which extracts 5 words from a news clip and repeats them many different ways in layers. XXXGoogle does not remember.XXX(*) It made a real impression on my young mind. It's not "pleasant dreams".
(*)XXX- helps if you spell it Reich. 1966.
https://www.google.com/search?%22Come+Out+To+Show+Them%22
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out_(Reich))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZUB5iSEifI
I love some of that late 60s Steven Reich stuff. I sometimes imagine what would have come out of a Reich / Pink Floyd collaboration in those days.
Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 25, 2020, 04:46:42 PM
Quote from: Fancy Lime on February 25, 2020, 02:54:54 PM
Quote from: Mark Hammer on February 25, 2020, 09:47:54 AM
...
I think we're getting somewhere. :icon_biggrin:
OK, now I'm intrigued. Where are we getting and what are we going to do when we get there. I don't wanna come unprepared.
Well, Andy, I guess the destination is to provide some basic perceptual design principles for the desired outcome. As a psychologist, I think first in terms of what the effect does with respect to our thinking, perception, and attention. These aren't just "sounds". I can make different sounds by just turning the knobs on the amp or on the pedals I already have. These are quarter twists to how we think about what we hear. That said, it's a bit like saying "Hey, let's go for a trip to the country!" or "Let's go on vacation!". There are a million directions one could go in from where you are.
In the early '80s, there was an article in either JASA or JAES, by Bernie Hutchins I believe, on what makes a synth sound "fat". Keep in mind that the article was likely submitted to the journal a year or two earlier, as such things go. And while 1981 or so was not the dark ages, it was well before many of the aspects of sample manipulation, aftertouch, velocity sensitivity, and other things we've become accustomed to, came into being, or at least were found in consumer-grade products. So Bernie's question was in response to people's comments about this or that synth sounding "fat"; just what was it that people liked about that sound, and what sorts of manipulations resulted in that perception?
It's a long time ago, so don't quote me, but I think "fatness" maxed out at around 3-5 kinds of modulation imposed on a note. NO modulation of any sort was what led to organs being labelled as bland-sounding and boring. Once you got to around 5 or more sources of modulation (e.g., ADSR + LFO for amplitude and filter, and sub-octave fade-in), subjective evaluation went from "fat" to distracting and too busy. The sound had to be just busy enough, but not too much.
I'm kind of aiming for the same sort of deconstruction here. As for preparation, bring a change of clothes, and maybe a pillow.
Mark, thank you for rebuilding my confidence in Canadian psychologists, which had suffered in recent years. But fortunately, a cider a day keeps the lobster away.
I think the statement about "fatness" holds true, at least to some degree, for "dreamyness" as well. Several slow-ish movements of tonal parameters (pitch, volume, filtering, stereo panning, time delay), which interfere with each other can give the false short-term impression of predictability but drift of in unpredictable waters over more iteratioins. The timescale of the wave forms created by the interference should probably be such that there seems to be no interference over short periods of time (a few oscillations of the LFOs) and it only becomes obvious over time scales that are significantly longer than our usual musical "groove attention span" of one or two bars. To that end, the involved LFOs should have a small offset of <10% in rate between them.
May I suggest a sleep talking pedal (name is taken by Jacque, unfortunately): Two parallel wah circuits driven by independent LFOs. I would use MFB filters or maybe bridged-T feedback filters, controlled by simple phase shift oscillators via vactrols or JFETs. That before some light overdrive, then a flanger with a reeeeealy slow rate, a delay and some reverb. You could probably fill 5 minutes of song by just slowly picking a simple chord progression a few times and reciting a beat poem about the existential dread of smoking filter-less cigarettes in the rain, or something along those lines.
Andy
Quote from: PRR on February 26, 2020, 01:03:05 AM
> If the repeats change over time, however, that tends to draw us in.
There is a piece, "Come Out To Show Them", c.1970 tape manipulation, which extracts 5 words from a news clip and repeats them many different ways in layers. XXXGoogle does not remember.XXX(*) It made a real impression on my young mind. It's not "pleasant dreams".
(*)XXX- helps if you spell it Reich. 1966.
https://www.google.com/search?%22Come+Out+To+Show+Them%22
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out_(Reich))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZUB5iSEifI
Love all that meditative stuff, Reich, Oliveros, Riley, Glass, Part.
A couple months ago, this thing happened on CBC radio. I don't know if it was just local or system-wide. One show ended and a several-second announcement came on for a comedy show after the news-on the-hour, The announcement kept repeating (like "Come out") endlessly, like a loop. It repeated several hundred times, replacing the entire newscast. What was interesting was that the audio quality slowly degraded, until the residual hiss finally replaced the voice. It wasn't tape, and the sort of quality degradation that occurs after 50-100 repeats. It wasn't analog delay, because that would have degraded after a dozen repeats or so. But it didn't have the lasting power of an encoded digital repeat. So I don't know what the hell happened. But 6 minutes later, you're listening to the same 10-12 spoken words that have gotten progressively harder to make out, unless you heard them 6 minutes ago before they got corrupted and the hiss slowly crept in. It was the damnedest thing.
In any event, I confessed to a wide variety of crimes when it was done, and am awaiting sentencing.
This is not so much dreamy as nightmarish, but I took a sample of a voice track I did for a corporate training video and ran it through an FV-1 with some type of "granular" thing going on. By the end, it's pretty nuts.
https://soundclick.com/r/s7ts40
That reminds me of a few cool art pieces by Douglas Gordon that I saw several years back. One was "24-hour Psycho", which was the Hitchcock classic "Psycho", slowed down to approximately 2 frames per second (obviously I didn't watch the whole thing). The other was "through a looking glass" (I think that was the name of the piece), which featured mirror-image projections, facing each other, of the "You talkin' to me?" scene from "Taxi Driver", which slowly slip in and out of sync as they repeat over the course of an hour.
When I was a young teen, and AM radio was what you listened to music on, I would tune in to this late night Sunday jazz show from Rochester, NY on station WHAM, 1180 on the dial. WWVA, one of the most powerful broadcast transmitters on the continent, is 1170khz on the AM dial. A third station - I can't remember which - was slightly higher than 1180. The jazz show itself was odd enough. The jazz show announcer, Harry Abrahams, appeared to be the only person in the station at that time, covering all bases, and announcing himself in every role ("Next, Harry Abrahams with the weather. Hi, Harry Abrahams here with a Rochester weather update. Coming up next, Harry Abrahams with sports.") I learned that his career eventually took a turn for the worse ( https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/columnists/memmott/2014/04/29/rochester-story-jazz-robbery/8475775/ ).
In any event, from several hundred miles away, the radio reception was not good. And, germanium transistor radios and AM being what they were at the time, reception drifted. The two adjacent stations would run The Billy Graham Hour of Decision, but about 30 seconds out of sync. So what I listened to was this constantly morphing thing that faded from Billy Graham ranting on about verily this and verily that, to Jimmy Smith or Jack McDuff playing these incredibly funky riffs to Billy Graham repeating what he had just said a little while ago back to the jazz organ tune, then to Billy, and back again, the cycle repeating until I wafted off to sleep.
You know, all through the '60s and '70s, I never felt the need or urge to try any "mind-expanding" substances. Probably because all I needed for those same hallucinatory experiences was my little Mitsubishi 11-transistor radio.
Somehow Jimi's "Drifting" and early Pink Floyd stuff does it.
Quote from: Steben on February 26, 2020, 12:44:52 PM
Somehow Jimi's "Drifting" and early Pink Floyd stuff does it.
Yes, I agree. "Julia Dream" and quite a lot of "Meddle" is pretty dreamy.
A lot of early Floyd is not what I'd describe as "dreamy". "Full-on psychedelic" is more like it. There's an intensity to that that I don't associated with dreams - they're more nebulous, harder to grasp. Early Floyd stuff like "Let there be more light" or "Interstellar Overdrive" sounds like some crazy engine of a rocket ship taking your mind to a distant galaxy. There's very much the sense of a powerful motor driving you forward.
I also agree about Jimi on "Drifting", but "Foxy Lady" to contrast sounds like a freight train going through a wall! Blew me away when I first heard it!
What makes an effect/patch "dreamy"/"dreamlike"?
Well I'd say having a little delay turned on here and there .... and most importantly, getting the player properly hammered!
Haha, I'm sure you know the drill!
Quote from: bool on March 04, 2020, 08:21:59 AM
.... and most importantly, getting the player properly hammered!
i'm going to try this.............................................again. ;D
Quote from: deadastronaut on March 04, 2020, 01:03:56 PM
Quote from: bool on March 04, 2020, 08:21:59 AM
.... and most importantly, getting the player properly hammered!
i'm going to try this.............................................again. ;D
Many years back, there was a guy doing his doctorate in math at Stanford Univ. who bludgeoned his dissertation supervisor to death with a ball peen hammer. When he was eventually allowed out on parole, there was a restraining order against his being anywhere near Stanford campus. His response was "They stole ten years of my life. I don't think they should be able to do that with impunity."
I photocopied the newspaper article, and kept a few copies in my desk. Whenever one of my fellow grad students was experiencing some difficulties with their supervisor I'd jokingly give them a copy of the article, and tell them "Just slide this under their office door after hours, to anonymously remind them that, like, you know, stuff happens."
But I don't think that's the "hammered" you meant. At least I hope it isn't. :icon_wink:
Oh, yeah ...
Hammer Marks the spot!
ha ha ha
Quote from: Mark Hammer on March 04, 2020, 02:39:16 PM
But I don't think that's the "hammered" you meant.
"Hammered" means that our esteemed eponymous colleague has stopped by a thread and deposited a little nugget of wisdom. :)
It is a strange world indeed, when jokes about criminal harrassment and threats of murder are construed as "wisdom". But hey, if that's what's getting served up as compliments these days, I'll take it. I'm not proud. :icon_mrgreen:
I love music that dances around the threshold between alien and familiar, when you can make out shapes and movements that you recognize but they're askew in some fundamental ways. I think that's dreamy. Here's a dreamy record I've been listening to a lot. Plenty of processing units, not so much guitar, but it's still good music, I promise!
Amon Tobin's Long Stories (https://music.amontobin.com/)
https://youtu.be/g1wVv-soLjc
I said dreamy, Paul, not nightmarish. :icon_lol: