Stereo Ping Pong

Now I have done a bit of audio engineering over the years, and recording in stereo was something I did a lot of – the Sony stereo microphone and MiniDisk combination was a killer back in the day – and it still works a treat.

I had recorded Touchstones “Come Together” and this piece “Ping Pong” in stereo, and went to rip them to computer file using my SoundBlaster Play 3 USB soundcard, only to discover something unexpected.

It appears most “headset” type external USB soundcards only record in MONO, but offer full stereo playback – this was a revelation made clear from the experimental song “Ping Pong” which used hard L-R-L-R alternating channel punishment, and my rip had HOLES in it where the right channel should have been.

Laptops these days only come with a stereo headphone jack, no line in anymore – I guess hardware manufacturers figure you only need mono to support zoom calls so do not bother mounting the whole sound card experience. Seems the soundblaster was recording the left channel and copying that to the right, for a completely flat 2-ear mono. I had wondered why “come together” lacked the vibrancy of the original Minidisk recording, but… there you go. I managed to rip true stereo audio using my wife’s gaming computer – it has a REAL sound card in it (with a lovely blue line in), but i am going to have to come up with a more independent solution eventually.

This piece is an experiment in what I can achieve with the Theremini ONLY, in one take. I dialled my modification of the “Helix” preset, which uses a wide long ping-pong delay, chose the Key of C, and Major Pentatonic, dialled the pitch correction to off, plugged in my minidisk and headphones (I have a headphone splitter dongle), did a little playing before waiting for silence then hitting record.

What you hear is as I performed it, no editing (apart from top and tail trimming) – all the noise was made during the recording session, using only the built-in fx processing of the preset. I discovered that I could play inside the wide stereo field, that by pulling rapidly from highest to lowest, and getting the volume right I could get close to a kick drum sound, and love that parts sound like I used drum pads.

The delay quickly fills up, and when it gets really congested, the sound gets crunchy, and that is also sort of cool. To get the fade out I paused on the lowest note before silencing the volume antenna and waiting for the delay to decay to nothing – such an old school synth sound.

I really like this, not sure why, but I am amazed how much deliberate sound a monophonic instrument can make like this.