Plug-In User Guide / Owners Manual

5
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THE BASICS - ABOUT PHASEMISTRESS
PhaseMistress — Version 5
PhaseMistress was designed to offer you an all-encompassing set of
phase-shifting tools, expertly modeled from the most sought-after
hardware units. An extensive amount of research and development
went into creating the wealth of features and modes that make
PhaseMistress the most complete phase-shifting effects plug-in
available. PhaseMistress sounds and responds in the same manner as
a physical analog phaser would, but also includes powerful new tools
for creating endlessly customizable effects. To help illustrate just how
capable PhaseMistress is, let’s take a look at the history of phasing
effects and highlight some of the legendary sounds available to you
inside of this plug-in.
The original phase-shifting effects were an attempt at electronically
recreating analog tape flanging (an effect created by mixing the output
of two analog tape machines playing the same track, only slightly out
of sync) using integrated circuits. Early effects designers attempted to
model the ‘out of sync’ part of the flanging effect by using something
called an analog phase shift circuit. The result wasn’t exactly tape
flanging in the classic sense (as an actual flanging effect also requires a
short modulated delay), but sounded very cool in and of itself and would
begin to be utilized in unintended ways by some pioneering musicians
(we’ll get to this part of the story in just a bit).
A phaser or phase shift effect is created by altering the phase of the
audio, (similar to a delay, but with frequency variation) and mixing this
phase-shifted sound back in with the original signal. The resulting phase
cancellation produces a wonderfully musical sounding set of “notches”
at musically related frequencies in the original sound. By sweeping, or
modulating the phase-shifted signal, the notch frequencies are moved
up and down the frequency spectrum thus creating that classic swooshy
and swirly phase-shift sound.
In 1968, a Japanese company by the name of Shin-ei created a
footpedal operated phase-shifter called the Uni-Vibe. The Uni-Vibe
was designed to recreate the Doppler-effect sound of a Leslie rotating
speaker. Remember the pioneering musicians I referenced in the last
paragraph? Well, a young ex-pat American guitarist found the lush,
swirling sound of the Uni-Vibe to sound a little better on guitar than
the organ. That lad’s name: Jimi Hendrix. And the rest, as they say, is
history.
Phasers became very popular with guitarists during the Psychedelic
‘60s, and by the 1970s phase-shifting effects were being used on drums,
keyboards, and in motion picture and television production. Analog
phasers work on the principle of having a series of phase shift all-pass
filters (or ‘stages’) in their design that produce phase shift through
the circuit. As you add stages to the phase shift “circuit” (resulting in
more notches), the overall “strength” of the phase shift effect increases
and becomes more prominent. In addition, the number of stages
significantly affects the overall tonal character of the phased sound. A
two-stage phaser will be very “washy” and wet (think of “Machine Gun”
by our friend Jimi, Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs”, or the opening
guitar on Dark Side of the Moon’s “Breath”). The totally cool phased
drum sound on Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” from Physical Graffiti was
created with a 4 stage phaser that provided a much more pronounced
effect. So it kind of stands to reason that 6, 8, 10 and 12 stage phasers