What I want you to focus on is the green blocks in the center and the blue up and down automation. What you are looking at is a detractive stutter. It is very simple.
I created my stutter by first cutting and pasting in a section of audio from the left of the stutter. The top row of green is panned left. The bottom row is panned right. As it enters the stutter I remove every other 32nd note section. I highlight every other section then cut it out of the song entirely. Notice also the precision of the blue automation. What is going on aurally is that the listener is hearing the left and the right guitars in their ears. As the song nears the stutter I move it from a hard pan to a center pan so that both guitars merge into a center panned spot when they hit the stutter. I experimented with alternate panning of the stutter and found that when it was staggered in alternate fashion, meaning the left ear would jump to the right ear at the same time the right ear jumped to the left ear, then you could not hear the panning effect. So then I went back and changed all the automation so that the sounds come to a central focal point and then together they move to the left and then the right in exact increments.
To set up your panning, first set your line to direct center C and then add your breakpoints on the line, being as precise as possible. Use the zoom in function. Then go back and add another breakpoint and move that one to the left or the right and to the exact increment where it needs to be.
It is a subtle effect when run through speakers. In headphones though, the effect sparkles with magic! You hear the left and right channels merge and then begin slowly bouncing back and forth. The sound comes from your left and right side and impinges upon the center point. You can't see the automation for the volume above but as the stutter continues through time I lower the volume. The effect is like walking into a cave and hearing the sound field widen and slowly dissipate into the background, but allowing the echo to reveal the "shape" of the cave, which in this example is an expanding room. Directly after the stutter the channels are once again panned mostly hard left and hard right. This gives your mix some really great stereo separation and a wide panorama of sound.
Also notice, that directly underneath the stutter is something playing continual 32nd notes, with no detractive removal of sound. This is the sound of a Cello playing a series of single notes that also reduce in volume over time, and play off of the stutter. When EVERYTHING in the music stutters it sounds like a malfunctioning computer. But with other sounds in the mix that do not stutter your ear differentiates and you realize that it's just a cool effect in sound, in this example coming from the audio track of doubled guitar lines.
This stutter effect can also work in reverse, going from a wide pyramidal base and progressing over time to a single point to simulate walking from a wide room to a small doorway or passage. Also experiment with having the sound begin from the center point and expand outward. You can also add in automated reverb to enhance the effect. And that's it! Hope you give it a try and find some use for it in your own music!
Download the song below to hear the stutter trick and click on the song note icon for more information on the song.
Ken D. Webber / Plague of Smiles
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 Displacement IS Gravity by
Ken D. Webber is
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All art, music, design, writing, animation, works on film, and merchandise copyright 2010 by Ken D. Webber; All Rights Reserved. TRUTH ™ and MAAT ™ are the trademark names of my guitar design series and my pyramidal amplifier series.
Original astronaut photo by Stacy Braswell,
modified by Ken D. Webber
