Hey if you guys want your mind blown listen to this song. Pretty freaky even for the sixties and is an early example of the singer's(in this case a female singer)voice going through a ring modulator. The effect starts around the 1:26 mark. This is from 1968 and could be considered psychedelic or proto prog even. Their whole album(self titled album by the United States of America)is very good if you don't mind weird and wild stuff.
The EMS is the best guess......If not, its could be a MuTron III, the Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth, or something along those lines in the same familyOriginally Posted by Progbear
Of course, the best example of a voice being processed through a ring modulator is any classic Doctor Who episode with the Daleks in it, as well as the voice of Morbius in The Brain Of Morbius, and the Rutan in The Horror Of Fang Rock. All of those were done with a ring modulator.
Beyond that, my favorite is probably Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mikrophonie II, where the choir's voices are being processed through a ring modulator, I believe using a Hammond organ for the input signal.
When did I say it wasn't a VCS-3? As I understand it, the VCS-3 (or a Synthi A) was the only synth King Crimson had back in the day. So any synth you hear on any of those early 70's records is gonna be that.
I didn't realize Rundgren used one, but I know Hackett used one during The Lamb/A Trick era. I believe he's said that's how he got the pseudo backwards guitar solo tone on Ripples for instance. I know Gilmour also had one, which he apparently used onstage circa 73-74, but I'm not sure where/if he used on any of the records, or if he just used it onstage.
Im not as Floyd-fluent as most here but I dont remember hearing anything like it on PF records but I do know that David Gilmour was one of the first to get one ....Weird
According to this he used it on DSOTM, but I've never heard anyone else say this.
It's not unlikely that when a new bit of kit comes out people will buy it (or even be given a freebie), have a play with it and decide it's not for them. Ritchie Blackmore had a Synthi Hi-Fli c. 'Burn' but doesn't seem to have persevered with it.
Todd seemed to be a big EMS booster, owning one of the first VCS3s in the States (referring to it as “the Putney”) and using it as far back as Runt. It’s pictured in the inner gatefold to Something/Anything?. M. Frog, when he was in Utopia, played a bank of two or three Synthi-As. I believe Todd got the Synthi Hi-Fli in time for the Todd album (though I think most of the “guitar solo” on “Spark of Life” is really Todd screaming through the VCS3).
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
Gilmour once claimed that that he bought, "at great expense", the original two prototypes for the Synthi Hi-Fli. There's photos of the band onstage in 73 or 74 where you can see he has the Synthi Hi-Fli in his rig, but other than maybe something like Time or Any Colour You Like, I'm not sure I know where he would have used it. Those are the only songs where it sounds like he's using anything like that on the recordings I've heard, and really, that could have been almost any phase shifter.
Oh, and one that I've always wondered is what Mark Knopfler used on the Dire Straits song So Far Away. In the video, he's playing what appears to be a custom guitar synth controller (at least I think that's what it is, it's certainly not one of his usual Schecter Strat style guitars that he was using during that era). But the articulation on the licks sounds more like an actual guitar, not a synth, which makes me wonder if it's not some type of effects module, like something he might have gotten out of one of those Eventide or Yamaha effects units that were big at the time (or maybe an AMS?!).
And on a related note, in the movie Control, the Joy Division biopic, there's a bit depicting the recording session of the song She's Lost Control. The actor playing Stephen Morris is shown using an aerosol spray can as a percussion instrument, using it make the distinct "sss, sss" rhythm that you hear on the track. The thing is, ont he track, it doesn't sound anything like an aerosol spray. I've always wondered if that's actually what was used on the track, and then Martin Hannett ran it through the effects console or what. Knowing that Hannett was apparently a big fan of the AMS delay unit (which he apparently had a hand in R&Ding), I guess that actual original sound could be almost anything.
Dire Straits are one of the few "big name" bands who I have actually seen live in concert, and my chief memory of the concert is how much better the live rendition of this song sounded than the studio version. On stage they gave it a Hawaiian feel, with those twangy sustained guitar notes that one hears in Hawaiian folk music. I'd say on stage it was all guitar, but I couldn't say what was used on the record.
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