One of the top producers/engineers at one of the world's top tracking havens, Nashville's famed Blackbird Studios, shares tips and tricks on how to Introduce these classic effects to your mixes.
Hello and welcome to another Dojo. This time I'll discuss the differences between phasing and flanging and offer some advice on how better to use these effects in your recording and mixes.
First, what is flanging? Flanging gets its name from the glory days of tape machines. More specifically, the miles of spooled tape that was used to make records that were fed, and alternately collected, on metal reels—the outer edge of which was called the "flange." The earliest way to accomplish flanging was by synching two tape machines playing back the same exact audio material, and manually slowing down one of the machines by pressing a finger (or two) on the flange of the playback reel on one of the tape machines, releasing it, and listening to the characteristic "swoosh" as it raced back into synch with the other machine. Do this more than once, and you are "flanging."
I particularly like using these effects on families of instruments (drums, grouped guitars, background vocals, strings, synths, loops, etc.) or on whole sections of mixes.
In the late '70s, Eventide came out with the classic FL 201 Instant Flanger and added some nifty little tweaks: adjustable rate on the LFO, a choice of triangle or sine wave LFO, feedback, phase, envelope follower, and more. You can buy the plug-in version for around $129. Have a look at Fig.1, where I've drawn up a basic signal flow for this type of circuit. As you can see, the primary way flanging gets its sound is by manipulating delay time and its parameters.
In contrast, phasing is accomplished by lining up a small group of non-linear, all-pass filters in series that react with frequencies in different ways. Look at Fig. 2. This shifts a particular frequency's wavelength ever so slightly (i.e., 250 Hz moving an eighth of a wavelength). By combing other filters reacting to different frequencies, and phase-shifting those wavelengths by random amounts, you get the comb-filtering that is characteristic of phasers.
Fig. 2
Both effects have similar sounds, characteristics, and controls. Today, most offer adjustable delay times in parallel or series, phase angles, LFO types, filter types, and delay lines at different degrees of phase that can be modulated in sync with your DAW's bpm.
Now, let me offer some basic jumping off points for you to begin experimenting with phasing and flanging. I particularly like using these effects on families of instruments (drums, grouped guitars, background vocals, strings, synths, loops, etc.) or on whole sections of mixes. Try this:
Flanging Reverb
Take your guitar solo and send it to a reverb. Place a flanger (or phaser—you should switch them out and see what works best) after the reverb and then blend that into the solo for added effect. Next, mute the phaser/flanger on the reverb channel and instantiate the same phaser/flanger directly on the guitar solo track. Listen to the difference and adjust to taste. You can also try the same thing using a delay instead of a reverb.
Sectional Phases
Experiment with manipulating sections of your song (the bridge, interlude, verse, etc.) by adding a flanger to master stereo output (aka the "2-bus"). You should be able to automate various parameters of the effect. I would suggest starting by automating the power/bypass on the plug-in in your DAW. If this isn't an option, you can always bounce down the section you want, or even the entire song, with the effect on the whole time, then import that bounce back into your session to add in when inspiration hits. When playing back the "flanged" mix, make sure you mute all the other tracks, since they're already contained in the bounce. Otherwise, you'll be introducing even more phase to the session, and not really in the best way. If that happens, you may find yourself reaching for the volume knob, because everything disappears and there is not much energy in the frequency spectrum.
As always, I invite you to come by my website for more information and demonstrations on these techniques. Until next time, stay open-minded, and be safe and well. Namaste.
Although he's become a leading figure in both jazz and blues guitar, Robben Ford's first instrument was saxophone. He switched to guitar at 14 and was fronting the Charles Ford Blues Band—named after his father—and supporting blues greats Charlie Musselwhite and Jimmy Witherspoon by age 18.
Photo by Mascha Thompson
The jazz and blues virtuoso changed his tone palette on the new all-instrumental album, Pure, stepping way from his legendary 100-watt Dumble. After 36 years playing the same rig, the transition was not easy.
"I consider it a real blessing having learned the guitar through the blues medium," says Robben Ford. "I then developed a great love for jazz and, in particular, the tenor saxophone. Those guys—or the guys that I like, I should say—are all very vocal players. They're singers. Miles Davis's trumpet as well is the most brilliant example of a trumpet player using his horn as a voice. It's very much related to speech. Sometimes you speak softly. Sometimes you just groove along. Sometimes you yell. You're always trying to say something as opposed to play something."
Robben Ford's musical conversations date back to the early 1970s and include work with artists as disparate as Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Miles Davis, the Yellowjackets, and Charlie Musselwhite. He's also released more than 30 albums as a leader, with most featuring his songwriting and vocals. However, like many things these days, change is in the air, and his recently released Pure is an all-instrumental album. It's the first time he's done that since Tiger Walk in 1997.
Pure
Ford's playing is a unique hybrid style that incorporates the nuance and sensibilities of the blues with the harmonic complexity of jazz. It's an approach that sounds intuitive and obvious in his hands, and on Pure, he takes advantage of the instrumental setting to showcase those different sides of his musical personality.
Pure's roots date back to 2017, when Ford relocated to Nashville. After years on the road, he was looking for a community with a vibrant music scene. He wanted a place where he could gig regularly with local players, focus on producing albums for other artists, and—for someone who's basically been a road warrior since the early 1970s—somewhat settle down.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect."
By early 2020, Ford had racked up a number of production credits and was knee-deep in instrumental projects with people like saxophonist Bill Evans, pedal-steel guitarist Paul Franklin, and guitarist John Jorgenson. But then the world came to a screeching halt, and all that work was put on hold.
Except his psyche was still in a very instrumental zone, because that's what he was busy with when the work dried up. "Ever since Tiger Walk, I've basically devoted myself to really learning how to write a good song and to deliver it on the bandstand as a vocalist," Ford says. "But my head was in the instrumental thing, and I thought, 'Let's just run with it. I am feeling it.' And indeed, that's why I did the instrumental record."
Robben Ford's Gear
Since 1983, Ford had used the same amp on all his albums—the second Overdrive Special built by Howard Dumble, with a 2x12 Dumble cab—until 2018. "It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording," he says.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
Guitars
1960 Fender Telecaster
1952 Fender Telecaster
1966 Epiphone Riviera
1964 Gibson ES-355
1964 Gibson SG
Assorted Paul Reed Smith guitars
Strings & Picks
D'Addario (.010–.046)
D'Addario heavy picks
Amps
Dumble Overdrive Special (100 watt)
Dumble 2x12 Cabinet
Little Walter "59" (50 watt)
Little Walter King Arthur (15 watt)
Effects
Hermida Audio Zendrive
Cornerstone Music Gear Gladio preamp
Strymon TimeLine Delay
Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
It's a setting that plays to Ford's strengths—the most prominent being his use of dynamics. He doesn't dime his amp and scream at you song after song. He tells a story, mimicking the natural inflections of speech. It's a skill he's mastered and, according to him, is the result of growing up immersed in the blues, followed by developing a passion for horn-centric jazz.
Rig Rundown - Robben Ford
Watch Robben Ford and Nashville luthier Joe Glaser go over his live setup.
Another way Ford changes things up is in the subtle use of his pick. He regularly plays by holding the pick backward and using the rounded end, but switches to the pointy end when aiming softer and lighter. He'll also vary the timbre by intuitively moving his picking hand between the neck end and the bridge, which is more percussive and punchy.
TIBIT: The new album was recorded at Purple House, an intimate studio outside of Nashville owned by Ford's co-producer, engineer, and second guitarist, Casey Wasner.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect," he says about searching for the right tone. "That's another deliberate choice. Rather than going to a pedal, I'll try to get nuance using the pick and volume. It's just the way I learned how to play. The blues players and tenor players, man, those guys weren't using effects." But he's not an anti-pedal purist (despite the album's title), and pedals have factored into his tone for decades. "We have so many colors on the new album that I am trying to find them and recreate a little of what happened on the album through effects. This is a new phase for me. I'm using two different overdrives instead of just the one, because I need that other color. I am also working a lot with the Strymon TimeLine Delay. I've been using that for a while, but really just for short and long delays, nothing special."
Ford's main overdrive, for decades, is the Hermida Audio Zendrive. He's been through a number of units, but it's been a staple. He's also added a second overdrive to his pedalboard: the Gladio preamp from the Italian manufacturer Cornerstone Music Gear.
Robben Ford Show 6º Festival de Blues e Jazz
Here's Robben Ford defining great tone in a 2021 livestream show from Nashville, with his 1961 Gibson SG.
"It's basically an overdrive pedal," he says. "The fellow basically designed it trying to capture what he heard me doing with the Zendrive. He sent pedals to my friend Jeff McErlain. Jeff is a guitar player from Brooklyn. I produced his album, and he's been very helpful to me in terms of gear. He's turned me on to things that I was unaware of, and the Gladio was one of them."
Another essential element of Ford's tone has been his Dumble Overdrive Special, which he's been using since 1983. Since all Dumbles are built for specific players, Ford's was made by Howard Dumble with his particular tonal needs in mind. That amp—the second Overdrive Special built—still comes out occasionally when he plays live, but in the studio, since moving to Nashville, his needs have evolved.
Ford's latest album features several guests, but his core band is Casey Wasner on guitar, Michael Rhodes on bass, and drummer Shannon Forrest.
Photo by Mascha Thompson
Ford was recording 2018's Purple House at a studio in Leipers Fork, Tennessee, called—you guessed it—the Purple House, when he realized that the Dumble wasn't going to work. "The Purple House is a studio owned by my co-producer and engineer, Casey Wasner. It's a small house and the rooms are small—the rooms aren't live—and I tried using the Dumble and it was just too big. Everything was being recorded in one room. It was a small, dead room, and the drums, bass, and myself—with my amp and a cabinet—were in that one room. The bass was direct, and Casey was in the control room playing rhythm guitar, along with a second engineer. No matter how hard we tried, the Dumble just didn't fit. I always work in a much more spacious environment. I like larger rooms. When we did that record, it was an experiment. I learned a lot about recording—how to record and how to use the studio—and, in particular, I got comfortable with small amplifiers."
"I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here."
For Ford, getting comfortable with small amplifiers meant finding a way to adapt to the new situation without changing the way he plays. "That was the journey," he says. "How do we keep the vibe? I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here. I had to find a way. It was hard for me, and it was a struggle. It took about four months during the making of Purple House to feel like, 'Okay, now I get it.' There were times when we went into a really righteous overdub room where I could crank the amp up. It's a real process and, for me, not one that I ever paid that much attention to. Up until Purple House I had always worked in larger rooms, with the same amp and cabinet, and some great engineer. I've been doing this for 30 years. It was a big change but cool. I am really happy having had the experience and having learned these things."
Back in 1974, George Harrison hired wunderkind 23-year-old guitarist Robben Ford for the George Harrison and Friends North American Tour.
Photo by Jim Summaria/Frank White Photo Agency
Ford took those lessons to heart, and he's continued in that vein on Pure. In the studio, his primary amp was the Little Walter "59," which is a 50-watt head, through a single 12" cabinet, which, despite what he's learned, is still taking some getting used to. "I've literally done every record I've ever made since Talk to Your Daughter (1988) with the same Dumble Overdrive Special and cabinet. [That's a 2x12, also built by Dumble.] It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording."
But despite his intensive efforts discovering the right tone—not to mention his years studying the instrument and developing his craft—ultimately, playing, for Ford, is intuitive.
"An analogy that I came up with for the way I play is that it's like finger painting," he says. "You put the color on the paper and then you brush it around. You're not making a square, necessarily, you're free flowing. It's more like clouds and wind. There is freedom in it, and it is never going to be the same way twice—it actually can't be the same way twice—because it's like brush strokes. I made a very conscious effort to take chances in the improvisations. It's always been very key to me, and, once again, it's a product of the people I listened to."
How to Play “That Out Shit”
(For more insight, watch Robben Ford explain—and play—diminished scale blues in this video.)
A big part of Robben Ford's playing is his use of the half/whole diminished scale, which is an eight-note scale that alternates half-steps and whole-steps over the course of an octave. It's a scale that's been in the jazz repertoire for decades and was a huge part of the Miles Davis sound throughout the 1980s. Ford was a member of Davis' band in 1986, although he began using that scale much earlier.
"A long time ago, I was 19, and my brother Patrick, a drummer, and I were playing with Charlie Musselwhite," Ford says. "We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?' He said, 'I use the half-step whole-step scale.' And I was like, 'Okay.' I went back to my hotel room and went G, G#, A#, B, and I worked out the scale. That was in 1971."
"We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?'"
One aspect of that scale's sound is the b9, which is a note Miles Davis often sat on. "Miles Davis would just play a b9 right on top of a seventh chord as his first note. I heard that sound, and from that time on I experimented with the half/whole diminished scale. Once I understood it through learning chords and realized it was a diminished scale and you could play it right off a #9 chord, that was the sound that I heard. I just got deep into it, and it has been a major quality in my playing."
Ford points out that all of the notes in a dominant 7th chord fit into the scale and says, "So there's my chord and I can play any of these notes. I can play a b9 against a G7—whether anybody likes it or not—and it's legit. I really work with that, and for me, that was the gift of Miles Davis."
IK Multimedia releases iRig Stream Solo and iRig Stream Pro. The original iRig Stream offered groundbreaking features for today's top apps that made it a must-have for millions of creators. Now iRig Stream Solo brings comparable features and connectivity to a new level of affordability, while iRig Stream Pro takes it all to the next level with enhanced connectivity and audio quality for world-class podcasting and streaming.
iRig Stream Solo is an easy-to-use, all-analog audio interface for iPhone*, iPad and Android that lets users connect up to three separate sources and mix them for streaming. Connect DJ decks, mixers or keyboards via RCA inputs. Use headsets or iRig mics for voiceovers via the 3.5mm headphone/microphone jack. And even the audio from the host device can be looped back and mixed together into a signal that's optimized for streaming and sent to the user's choice of streaming apps.
Start Connecting with the World
iRig Stream Solo is easy to use with a captive TRRS cable to connect to any iPhone*, iPad and Android device. Its 1/8" mono Thru line output lets users send audio to additional devices such as cameras, mixers and more. And with two AA batteries, streamers will enjoy hours of reliable performance anywhere.
* May require the use of Apple's Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter (TRRS).
iRig Stream Pro combines a 24-bit, 96 kHz audio interface for iPhone, iPad, Android and Mac/PC with a comprehensive 4-input in-line mixer. An XLR/¼" combo input, stereo RCA, TRRS and device inputs (Loopback) offer serious I/O, all sub-mixed into a pristine audio interface with even more comprehensive features.
Stereo or Multichannel? You Get Both!
iRig Stream Pro offers 2 modes. By default, it operates in stereo mode and pre-mixes multiple sources of audio (RCA stereo inputs + Loopback, XLR/¼" combo input and TRRS microphone) down to a stereo track, which is sent straight to streaming apps like Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, etc.
Switching to multichannel mode, the combo and TRRS inputs are routed to channels 3 and 4 respectively giving users 4 channels of audio to send to recording apps such as GarageBand or any other compatible DAW.
Pro Results with Loopback+
iRig Stream Pro's multichannel mode offers another advantage. Loopback+ is a powerful new feature that lets users route either or both channels 3 and 4 to audio apps such as MixBox, AmpliTube or VocaLive for processing and then route their outputs through the Loopback feature and into channels 1+2 going to their preferred streaming app. It's like using these audio apps as a plug-in for more creative and professional-sounding streams.
Connect More with the World
iRig Stream Pro makes it easier than ever to connect it all with USB, USB-C and Lightning cables included in the box. It operates with two AA batteries or via bus power on any Mac/PC. Plus an optional PSU not only powers iRig Stream Pro, but also keeps iPhones or iPads charged for even the longest sessions.
Comprehensive Compatibility
Both iRig Stream Solo and iRig Stream Pro work with any app that records or streams audio or video. To get started, they come with iRig Recorder 3 LE (iPhone/iPad/Android) - an easy-to-use, high-quality audio and video recording app. Record, trim, edit and share, right from the device.
Godlyke, Inc. is excited to announce the release of the TWA Triskelion Mk III. The Mk. III combines features of all previous versions of the Triskelion in a smaller, pedalboard-friendly chassis.
The Triskelion is a variable-state bandpass filter with adjustable gain. The filter's "Q" can also be adjusted from very wide to extremely steep to create harmonic focus in a narrow frequency band.
The Triskelion's specially designed filter can create glassy clean tones, boost mids for throaty solos, or tune your rig to any room for walls of singing, resonant feedback. Massive amp sounds, explosive lead-breaks, infinite sustain, and downright nasty, energy-intense tones are just a few of the uses for the Triskelion – the possibilities are limitless.
The Triskelion circuit is based on the uber-rare Systech Harmonic Energizer and has been used by many well-known artists including Dweezil Zappa, Lyle Workman, and Megadeth's Dave Mustaine.
TWA Triskelion® Mk 3 - Harmonic Energizer® Demo (New for 2021!)
Features
Amplitude knob adjusts the gain & output level of the pedal
Mass knob adjusts the frequency of the filter
Energy knob adjusts the Peak or "Q" of the selected frequency
Mass Boost switch raises selected frequency band by 1-octave
Amplitude on/off switch allows use of pedal as straight EQ or as a Booster/EQ
1/8" external footswitch jack for remote on/off control of Amplitude knob
1/8" TRS Expression pedal input for external control of the filter frequency sweep
Ultra-low noise operation
9V battery or external 9 VDC power with low-current draw operation
Relay-based True Bypass switching
3-year warranty
Made in USA
Street Price $229
For more info on TWA products including video demos of the Triskelion Mk III, please visit www.godlyke.com.
The Nobels ODR-mini is a natural, non-compressed tube-amp style overdrive that is versatile, amp-like, and affordable. Creates crunchy rock and blues sounds or extra boost for soloing without smothering the natural character of your guitar's tone. The Spectrum control optimizes tones from single coil chime to powerful humbucker rock ensuring plenty of clarity and full dynamic range.
