What makes an effect/patch "dreamy"/"dreamlike"?

[Mark Hammer]

I've asked questions about effect adjectives in past, like what makes a drive or amp sound "woody".  Since that time, we've seen a veritable explosion of ambient-music pedals, and especially devices that play with delay and reverb in unusual ways.  For instance, this morning, I was looking at a demo of the Alexander Pedals Superball, which is a modulated reverb/delay.  But plenty such devices these days aim for the ambient category even without bringing in anything weird.  Many reverbs incorporate shifting reflections that morph to some degree.

In the synth universe, such things tend to be called "pads" or "washes" (almost in the same sense as water-colours).  It would be a mistake to lump everything geared towards ambient sounds/music as "dreamlike" because there are tones/sounds in many forms of ambient or meditative musics that are simply repetitive.  That is, the individual sound is not dream-like, only the overall effect of all the sounds and instruments combined.  What I am inquiring about here is what sorts of effect sounds, on their own, regardless of the context they might eventually be used in, give you that dream-like sensation.  That is, you strum a chord, and you just want to lean back and drift away.  Or, perhaps you strum a chord and  lapse/stumble into a world where everything is upside down and nothing seems to make sense anymore; a world with the unpredictability of dreams.


So, I ask the musical question: for you, what makes a tone best described as "dream-like" or "dreamy"?  You can either respond with specific pedals and settings, or simply list/describe tonal qualities that give you that feeling.

[stallik]

For me, it's usually reverb or delay drenched. Recently I've described My latest Deadastro build as dreamy. Delay with modulation. Not surprisingly, Rob called it the Dreamtime delay.
Of course, what you play has a major influence on 'dreamy' but any pedal that influences you to play that way must count?

[EBK]

The thin, distant sound of a wah pedal at its narrowest setting combined with a touch of short, soft delay.

Also, the sound of plucking strings at the headstock behind the nut.  There was a Pearl Jam song that ended with several such notes, but I can't recall which one it was (perhaps I will figure it out later).

[cloudscapes]

Reverb/delay is the easy answer, but for me it's modulation. On anything, not just delay. Anything that makes a parameter ebb and flow. Especially if you have multiple modulation sources and destinations.

[DIY Bass]

Also add in a slow attack pedal or volume pedal to remove the hard attack from a note and make it more of a pad/wash of sound.

[ElectricDruid]

Also add in a slow attack pedal or volume pedal to remove the hard attack from a note and make it more of a pad/wash of sound.

+1 agree. I was going to say a softer attack too.

[swamphorn]

From a theoretical standpoint I believe you can quantify dreaminess as smearing, either time-domain smearing (delay, reverb), frequency-domain smearing (chorus, distortion even), or both. The dreamiest effects combine these.

[Fancy Lime]

Along the lines of what has already been mentioned, I would say that a dreamlike effect is one that makes the note less tangible, less concrete by blurring our perception of when it starts, when it stops and what pitch it is. In my dreams, I often know that there is something just outside my field of view, which I would like to see but I somehow cannot turn my head or cannot focus on it or it turns out to be behind milk glass windows. So soft attack, blurry decay (heavy reverb and/or delay) and wobbly pitch (vibrato) sound very dreamy *to me*.

I would also mention the element of unpredictability that is introduced for example by interference of two or more LFO controlled effects. The simplest case would be two tremolos set to speeds that do not have a simple mathematical relation to each other, producing a kind of a-rhythmic wobbling. This sort of thing throws us off because our "intuitive prediction" of what should come next is not really used to this sort of thing, although it is not even that outlandish. Non-obvious relations between tremolo speed, phaser speed and delay time are another option. Works best with long, drawn out chords or notes and the speeds set to relatively similar values but something like 10-40% off or so.

Andy

[StephenGiles]

I'll have to ask our greyhound Dreamy!!

[GGBB]

Usually my playing is plenty dreamy - no additional effects necessary. I'm just that good. 

Seriously though, in my case it starts with lush reverb (Hardwire RV-7 on plate) and includes warmish analog delay (Strymon Brigadier) not too loud and 2 repeats (second one very faint). I often use a compressor, and find this adds some flavor to the dreaminess, but it isn't necessary as sometimes attack can be part of the dreamy sound - however it's important to not have too spiky of a sound after the attack. I rarely use modulation (even on the delay and reverb) - for me it's about broadening the "space" around and depth of your sound, not about "fattening" the notes.

[MaxPower]

Reverb. And motion. Lots of reverb and modulation. Lfos gently modulating osc pitch/pulse width, the vcf, and/or vca. Could be any number of other effects but reverb is ever present.

[amptramp]

For your question about woody amp sounds, things sound woody when there is an abundance of odd harmonics.  Woodwinds with a reed usually have a pronounced third, fifth, seventh etc. harmonic and nowhere near as much of even harmonics.  Odd harmonics can come from balanced clipping where the high side of the signal is cut the same amount as the low side of the signal.

Dreamy sound may be from a number of things:

1. Reverb gives the sensation of sound being reflected off walls where the sounds may add or subtract depending on whether the reflection is in phase or out of phase.  This is dependent on frequency.

2. A phaser may give the same sensation of sounds being added or subtracted from the original sound.  This is also dependent on frequency but is more of a shimmering sound.

3. Flanging may give an interesting sound that can be harsh but can be dreamy in itself.

4. Never underestimate the effect of fingering technique - it can make things harsh or dreamy just by changing the modulation of the sound.

There may be more, but this is a good starting point.

[jonny.reckless]

To me, "dreamy" means diffuse, as opposed to articulate. Swirling modulation, delays (often modulated delay) and the use of shimmer reverb are typical, often connected with feedback loops to further diffuse the overall tone. Slow attack on notes helps to further soften the overall sound. Diffuse sound field and slow harmonic motion characterize the overall timbre. I've used a 20 second clip of a jet plane flying overhead as an impulse response with great effect in the past.

[idy]

i once dreamed of playing through a filter with a sample and hold type random step thing. I had never listened to a pedal like this before or given it much thought, but had run across a description.  I remember thinking "That must be a FSH!" I did end up building a couple of these. They sound just like that dream.

[ElectricDruid]

i once dreamed of playing through a filter with a sample and hold type random step thing. I had never listened to a pedal like this before or given it much thought, but had run across a description.  I remember thinking "That must be a FSH!" I did end up building a couple of these. They sound just like that dream.

Mark's original question got me wondering what it would sound like to to have three or four S&H filters in parallel, ideally panned across the stereo field. Or with the stereo position also S&H modulated. Would that be dreamy? Or downright *weird*? Sometimes my dreams are just plain weird, so does that count?!

I think complex modulations that your brain can't quite get a grip on are a part of it, especially for dreamy synth sounds. With pedals it's a slightly different story, since you have a different tool set.

[Mark Hammer]

Not a filter, per se, but a bit back I made a stereo version of the Magnavibe circuit, with independent LFOs for each side/channel.  The Magnatone amps that provide "stereo" also include semi-independent vibrato, but both channels are linked to a common LFO, with each side being counterswept by that single LFO, in a manner similar to the way the two chorusing BBDs in a Dimension-C pedal are counterswept by an inverted version of the same LFO.

Having the gentle pitch modulation of the Magnavibe NOT simply moving from side to side, but the two copies moving around independently, occasionally syncing, then unsyncing, was just incredibly immersive,  Even through small crappy speakers, you just wanted to move in there and live there.

I note this in response to Tom's hypothetical multi-stereo S&H idea.  Not that "immersive" = "dream-like" all the time, but they overlap a bit, conceptually.  If you ever saw the movie Avatar, you'll likely remember the early scenes wandering through that unusual forest on Pandora, completely surrounded by stuff so different it made your attentional focus just flit around all over.  That, too, had a dream-like quality to it.  I mention it because I think we're maybe starting to get at what gives an effect a dream-like quality.  It's not the category of processing, per se.  That is, yes you can do it with filters, with reverb, with delay, with pitch wobble, etc.  What they all share in common seems to be what it does to one's attention.  Maybe that's why we describe it as "dream-like".  Dreams can have "plot", but they rarely have focused attention.  Random associations bring in unexpected content that continues to fragment attention in a way that makes one's mental focus feel like a pile of Lego or jigsaw pieces scattered on the floor.

Consider: if I play a note into a digital delay, and crank up the repeats so that it just keeps on going and going, without any audible change, that's not especially immersive or dreamy.  If the repeats change over time, however, that tends to draw us in.  Certainly what appeals about many of the more recent reverb pedals are those options that yield very different reflections over time, or make octaves emerge, and such.  There has to be change, rather than sameness, and a degree of uncertainty and unpredictability, to grab and fragment our attention.  Stereo, of course, just enhances that, because our attention now has to be divided between what's going on over here and what's going on over there.

I think we're getting somewhere. 

[Steben]

The opposite of dry signal.

[nocentelli]

Reverse reverb + massive distortion + woozy microtonal pitch drifting from a fender jaguar/jazzmaster tremelo arm

[stallik]

Yes modulation, especially of delay and reverb is something i'd describe as dreamy. When that modulation becomes too much, dissonant or too uneven to remain comfortable or easy for my mind to understand, my description would veer toward nightmare

[Fancy Lime]

I'll have to ask our greyhound Dreamy!!

Dog dreamy is easy: two screeching squirrels chasing each other round the bird feeder to the Benny Hill theme. At least that's how I interpret my dogs noises and galloping movements when she dreams.

...

I think we're getting somewhere. 

OK, now I'm intrigued. Where are we getting ant what are we going to do when we get there. I don't wanna come unprepared.


@nocntelli
Yes, good point. Gazing at ones shoes non-stop for 90 minutes in front of a wide open Marshall full stack on a stage with flashing lights in a small underground club with the worst boomy acoustics on account of being an old bunker in a decade when chain smoking was not only excepted but expected behavior for concert goers might, nay will, produce a somewhat hazy feeling between the ears. And some shoegaze bands actually managed to conserve that (to a degree) on record.

Andy