"Ironman" effect, fast Shepard flanger

[Fancy Lime]

The intro of Black Sabbath's Ironman starts with a strange vocal effect. I dimly remember having read somewhere that this was achieved by Ozzy speaking through a fast spinning fan. If so, then this is basically a Shepard (aka barber pole) flanger implemented by accelerating air. There are a few Shepard flangers out there but I couldn't find a demo with a fast rate. Most of the demos are in fact quite boring, sadly. Does anyone know a good one?

Cheers,
Andy

[Rodgre]

Shepard Flangers and Phasors are a very cool effect. Much easier to do with DSP nowadays than with analog, I would assume.

That said, I'm not sure that the "Iron Man" effect is Ozzy speaking into a fan. I think that's a legend that's been passed down. I have a feeling it's a ring modulator, but I'm not 100% certain. Whatever it is, it sure was unique and caught my attention when I first heard it as a kid.

The only commercial Shepard effects that I know of are things like the Boss BF-3 and Boss PH-3, which are both digital. They call is "rise" and "fall" I think.

Roger

[iainpunk]

Shepard Flangers and Phasors are a very cool effect. Much easier to do with DSP nowadays than with analog, I would assume.

That said, I'm not sure that the "Iron Man" effect is Ozzy speaking into a fan. I think that's a legend that's been passed down. I have a feeling it's a ring modulator, but I'm not 100% certain. Whatever it is, it sure was unique and caught my attention when I first heard it as a kid.

The only commercial Shepard effects that I know of are things like the Boss BF-3 and Boss PH-3, which are both digital. They call is "rise" and "fall" I think.

Roger

those boss units use a single LFO that sweeps all the filters at the same time, a sheppard effect would have multiple saw-tooth LFOs being out of phase with each other, but having the same frequency.
i have had a VST plugin with this function on my previous laptop, but i can't seem to find it anywhere online.

cheers, Iain

[garcho]

The fan effect is like a weird tremolo, I used to play a saxophone right in front of a box fan, cool effect. The Iron Man vocal intro thing sure sounds like a ring mod to me, maybe even both, through the fan then ring mod. Back then, ring mods were often called a "metal" effect, maybe some marijuana laced free association led them to try it out. "Dude, Iron Man would have a metallic voice, he's made out of metal, what if you sing through that metal thing!"

[soggybag]

I had a fascination with the Shepard/barber pole effect a long time ago. It seemed too complex to make DIY. Then one day someone, on this forum (might have been Mark Hammer), that Behrenger came out with a Phase Shifter that does this. It was $40. It also does a ascending and descending, along with stepped random phase.

[Kevin Mitchell]

I feel like the Echo Flanger/Poly Chorus could get you close. May need to follow it with a tremolo.

Never heard of of the Shepard effect. Very curious.

[anotherjim]

I always thought it was the old Dr Who Dalek voice effect. Ring mod, but you have to elongate your vowels. Speaking normally, Ozzy would have said "Oy yam Ion marn".

[mdcmdcmdc]

I had a fascination with the Shepard/barber pole effect a long time ago. It seemed too complex to make DIY. Then one day someone, on this forum (might have been Mark Hammer), that Behrenger came out with a Phase Shifter that does this. It was $40. It also does a ascending and descending, along with stepped random phase.

That'd be the Behringer clone of the Boss PH-3 which I think is itself probably under $100 used if you want to avoid the plastic behringer enclosure.

[garcho]

Dr Who Dalek voice effect

Yeah, that's right! There is a little of that odd down-sampling effect, or whatever it is that makes that Dalek effect so cool. That's a reoccurring nightmare for me. I've had Holtek "robot voice" effects on the breadboard so many times over the years I can't keep track, yet never went through with the build. They started simple, like the datasheet, but I kept adding stages, logic control (running through the switching like a sequencer), more pots, switches, buttons, µC control, expression pedal, MIDI sync, and... and then poof, had to do something else for some reason and cleared the bench before trimming down the excess and committing to a final product. "I'll come back to this later". Yeah, right. I was always excited to present something here, it really is a fun IC to mess with, regardless of utility. Some day!

[soggybag]

I had a fascination with the Shepard/barber pole effect a long time ago. It seemed too complex to make DIY. Then one day someone, on this forum (might have been Mark Hammer), that Behrenger came out with a Phase Shifter that does this. It was $40. It also does a ascending and descending, along with stepped random phase.

That'd be the Behringer clone of the Boss PH-3 which I think is itself probably under $100 used if you want to avoid the plastic behringer enclosure.

I never knew Boss made this, I'd never heard of it. I should have guessed Behrenger would not invent something like this from scratch.

[danfrank]

Ironman was released in 1970... Besides studio tape effects, there were only a few other types of effects available at the time.
My guess would be a fan and some kind of distortion, maybe a fuzz box. The choppiness from the dan and the synthy part from a dirt/fuzz box

[anotherjim]

Ring Modulator effects were around the '60's (and much earlier) usually as scholarly or scientific devices, but any sound engineer trained in audio/broadcast engineering at the better establishments would have been exposed to them. The "Forbidden Planet" soundtrack used Ring Modulators a lot. They don't have to process vocals, in fact that seems to be pretty rare.
I think they tended to be black-box projects built by the establishments backroom boys but of course they found their way into the outside world ("borrowed"!). Most British recording engineers had formal training in those days so would have seen or played with them. The BBC probably built their own for the Radiophonic Workshop and the success of Dr Who generated a lot of interest and this was in 1963.
Maestro produced a Ring Mod pedal for guitarists, but I can't find out when it was first released, but as it relies on IC's then probably later than 1970. This was also used by Jon Lord in Deep Purple on his Hammond organ.  There are projects for the Maestro unit but it isn't something you can knock together on a breadboard tomorrow.

[soggybag]

Iommi used the ring modulator on the guitar solo in Paranoid. It's been a while since I listened to this but I think it's either on one of two guitars or it's mixed with the straight signal because it's not strong but it's there.

That's interesting about Ozzy singing through a fan. I had never heard that. I would have guess he sang through a ring mod. In a a way the fan may have been like a ring mod imposing a high frequency amplitude modulation on his voice.

Ring mod is another effect that has fascinated me. I own at least 4, though I rarely use them.

[Fancy Lime]

Hey guys, thanks for the interesting responses. Listening at it again closely, I think you are probably right and it is likely a ringmodulator with a slowish carrier on the vocals. If it were a fan, it would need to spin crazy fast. But now I have the idea of trying to simulate the fan thing stuck in my head. Hmm, need to think about it. I think I'll start experimenting with a resonant low pass moved by a fast sawtooth oscillator, for a combined autowah and tremolo effect.

The ringmod on the Paranoid solo: is that a ringmod or is it the "ghost tone" phenomenon that was discussed in another thread recently? I know too little about how either sounds to really tell the difference.

Cheers and a healthy New Year,
Andy

[dthurstan]

There is rotating speaker effect on the vocals of Planet Caravan, I wonder if that was what Ozzy was thinking of?

[Rob Strand]

Anything to do with Iron man needs transistors.

[anotherjim]

I can't imagine a 1970 British electric fan being quiet enough. The turbulence noise would be louder than the voice!

[soggybag]

The wiki page mentions a fan, and we believe everything we read on the internet. I'm inclined to believe this. Though I'm surprised the sound of the fan or at least the air moving is not audible.

Iommi using a ring mod on Paranoid is something I've read a few times and never really noticed until after.

[Ice-9]

Iron Man sounds very much like a ring modulator to me, but if it's a Shepards/ barber pole flanger you want Then MR.Black makes a nice and reasonably priced Shepards Flanger (FV-1)