The 1960s band, The Small Faces have been subsequently classified as a “psychedelic band.” For this song, the psychedelic part is the cool sound known as flanging. A flange the plastic or metal container used to hold magnetic recording tape, used in recording music. You get the flanging or phasing sound by lining up two identical copies of the same passage, start them simultaneously (which was tricky to do) and then touch one of the flanges to delay it by 20 milliseconds, you then get a whooshing sound. This was the first use of this effect in a pop song according to the Wikipedia source, but I know that the Beatles used it in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamond” (1967) and “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” the Goffin-King song recorded by the Byrds was also from 1967.



[Warning: drug references in this song.]

2 Responses to “Small Faces: Itchycoo Park (1967)”

  1. ComposerBastard Says:

    im time tripping…very cool.

    vocoder like…
    this is yummi example
    how bout some gated reverb from 80’s,,,

  2. Brad Wood Says:

    The small delay produces constructive and destructive interference at sets of frequencies. For the complete effect you want the delay to slowly vary.

    After the technique was discovered using tape machines, some electronic instrument makers set about realizing it in silicon, with varying degrees of success.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.