The guitarist was working on his guitar, which makes a beautiful haunting ghost of a guitar sound, and it was going on in one room while the bass chords were going on in another, and I heard them in stereo working together.

Does "I heard them in stereo working together" mean that I heard them (guitarist, bassist) playing together at the same time in two different rooms?

If you're in a room with a bassist and a guitarist who are playing acoustically, what you hear is sterophonic, or natural.  Your two ears hear two slightly different versions.

If you repeat this with the bassist in the next room, you have the same thing.

If the two instruments are electrically amplified, and fed to two separate speakers, you have stereo.   If they're both fed into the same speaker, you have mono, or monaural (not stereo).

I don't know what he means by "bass chords."  Double stops are rare on the bass.  Of course, the bass supports the harmony, and the chords are implied by a good bass line.

If you were in a studio and heard both at the same time, I would say "in concert", not "in stereo".

"In stereo" also implies that you heard with both ears, so if you closed your eyes, your brain could figure out where they were in relation to each other.

It is almost never simple!

Cheers,

A-s

Avangi

“

 

In my honest opinion, the reason he brought "stereo" into the picture is that the experience reminded him in a poetic way of how in modern recording, tracks may be recorded separately and then put together to produce a stereo effect.  The stereo effect in this case was unintentional.

”

I think you're right here. Thanks.

optilang

“ My understanding of stereo is a sound signal that has been separated into two signals. It is not a question of how many tracks have been mixed into each signal. Mono has only one signal, irrespective of the number of tracks recorded.  I agree almost 100%.  You can mix an infinite number of tracks into one signal, which would then be on one track.  (Why would you want the same signal on multiple tracks?)  What you now have is monaural, regardless of how many speakers you feed with it.

It's impossible to split a single track/signal into two track/signals, unless you have access to the original multiple tracks and remix the whole thing.  The only thing you might do is to slightly delay the second track, creating the illusion that one ear is hearing the music from a greater distance.

You could do your original mixing to a dozen or more tracks, as in the movie Surround Sound technique, sending them all to different speakers.  However, you only have two ears, so your brain will interpret the result in the same way it would interpret two tracks/signals.  You could achieve the same effect with the panning technique you describe.

As for 'bass chords' - any bass player will know that it is possible to play chords on a bass guitar.  I didn't mean to imply that it's impossible.  I said double stops are rare on the bass.  This is especially true in popular music.  You might find it in a jazz solo on a stand-up bass.  To stop more than two strings in the lower register produces nothing but mud.  It's not unusual to hear a whole concert in which the bass player never plays more than one note at a time. ”