Panning, Psychedelic Effects, and Headphone Vectors

1:35 What's good, everybody?This is Scoobert Doobert.Welcome back to love music more.Today, I want to talk about panning, the process of moving audio in between your ears.We've talked a lot about Dolby Atmos, which is the fanciest version, a whole bunch ofspeakers, binaural audio above, behind, but let's break it down.Let's get simpler.We got two ears.We got two speakers.How are they working together?

1:56 And what are some of the cool effects that we can have?Because really, there's not a ton of tools in our toolbox.A lot of the things that we do that are psychedelic or that ad character and depth, quote unquote, toour mix.They're really just playing with the fundamentals of sound.You have pitch.You have timing.You have a hammer.You have transition.

2:15 You have the feeling of things being really complex and are really simple.One of the other vectors, the things that you can pull, the levers that you have at yourdisposal or the tools in your toolkit, are the relationship between mono, which is rightup the middle.Both of your ears are hearing the same ears.Both of your ears are hearing the same thing versus stereo where, say for example, I havethis guitar.

2:42 It's perfectly just in your left ear.It's a little disorienting because it's unnatural.So there are different ways that we can do that to make it seem a little bit more natural.For example, I can use a tool called Pana, which is a quote unquote like natural panner.So this is still panned all the way to the left ear, but it creates a little bit of theillusion of bleed into the right ear.

3:10 So one of the things that I think is really fun just right off the bat is to decide whetheror not to use the natural panor or to do something hard panned.Another thing that you can do is you can use phasing.So I was talking about inversion where I think about noise cancelling headphones.You have flipping the phase of the audio that's coming at your ears so that it's cancellingit out when it hits your ears.

3:34 That's part of the reason why it works so well on an airplane because it's fairly steady,static noise.But then if a child starts screaming or something like that, usually the first scream on theairplane, you can hear pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty well because it's a new surprisingsound.The algorithms have to do adapt to it and go, oh, flip that phase.

3:53 And that latency in between the algorithm, doing that math and hitting your ears, you cansometimes hear the outside world even through noise cancelling headphones.But we can use that same concept to create really wide perspective, so I'm going to playthat same old G chord and I'm going to have it phase flipped in between the two ears.

4:09 So if you sum it as in, if you listen to this on a mono speaker, which some of you mightbe doing right now, you're going to hear nothing.And that's the whole point.That wide sound is created by basically tricking your brain.It's like an all of a sudden audio illusion.It's so wide because your brain is struggling with the fact that the phase is perfectlyflipped.So we can play with that to different degrees though.

4:38 So there's something called phase panning.So instead of going all or nothing, we can do things using tools like pan pot, but Goodhertz.No worries if you're not a music producer, if you are, it's a sick plugin.But that's a great way to do another technique.So you're doing the same idea.You're moving things spatially around, but you are using different techniques to achievethe same end result.

5:07 And because you're using different techniques, it's got a little bit of a different flavor.So check out this is instead of doing that natural time-based panning, or that hard abruptpanning, this is phase-based panning.

5:31 So think about this kind of guitar tone, makes you just want to pull on classic rock.But do you hear that panning?It's kind of fun, right?Panning's fun though because it really, it takes you in that psychedelic where the guitaris swirly and moving around.And a picture, if you're on top of a very steady mix, like everything else is a drum kit

5:55 and you know where it's placed, it's placed normally, it's right in front of you, but thenthe guitar is dancing and swirling around, swirling above your head.Those are the same kind of effects that we try to get out of the more advanced DolbyAtmos, but we just have more speakers to throw it into.It's the same basic idea.But you can do this also with things called delay trails or reverb trails, where you can

6:15 do hard-paned source audio, so like the clean audio and hard-paned reverb, so you'resplitting between those two signals.Makes me feel like I want to like Foghat or something.It's fun.It's easy to...Or is that hot for teacher?That's hot for teacher.That's right, that's pretty similar, right?Are you getting the gist?I don't know if I'm losing track because I'm playing fun classic rock guitar.

6:58 Let's try a few different versions of panning.Remember how I talked about how there are certain tools that we have at our disposal?We have delay-based.That's delay-based panning.We have phase-based.That's phase-based panning.And then we also could do timbrel.The way that Pan Pot talks about it is spectral, cool or word.

7:24 But it's basically just changing some of the tonal character, and there's a few otherthings that we can do, but we'll get there.You can also combine these to make really, really crazy kind of sounds.Here's one of my favorite little effects that I use.Sometimes I'm like little chimie things up on the top kind of high register, so why don'tI play some kind of high register stuff.

7:59 Cool versions of just psychedelic-ish without having to go all the way into the bag oflike chorus, which is blending in slightly out of tune things with each other, or fullon phasory stuff, where you're overlaying inverted or slightly offset wave forms, duplicatewave forms, to create kind of warbly sounds.

8:28 This is all focusing on how do we move things and spatialize things without necessarilyhaving to just layer on effects.And one of the keys that this provides you is that you can have a more complicated mix,and you can also create more of the illusion of camera type effects like zooming in or focusing.

8:53 Also you can have really complex things and throw them all the way into one ear to createroom for less complexity in the rest of the mix.It's a very like Beatles-y, 60s kind of thing, but I find it really powerful, especiallyif you're just like you have a percussion idea, it's a little bit too complex.When you put it in the middle of the mix it's just get swallowed up by everybody and justsounds messy or muddy.

9:16 You throw that all the way out into the left or right ear, and now you've got this kindof like band leader.It's almost like a parade going through and you have somebody that's leading the chargewith a funky tambourine or something like that.Let's do some of those fun effects.So like I was talking about the phaser, the flanger, the chorus.All of these are kind of like pitch and spread-based effects.

9:38 But watch as I change my guitar from a mono signal to a stereo signal using some of theseeffects.I'll play just some more big AC/DC style chords.So that's chorus.Here's some flunch.Kind of neat, right?And if I did that on more of an open and Chinese kind of way.Kind of cool how you can use specializing effects like chorus or flanger.You can tell the flanger when it goes, that's what I switch over to that.

10:49 But how you're able to use these time and pitch and phase-based effects to localize andthen also to spread out to create effects or to create placement.That allows you to make interest, create psychedelic headphone experiences, and also create spacein mixes where like I was talking about the parade leader, anything like that.Say for example, you wanted to draw the listener's attention onto a guitar solo, sometimes

11:16 the best way to do that is have it running around like a guitar solo on stage.It gives like that bombass that level of just like, I'm like, look at me, I'm in the spotlightjust having that guitar swirl over your head can have that kind of effect, especiallyif the guitar solo isn't like super slow and melodic, although that can be cool too.

11:39 Another thing is if you want to have a just like crazy person on stage, sometimes it'sbest to put them on the side stage and put them deep into one of those left or rightyears.Not just like the parade thing, but like something with a lot of character, somethingthat makes it feel more angular, like a triangle, and sometimes think of that with mixes where

12:00 usually, usually you want it to be a blend between the middle and the sides.You want to have balance in your mix where you're left and you're right here are kindof getting the same amount of information so it doesn't feel all-upsided.But another like lever that you can pull is it creates tension and interest when youare angular and then you can resolve that tension by going less angular.

12:25 So save for example, I'm talking and I have this going on over in one of my ears, butthen I move it to both ears.See, I kind of like resolves or if I put my vocal all the way into the other ear andthen I've got the guitar just kind of like cruising.You know, if I'm just trying to talk and play this kind of classic blues rock, it'sa little difficult actually.Now let's resolve it.So now I'm back in the middle.

12:56 Now it's not a spread.I don't know, those kind of like weird little things that you can do that draw interest,draw change and like were wired to look for change, right?And you can highlight certain sections, you can make a verse feel like it's pushingyou forward so that when you arrive at that chorus or into a bridge like a moment of rest,

13:21 it feels much more satisfying rather than just kind of like a slow churning along trainthat doesn't really change, doesn't really go anywhere, especially like I think in thismodern age with the whole like, oh, people don't have attention span, et cetera, et cetera.I think a lot of it though is like, you got to entertain me about so many options of entertainment.

13:43 Surprise me, take me on a ride, push me to new places, give me a reason why I'm like,oh yeah, two minutes and 10 seconds in, that's my favorite part because it gets weirdand I don't know why.Now you'll know why, it's because the mix got angular, those kind of ideas.So anyway, hopefully this is helpful, hopefully this changes a little bit the way that you

14:01 listen to music and headphones and if you produce music, maybe take some of these thingsin mind and definitely get a pan pot by Goodhertz because it unlocks a whole different worldof panning for you.I also really like Pana because they both, they give you flavors of the same thing.And there's a beautiful thing with anything artistic that if it feels familiar but different

14:25 at the same time, you've really, you've hit on something special.So that's what we're trying to do.Thank you so much for listening.If you enjoyed this episode, best way for the pod to grow is to share it with a friend,maybe share it with somebody else, you say, like, hey, this is a cool way to listento music.Have you been listening for panning or to a musician friend?

14:43 Like, hey, have you checked out these cool plugins that he recommended?They're really great ways to, to pan some stuff out.If you'd like to hear my panning, my music, go to scoobertdoobert.pizza or search Scoobert Doobert on Spotify.We've got some great guest episodes coming up so be sure to subscribe, five star, and we'llsee you next week.Quick little addition.

15:07 My producer mentioned that I've been saying the word flanger flanger launch in a weird way.I don't know how you actually say it anymore.I've been reading all these things on the internet and everybody's saying it differently andit's kind of making me go crazy.

15:27 Dictionary.com calls it flange, all right, and if I go on to Google, they call it a flanger.I feel like that can't be right.My favorite is the British pronunciation flanger.That's not a German flanger.So yeah, say it the way you want and maybe leave me a comment so that I know how I actuallyam supposed to pronounce it.We're all learning here.Thanks for listening, even though I am flawed.