If you put headphones on the opening of this song reverberates in your skull in a way other songs do not no matter how catchy the hook. I have little background in music but I am guessing it’s a post production mixing technique. I don’t think it’s categorized as ASMR, it’s not the soothing sound I am after it’s the feeling the song is INSIDE your brain.
If this is a thing, what is it called? And what are other areas of music I am likely to find more of this?
Folks with a better use of the terminology will be along shortly, but the song is using a piano “trick” first produced by a Fender Rhodes electric piano: the sound is bounced back and forth rapidly between left and right ears and with headphones it’s really pronounced.
And ironically, the Fender Rhodes incorrectly calls it “vibrato” (it’s not vibrato - vibrato changes the pitch rapidly). There are stereo effects boxes that also incorrectly call it vibrato.
A more accurate term is rapid stereo panning. There are also stereo effects boxes that call it tremolo, though that word often refers to pitch changing as well. And some instruments (like the Rhodes) can have it built-in and don’t need an external effects box or any mixing board shenanigans to make it work.
An audio mixing board typically has a pan knob right above the volume control slider. You can create the effect manually by spinning that knob back and forth, though that is usually used for much slower panning between channels. Modern digital mixing usually has a plug-in called Auto-Pan (or something along those lines) that allows you to control the pan oscillation rate and other parameters, so you can do anything from a slow pan between channels to a rapid pan that sounds more like a tremolo effect.
You sound like a man in the know – how did Fender do that sound in their electric piano? Logic says it has to be electronic as a Leslie wouldn’t fit in the piano (or the speaker cabinet it usually sat on).
Yep, it’s electronic. They used a fairly simple oscillator circuit to control the volume on the left and right channels, with the oscillator output 180 degrees out of phase so that as the left channel increased in volume the right channel decreased, and vice-versa.
“Ping pong” (no delay) is a term associated with multi-track recording. In the early days – the Beatles used this extensively – you would record trax 1, 2 and 3 of a 4-track recorder and “pp” them to track 4 with any additional live noise, then re-record trax 1 and 2 and “pp” then unto track 3, and so on. It’s a lot of fun, but risky – any screw up and you have to start over, at least to a previous “pp” track.
But yeah, I’ve heard “pp” applied to the panning effect.
I’ve always called it “Bee Gees Disease.” I got that term from Mike Nesmith’s video Elephant Parts because there’s a scene where he plays a chord on a Rhodes, it rapidly pans back an forth, and he says “This piano has Bee Gees Disease!” I thought that was hilarious, so I adopted the term as my own.
I also want to point out we’re not talking about the Pink Floyd example. That’s just ping-pong stereo. We’re talking about a specific instrument panning rapidly as a musical effect.
“Tremolo” is the correct term though. The oscillation could be any musical curve/parameter you can think of, and it is not limited to only pitch.
