Cool effect in "Float On" by Modest Mouse

[austinm08]

From 2:28 - 2:34, there's a part which to me sounds like dress shoes or boots clicking on a hard floor or something.. but there seems to be a really cool stereo trick that was done, because it just grabs me..

Listening with my monitors, there's a real depth to it.. it's really interesting to me. Do you guys know what I mean?

If you listen to it in this video, it starts at 2:31, not 2:38.

 

[Corvette]

What you been smoking today son?

 

[lukecot]

Haa... that is pretty cool! It isn't an auto pan effect as the levels are consistent on both sides, but it might just be that they have completely removed the signal in the centre..
By this I mean that they have duplicated it and sent one to the full left and one to the full right. This will get rid of the signal in the middle (mono) but even with this you might not get the full depth of the stereo path like in the song...

The only other thing I could say is try getting a stereo enhancer and putting in on the two duplicated tracks each panned to the left and the other to the right and then add even more spread and depth to it... I think this might just do the trick but yeah it is a very cool effect..

 

[austinm08]

Hm. Yeah, I imagine that's part of it (panning hard left and right).

 

[RAMI]

By this I mean that they have duplicated it and sent one to the full left and one to the full right. This will get rid of the signal in the middle (mono)

No, it won't. Duplicating a track and panning them does the exact opposite. All it does it give you a louder mono signal.

 

[austinm08]

No, it won't. Duplicating a track and panning them does the exact opposite. All it does it give you a louder mono signal.

perhaps not (as much) if you apply a chorus to one (or detune it or something) and set it off time a bit.

 

[RAMI]

perhaps not (as much) if you apply a chorus to one (or detune it or something) and set it off time a bit.

Right. But simply duplicating and panning does nothing.

 

[starbuck26]

You could try panning both to the extremes and then inverting the phase of one of the images. This will make it sound like the sound is coming from outside the speakers, literally from the side of your head. The drawback is that if you listen to the song in mono they will completely disappear.

Is youtube still mono?

 

[austinm08]

There's no way YouTube is mono if I'm hearing that "effect" there.

But that's a good idea. Something to try, for sure.

 

[RAMI]

No, it's not mono. I've uploaded stereo wav files and they play in stereo.