Surf.Whammy
Active member
Over half a century ago when I was taking courses at university, I was fascinated by the idea of being a psychologist or psychiatrist and took a survey course in Psychology where I discovered Sigmund Freud's book, "The Interpretation of Dreams", which among other things explains his theory on psychoanalysis and how the mind works. I decided to psychoanalyze myself, which after a while led to discovering and identifying a skill I call "directed-dreaming" and is something two general groups of people understand and practice consciously, even if they do not have a proper name for it.
Sigmund Freud's book appeared around the same time Albert Einstein made his observations on Special Relativity (1905), thereby providing the disturbing insights (a) that nobody knows everything they are thinking in an immediately conscious way and (b) the nobody knows what time it is.
The basic strategy for directed-dreaming is to think about something when you are dreaming, which lets your unconscious mind ("id" in Freudian terminology) work on solving an otherwise puzzling problem or having a novel idea, which for musicians and composers might be the lyrics or music for a song.
If you watch and listen to interviews of composers like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, then it's not unusual or off-the-wall to hear them describing and explaining how nearly complete ideas for songs "just appeared" in a few minutes, as if in a dream or perhaps literally when they were asleep and dreaming.
With this in mind, I have been doing directed-dreaming for decades and am getting good at it, which is the background for this topic and is based on having a very detailed dream about a Fender® Jazzmaster® this morning in which I imagined a "mod wheel" type of roller control that can be used to change some aspect of the sound momentarily like a "mod wheel' that when released snaps-back to the default position; but rather than being a horizontally positioned control, it was vertical, yet it had the same textured metal surface.
For reference, I have custom-modded a 1999 Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster, which I call the "Fabulous Fifty Million Dollar Trinaural Stratocaster®"; and it has two separate and independent output signals fed to a dual-channel TRS jack. It's not a stereo guitar but it outputs two independent channels. Currently, it does not have any "mod wheel" style thumbwheel controls, but this is something I plan to explore.
Using a "kill pot" is a possibility, where the way it works is to momentarily stop a signal but then to spring-back when released to return the signal to the chain. Shadow Electronics makes a "kill pot", and the advantage is that it requires less visible space than a horizontal or vertical thumbwheel, plus it's a spring switch, hence when released it snaps back to place.
Thumbwheels are not spring-loaded; but they are sufficiently large to be customized to add spring-loading, which might not be so difficult to do when the thumbwheel does not need to move its full range but instead perhaps just a 1/4" or 1/2" forward or backward. I can see this working by drilling one or two holes and using tiny springs to snap the thumbwheel back to its center position.
Relevant to Studio One, it occurs to me that there should be a way to create a virtual "mod wheel" for purposes of acting like a thumbwheel on a Fender guitar to control something--volume, tone, pitch, vibrato, tremolo, and so forth.
This is possible using Automation; and after thinking about it, mapping it to controlling Volume or Panning looks to be easy; but what about other characteristics of tones and textures?
There are VST effects plug-ins that can be used to control nearly anything; and most of them have parameters which can be controlled via Automation in Studio One; hence for example, Pro-Q3 (FabFilter) can be used to control tone and various related textures, while other VST effects plug-ins can control individual aspects of a variety of tones, textures, and pitches, as well as things like echoes, which is intriguing.
Controlling custom echoes this way might be easier than creating custom echoes like the "ick, ick, ick" echoes producers Rock Mafia devised for Miley Cyrus in "Who Owns My Heart", which probably were done by tape splicing or audio-clip manipulation rather than by using an echo machine or effect and turning it OFF and ON when the custom echo was desired.
Melodyne can do the same thing, of course; but the idea of devising an Automation-based strategy is intriguing.
This might be a bit complex initially; but if it works the same way as Stutter Edit 2 (iZotope) works, then it can be useful and no so difficult to do, which was the way I created what I call the "Elvis Stutter" for my song "The Ballad of Dare L. Dupree".
It's not difficult to copy and paste sections of an audio clip (a) in the Studio One Track Lane or (b) "blobs" in Melodyne to create custom echoes; but I think it might be nice to be able to do it on demand via Automation once everything is configured; and it might as simple as putting Timeless 3 (FabFilter) on a vocal track and then toggling it ON/OFF when a custom echo is desired at the tail of a word or phrase.
This type of Automation-controlled effect will work like a "kill pot" for an electric guitar and will turn the effect OFF/ON momentarily or however long is needs to be OFF/ON.
Automation can do this; and I like the idea!
Sigmund Freud's book appeared around the same time Albert Einstein made his observations on Special Relativity (1905), thereby providing the disturbing insights (a) that nobody knows everything they are thinking in an immediately conscious way and (b) the nobody knows what time it is.
The basic strategy for directed-dreaming is to think about something when you are dreaming, which lets your unconscious mind ("id" in Freudian terminology) work on solving an otherwise puzzling problem or having a novel idea, which for musicians and composers might be the lyrics or music for a song.
If you watch and listen to interviews of composers like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, then it's not unusual or off-the-wall to hear them describing and explaining how nearly complete ideas for songs "just appeared" in a few minutes, as if in a dream or perhaps literally when they were asleep and dreaming.
With this in mind, I have been doing directed-dreaming for decades and am getting good at it, which is the background for this topic and is based on having a very detailed dream about a Fender® Jazzmaster® this morning in which I imagined a "mod wheel" type of roller control that can be used to change some aspect of the sound momentarily like a "mod wheel' that when released snaps-back to the default position; but rather than being a horizontally positioned control, it was vertical, yet it had the same textured metal surface.
For reference, I have custom-modded a 1999 Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster, which I call the "Fabulous Fifty Million Dollar Trinaural Stratocaster®"; and it has two separate and independent output signals fed to a dual-channel TRS jack. It's not a stereo guitar but it outputs two independent channels. Currently, it does not have any "mod wheel" style thumbwheel controls, but this is something I plan to explore.
Using a "kill pot" is a possibility, where the way it works is to momentarily stop a signal but then to spring-back when released to return the signal to the chain. Shadow Electronics makes a "kill pot", and the advantage is that it requires less visible space than a horizontal or vertical thumbwheel, plus it's a spring switch, hence when released it snaps back to place.
Thumbwheels are not spring-loaded; but they are sufficiently large to be customized to add spring-loading, which might not be so difficult to do when the thumbwheel does not need to move its full range but instead perhaps just a 1/4" or 1/2" forward or backward. I can see this working by drilling one or two holes and using tiny springs to snap the thumbwheel back to its center position.
Relevant to Studio One, it occurs to me that there should be a way to create a virtual "mod wheel" for purposes of acting like a thumbwheel on a Fender guitar to control something--volume, tone, pitch, vibrato, tremolo, and so forth.
This is possible using Automation; and after thinking about it, mapping it to controlling Volume or Panning looks to be easy; but what about other characteristics of tones and textures?
There are VST effects plug-ins that can be used to control nearly anything; and most of them have parameters which can be controlled via Automation in Studio One; hence for example, Pro-Q3 (FabFilter) can be used to control tone and various related textures, while other VST effects plug-ins can control individual aspects of a variety of tones, textures, and pitches, as well as things like echoes, which is intriguing.
Controlling custom echoes this way might be easier than creating custom echoes like the "ick, ick, ick" echoes producers Rock Mafia devised for Miley Cyrus in "Who Owns My Heart", which probably were done by tape splicing or audio-clip manipulation rather than by using an echo machine or effect and turning it OFF and ON when the custom echo was desired.
Melodyne can do the same thing, of course; but the idea of devising an Automation-based strategy is intriguing.
This might be a bit complex initially; but if it works the same way as Stutter Edit 2 (iZotope) works, then it can be useful and no so difficult to do, which was the way I created what I call the "Elvis Stutter" for my song "The Ballad of Dare L. Dupree".
It's not difficult to copy and paste sections of an audio clip (a) in the Studio One Track Lane or (b) "blobs" in Melodyne to create custom echoes; but I think it might be nice to be able to do it on demand via Automation once everything is configured; and it might as simple as putting Timeless 3 (FabFilter) on a vocal track and then toggling it ON/OFF when a custom echo is desired at the tail of a word or phrase.
This type of Automation-controlled effect will work like a "kill pot" for an electric guitar and will turn the effect OFF/ON momentarily or however long is needs to be OFF/ON.
Automation can do this; and I like the idea!
Attachments
Last edited: