Scrubbing for Sounds

When Radiohead's Kid A came out, there was a lot of speculation on various recording forums as to how they created the odd, glitchy vocal drone of Thom Yorke's voice at the beginning of "Everything In Its Right Place". As it turns out, it was created using the scrubbing function in ProTools.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, scrubbing is the ability to play audio by dragging the playhead across a file in real time. It's a bit like fast forwarding or rewinding tape with the play head engaged. It's useful mainly for finding specific portions of an audio file, but it also opens the door to some interesting sounds if you have the patience to work with it. Everything from 'record spin-down' and scratching effects, to grainy digital drones and alien soundscapes are possible. Here's how to do it in Logic.

1. Load up some audio and place it on the arrange page. Any audio will do, but obviously the source material will make a difference in the timbre of the sounds you can get out of it.

2. Although not required, it's a good idea to zoom in a bit so you can scrub smaller portions of audio at a time.

3. Press the PAUSE button on the transport at the bottom of the arrange page.

4. Using the little green triangle at the top of the playhead, slowly drag the playhead back and forth over the sound file. Note how dragging at different speeds slows down or speeds up the audio. You can set maximum scrub speed and scrub response to taste under the AUDIO PREFERENCES.

If you decide there are some interesting sound design options for you here, you'll then need to use a program like Rogue Amoeba's excellent Audio Hijack Pro to record the output for further editing and sampling. Note too that any effects assigned to the track you are scrubbing will play back when you scrub as well, but only for as long as you are holding down the mouse over the playhead . Like most unconventional sound design techniques, experimentation here is the key. Not everything will sound great, but sooner or later you are bound to come up with something useful.