How to Make Backmasking
Backmasking is the process of reversing a piece of recorded audio. Many musicians use backmasking to hide a message in a song. Pink Floyd's "Empty Spaces," for example, contains a backmasked message from Roger Waters, while L7 used backmasking to hide the Big Mac jingle inside "Boys in Black." Other musicians have used backmasking as a production technique: the instrumental track on The Stone Roses' "Don't Stop," for example, is the backmasked instrumental track from "Waterfall." You can use Audacity, Ableton Live or Adobe Audition to backmask any audio file on your computer.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
Audacity
-
1
Launch Audacity. Click "File," then "Open." Double-click the audio file that you want to backmask.
-
2
Double-click the audio file's waveform to select it.
-
-
3
Click "Effect," then "Reverse." Audacity backmasks the audio. Click "Play" to listen to the backmasked audio.
Ableton Live
-
4
Start Ableton Live. Click one of the file folder icons at the left-hand edge of the Ableton window.
-
5
Navigate to the audio file that you want to backmask. Drag and drop the audio clip onto the track labeled "1 Audio."
-
6
Double click the imported audio clip to open its waveform view. Click the "Show/Hide Sample Box" icon, which looks like a sound wave, to open the clip's sample box, if it's not already open.
-
7
Click the "Rev." button in the sample box. Ableton reverses the audio clip. Click "Play" to hear the backmasked audio.
Audition
-
8
Start Audition. Press "Ctrl" and "O" simultaneously. Double click the audio file you want to backmask.
-
9
Press "Ctrl" and "A" simultaneously to select the entire audio file.
-
10
Open the "Effects" menu and click "Reverse" to backmask the audio. Click the "Play" button to hear the backmasking effect.
-
1
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
