Probably a stupid question, but I've long been curious: On the Small Club boot, certain places (particularly during People Without) are mixed differently to the left and to the right.

How and why is this? By "how," I mean...was the sound guy mixing the show as it occurred live? And by "why," I mean...no one in the audience would have been able to hear it that way, would they?

Just listened, and a good (albeit geeky ) question.

The sound guy certainly would have been mixing the sound live during the show, but i am not qualified to answer this query.

I don't think the audience would have heard the panning effect like we do on the recording, but i could be wrong.

I like the effect though.

An absolute sterling recording of an equally sterling show.

I absolutely love the effect, and I love People Without for multiple reasons, but that is one of them.

I guess the answer may be as simple as he wanted it to have that effect in case he ever decided to release it.

Efan said:

I absolutely love the effect, and I love People Without for multiple reasons, but that is one of them.

I guess the answer may be as simple as he wanted it to have that effect in case he ever decided to release it.

I cannot remember of all the gigs i have attended, ever hearing that type of effect as profound as it appears on the small club recording.

May i ask what version of the recording you have?

I have Sabs "Trojan Horse" and the X Records version, both have the effect.

I'd have to check when I get home to see which versions I have. I have a couple that I've collected through the years.

The different-channels mix is also on the version of "People Without" that was recorded on the next night's aftershow (which is on Playtime, CD 2, and probably on other boots).

Efan said:

I'd have to check when I get home to see which versions I have. I have a couple that I've collected through the years.

The different-channels mix is also on the version of "People Without" that was recorded on the next night's aftershow (which is on Playtime, CD 2, and probably on other boots).

If you are referring to 4DaFunk's "Playtime," the source of People Without is the small club version, from Sabs Trojan Horse.

[Edited 2/3/11 14:31pm]

Efan said:

Probably a stupid question, but I've long been curious: On the Small Club boot, certain places (particularly during People Without) are mixed differently to the left and to the right.

How and why is this? By "how," I mean...was the sound guy mixing the show as it occurred live? And by "why," I mean...no one in the audience would have been able to hear it that way, would they?

Isn't that a standard live stereo mix? That's normal for live shows. And keyboards are stereo in their output with built in panning on their voices. In my memory Small Club has all kinds of fucked up mixing, like the background voices on Housequake being way to loud... but are all the result of it being the real, the raw soundboard. And in live venues, they do have left and right panning to make it sound good. Listen to the soundboard of any of the tours (like SOTT or Lovesexy).

Or are you referring to something else?

TheDigitalGardener said:

Efan said:

I'd have to check when I get home to see which versions I have. I have a couple that I've collected through the years.

The different-channels mix is also on the version of "People Without" that was recorded on the next night's aftershow (which is on Playtime, CD 2, and probably on other boots).

If you are referring to 4DaFunk's "Playtime," the source of People Without is the small club version, from Sabs Trojan Horse.

[Edited 2/3/11 14:31pm]

Oh, sorry. My bad.

ufoclub said:

Efan said:

Probably a stupid question, but I've long been curious: On the Small Club boot, certain places (particularly during People Without) are mixed differently to the left and to the right.

How and why is this? By "how," I mean...was the sound guy mixing the show as it occurred live? And by "why," I mean...no one in the audience would have been able to hear it that way, would they?

Isn't that a standard live stereo mix? That's normal for live shows. And keyboards are stereo in their output with built in panning on their voices. In my memory Small Club has all kinds of fucked up mixing, like the background voices on Housequake being way to loud... but are all the result of it being the real, the raw soundboard. And in live venues, they do have left and right panning to make it sound good. Listen to the soundboard of any of the tours (like SOTT or Lovesexy).

Or are you referring to something else?

I guess I've just never really noticed this effect being used before, even in the soundboard recordings I have. I'm assuming this was Dr. Fink doing that keyboard part rather than Boni, but either way, you're saying it was just the way he (or she) was playing that part of the song?

If you can think of any SOTT or Lovesexy tour songs that also have this, I'd love to know. I'm just curious now.

Efan said:

ufoclub said:

Isn't that a standard live stereo mix? That's normal for live shows. And keyboards are stereo in their output with built in panning on their voices. In my memory Small Club has all kinds of fucked up mixing, like the background voices on Housequake being way to loud... but are all the result of it being the real, the raw soundboard. And in live venues, they do have left and right panning to make it sound good. Listen to the soundboard of any of the tours (like SOTT or Lovesexy).

Or are you referring to something else?

I guess I've just never really noticed this effect being used before, even in the soundboard recordings I have. I'm assuming this was Dr. Fink doing that keyboard part rather than Boni, but either way, you're saying it was just the way he (or she) was playing that part of the song?

If you can think of any SOTT or Lovesexy tour songs that also have this, I'd love to know. I'm just curious now.

Well, I don't have small club handy right now, but can you describe the sound? I'm suspecting that's it going through either a stereo effects processor or the keyboard noise itself is designed to move in stereo from one side to the other. It's a particular keyboard noise?

ufoclub said:

Efan said:

I guess I've just never really noticed this effect being used before, even in the soundboard recordings I have. I'm assuming this was Dr. Fink doing that keyboard part rather than Boni, but either way, you're saying it was just the way he (or she) was playing that part of the song?

If you can think of any SOTT or Lovesexy tour songs that also have this, I'd love to know. I'm just curious now.

Well, I don't have small club handy right now, but can you describe the sound? I'm suspecting that's it going through either a stereo effects processor or the keyboard noise itself is designed to move in stereo from one side to the other. It's a particular keyboard noise?

If I am remembering People Without correctly, it's a strange panning effect that is in one ear on the first note and on the 2nd and every note thereafter is played in the next ear on the synth hook. It sounds like it begins in the left and right at the end of the note it pans over to the right.

It's been some time since I last listened to Small Club, but I remember the panning specifically on People Without.

^^ That's it yes, it's a stereo effect.

Spinlight said:

ufoclub said:

Well, I don't have small club handy right now, but can you describe the sound? I'm suspecting that's it going through either a stereo effects processor or the keyboard noise itself is designed to move in stereo from one side to the other. It's a particular keyboard noise?

If I am remembering People Without correctly, it's a strange panning effect that is in one ear on the first note and on the 2nd and every note thereafter is played in the next ear on the synth hook. It sounds like it begins in the left and right at the end of the note it pans over to the right.

It's been some time since I last listened to Small Club, but I remember the panning specifically on People Without.

Yep, thanks.

TheDigitalGardener said:

Efan said:

I'd have to check when I get home to see which versions I have. I have a couple that I've collected through the years.

The different-channels mix is also on the version of "People Without" that was recorded on the next night's aftershow (which is on Playtime, CD 2, and probably on other boots).

If you are referring to 4DaFunk's "Playtime," the source of People Without is the small club version, from Sabs Trojan Horse.

[Edited 2/3/11 14:31pm]

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

Both versions are so radically different that 4DF's Playtime included both of them, one as a 'full band version' and the Grosse Freiheit 36 one as a kind of 'piano version', sourced from Sab's 'Driving to midnight mess'.

So both of you were right.

vitriol said:

TheDigitalGardener said:

If you are referring to 4DaFunk's "Playtime," the source of People Without is the small club version, from Sabs Trojan Horse.

[Edited 2/3/11 14:31pm]

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

Both versions are so radically different that 4DF's Playtime included both of them, one as a 'full band version' and the Grosse Freiheit 36 one as a kind of 'piano version', sourced from Sab's 'Driving to midnight mess'.

So both of you were right.

So the keyboard was set up to pan like that, right? The soundboard guy (bless his heart for this show, by the way) didn't have any involvement in this effect. Correct?

squirrelgrease said:

So the keyboard was set up to pan like that, right? The soundboard guy (bless his heart for this show, by the way) didn't have any involvement in this effect. Correct?

I don't think anyone knows for certain.

And yes, massive props to the sound guy/girl.

I suspect this is the case:

Many 80s keyboards had a pretty rude default stereo setting. Different voices were simply allocated to the two stereo channels. So, for example, if you had an eight-voice synth - a synth that had 8-note polyphony - the first four voices would play on the left channel and the last four voices on the right. Or, every other voice would play on the left and every other on the right etc. So, if you played, say, a Cmaj7 chord the different notes of the chord would end up getting sent to the two different channels (e.g. C->left, E->right, G->left, B-> right). Sometimes the allocation seemed sort of random to the listener, because if you held down certain notes the synth would just move the left-right cycle around when the other voices would get engaged. Of course, the sound guy was expected to have used the panning controls on the different channels on the mixing desk in order to narrow down the stereo image, but if the synth had been inserted to a stereo channel that was not possible.

This type of stereo separation is most notable - and most annoying - on headphones. It might not be apparent at all to a listener at a live venue.

At the end of "People Without" he seems to be playing a sampler, but the early samplers had the same type of stereo as polysynths of the time. There seems to be several keyboards used on that song as well, so they all have different stereo configurations.

^ Makes sense.

That's what I'd put my money on at the least.

The slight "swirly" quality of it might be due to reverb in an aux bus, microphones that pick up the room ambiance or whatever. That tones down the hard-panning somewhat. Let me retract a bit on the comment on the early samplers, though. The units that had "real stereo" often had samples with exaggerated stereo imaging, so the sound would bounce from left to right in any case.

[Edited 2/4/11 7:02am]

^^^Very interesting. Thanks!

TheDigitalGardener said:

^^ That's it yes, it's a stereo effect.

Isn't the technical term "panning"?