“Wrong” Signal Processing Applications

Sure, you can use effects the same way as everyone else . . . but let’s not

By Craig Anderton

It’s been said there are no rules in recording, and I agree. But then there’s the corollary: Rules that do exist are made to be broken. So, let’s break some rules, and look at a few “wrong” ways to use effects.

DELAY LINES AND CHORUSES

Early reflections generator: Acoustic reflections add life to your sounds, because these reflections (called “early reflections”) are an important part of what makes reverb. When a sound source occurs in a room, its waves first hit the various surfaces and reflect off of them (the first reflections), before scattering in a zillion different directions and creating a reverb tail. So take your multitap delay, create a bunch of tight delays in the 10-30ms range, add little (if any) feedback, then mix the collection of delays subtly behind the dry sound. Multi-tap chorus effects can work, too: Set an initial delay in the 10-30ms range, then trim the feedback and modulation way down. Turn the delay levels up to where you can just hear the effect.

CLICK AND POP REMOVERS

While these are supposed to remove garbage from vinyl records, if you have some soft synths or digital processors (particularly distortion and amp simulators) that exhibit some digital spikiness, or if the sound is a bit brittle, click and pop removers can give a creamier, richer sound (Fig. 1). Don’t activate any noise reduction options, if present; all you really need is the click and pop removal section set to maximum (or close to it).

Fig. 1: Sony Sound Forge includes a tool for click and crackle removal.

TREMOLO

Auto-pan: There is life after surf music for the tremolo, assuming you can adjust its phase. Insert the tremolo effect in a track, then copy the track and tremolo (or send the track to two buses, each with a tremolo). Sync the tremolos to tempo, then flip one LFO’s phase 180° compared to the other—instant auto-pan.

But why stop there? Try different sync to tempo values for the two tremolos for some wild panning effects. And if your tremolo offers more than just triangle or sine waves, even better—do an homage to Miles Davis’ On the Corner by using square waves, or modulate with sawtooth waveforms to “snap” back and forth between channels.

One of my favorite uses for auto-pan is with percussive parts that don’t play too often, like clave. With auto-pan, the clave sort of floats around the stereo field, without the obvious “sweep” that occurs if you’re panning something sustained.

Ring modulation: If your tremolo can hit the audio range, then explore its higher frequencies if you want some growling pseudo-ring modulation effects.

FLANGER

“Thinner” for thick sounds: Turn a flanger into a comb filter by shutting off all modulation, mixing the processed and dry amounts equally, and choosing negative (out of phase) flanging. This punches deep holes in the frequency response in multiple places (also known as a “comb filter”), thus making the sound weaker and thinner. If a “thick” track (like a pad) is hogging the sonic spotlight, thrown some comb filtering on it and see if that helps.

DISTORTION

Kick drums on steroids: Use distortion (preferably a “soft” distortion) as an insert effect on kick drums, and you’ll be able to dial in a far more aggressive, punchy sound (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Adding distortion after limiting not only enhances the limiting process, but also catches any rogue transients.

With snare—which already has a very complex signal—distortion will increase the sound’s density, and brighten the high end. Don’t use too much, though.

AUTO-FILTER/WAH

Vocal enhancer: Set the auto-filter’s initial frequency in the 2-3kHz range, and key it off of your vocals with a little bit of sensitivity — just enough to kick its response up a kHz or two on volume peaks. Mix the filtered sound in subtly behind the main vocal to add both animation and articulation to the voice. This can also work really well with percussion parts like shaker, tambourine, and the like.

A new type of EQ: Wah pedal emulations are different from your typical EQ, and many people think they have more “character”—particularly if they model the type of wah that used an inductor-based design for its bandpass filter. The sound will tend to be “sharper” and “warmer,” which are qualities that work well when mixed in with a number of instruments, including voice.

OCTAVE DIVIDER

The chaos machine: Octave dividers want to see nice, polite monophonic melody or bass lines. So give ’em a challenge! In parts of a tune where you want to up the chaos factor, instead of turning up the volume or adding distortion, insert an octave divider in an aux bus and feed it lots of signals — preferably from polyphonic sources. Follow the divider with a steep lowpass filter to turn what it produces into a low rumble, and you’ll get the same kind of sound that dogs react to just before an earthquake. Fun stuff for the industrially-minded.

And thus ends our little oddyssey of wrongness. Yes, I spelled “odyssey” wrong to sneak the word “odd” in there . . . in keeping with the spirit of this article!

RESOURCES

Sony Creative Software

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Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.