[sdiy] My intro to flanging

[aankrom]

 I just thought I'd take a moment to look back on the earlier days of my 
 audio experimentation.

 I discovered flanging quite by accident and in those early teen years, 
 of course I had never heard of it. But my uncle had a dual cassette 
 boombox. I don't know if it was a good one or a crappy one... All I know 
 is that when you put a tape into each deck and pushed "play" on both, 
 both cassettes would play through the speakers. "Hmmm I thought. I 
 wonder what it would sound like if I recorded this tape and then played 
 them both at the same time?" Well I tried it and was blown away. I 
 must've played with that boombox for hours. I did all the tricks: I 
 slowed one deck down by pressing on one of the wheels then I'd do it 
 with the other deck. Of course later I became keenly aware of this sound 
 in recordings, then I played with all the cool new Boss pedals at the 
 local music store (this was around 1985) and the name of the sound 
 became known to me. But it didn't sound quite the same and I'm still 
 looking for an old boombox that will do that. It's weird how they seem 
 not to do it by design. I even try out all of the dual tape decks at 
 Goodwill and other thrift stores. Fun times...

 AA