As we've been noticing in our exploration of the four dimensions in music, time flies. Lately we've been experimenting in Studio B with room ambience on electric guitars. There are some glass windows in the recording room, and we are having much success bouncing electric guitar signals off of them. Try micing your guitar amp the next time you record, and then aim it at an angle towards any window you can find, with a second mic pointing at the window from about 3 feet away. Vary the placement of the stuff until you find a set of reflections that complements the playing style, and you'll wind up with a recording that is much more compelling to listen to. Reason? The ear is used to hearing reflection ambiences all the time, so it's natural for us to hear them on recordings.

Now, on to some other time-related stuff. Hold your hands in front of your face, palms facing in and hands together. Now make a long Shhhh.... sound and move your hands in and out away from your face. The swirling sound you hear is caused by the varying reflection times of the sound bouncing off your hands.

Imagine this happening as waves bouncing off the walls of a swimming pool, and think about how the wave patterns get more complex as they intersect. With sound energy we hear these complex intersections as changes in the tone or timbre of the signal. So when the delay time of a reflected signal changes through time, we hear a constantly changing timbre caused by the constantly changing intersection pattern of the sound waves. We know these effects as flanging and phasing. And that's why using that kind of effect thickens the sound so much. The initial signal is duplicated, sometimes several times, and combined with the original signal at a constantly changing delay time. So the ear hears additional layers of your music as well as that shimmering effect created in the fourth dimension.

An interesting thing about delays, flanging, phasing, etc., is they do not change the dynamics of your musical message. You rock harder, and the delays holler right along with you. Play in a hush, and the relationship with the delays stays exactly the same. So enjoy your work with what we've talked about so far in this series: pitch, timbre, rhythm, and delays. Next time it's on to the exploration of dynamics, and the devious devices that give us an unnatural ability to change them.

If you have questions or comments for Fred, email him at fbogert@gibson.com.

Fred Bogert is the proprietor of Studio C Productions in Nashville, which manages historic RCA Studio B.