For me, effects are the fun bit of mixing, the icing on the cake if you will. There are different reasons to use effects, some are for purely creative reasons and some are for helping to sit the elements of a mix together. In this article I am mainly looking at the mixdown uses for effects…

There are three main effects types at your disposal in a mix delay, modulated delay and reverberation effects:

Delays

Delays are a probably the most versatile of effects in mixing, a delay is basically an echo of the original signal that is often programmed to be in time with the tempo of the track.

Delay units are fairly simple in principle with the concept originaating from old tape-based machines that had a continuous loop of tape, listen to any old dub reggae and you will not struggle to find examples of the old tape delay units such as the Roland ‘Space Echo’ and When ‘Copy Cat’.

Anyway, once digital delay units came onto the scene the basic principals modelled upon the workings of the tape-based units. The fundamental component of a digital delay unit is the Digital Delay Line or DDL as they are more commonly referred to as. The DDL is basically a simple digital sampler, which captures the signal for a programmable amount of time before releasing it.

Delay Time

The delay time is usually controlled in milli-seconds (ms) though some units allow you to select musical time measures such as 8’ths or crotchets and quavers.. If your unit does not use musical time values you can use this simple formula to calculate the delay time…

Feedback

The feedback control routes an amount of the delayed signal back into the DDL, this results in repeated echoes. So for example if a delay was applied to the word ‘hello’ with no feedback the result would be ‘hello……hello’ If a moderate amount of feedback was introduced the result would be ‘hello……..hello…….helllo…..hello’ (each delay getting quieter progressively’

Filters

Filters again have their origin on old tape based units. When a signal is recorded to analogue tape, the captured signal loses high frequency content, (remember what happened when you recorded a cd to tape??). To emulate this effect digital effects processors include a Low-Pass Filter (LPF). In addition to this many digital delay units also include High-Pass Filters (HPF) and Band-Pass Filters(BPF)

Dry/Wet

The mix control simply sets the balance between the Dry(original) and Wet(delayed), if you are using a delay as an auxiliary effect (parallel) then the mix should be set to 100% wet, if you are using a delay in series you can set the mix control to taste.

Delays in use.

For me delays are my main tool for putting a signal in a space…(not reverb you may think??) I’m finding as time goes on I am using reverbs less and less.. Delays are clean, easily controlled and can be easily made to work more musically/rhythmically with a track than reverb.

I can’t really say which delay measure is best for specific instrument, but I do like very short delay (16ths, semiquavers) on up front sounds such as synth leads etc.. On most elements of a mix of the time using 4ths or 8ths) works well but I would encourage you to experiment here.

Filters are very useful, a HPF allow you get rid of muddy delay signals and help to focus the ear on the original signal. The LPF is of equal importance and I never have delays passing anything above 10k(this is probably less relevant in these days of diminishing vinyl, basically vinyl doesn’t like much above 10kHz). In practice I usually end up with LPF set around 3-5k to allow the source sound to cut through but it really does depend on the track your working on.

Tricks

There are few really useable tricks with delay that I like…

I love to use stereo delays and I will often have the L&R set to the same delay time and then just nudge one side, this gives the effect of the delays getting wider, I think I got this idea from an interview I once read with mix god Dave Pensado….

If you are comfortable with the use of side chain compression then I thoroughly recommend you try having your delay return to duck against the original signal. It is a very good way of getting a nice wet signal without it interfering with the original signal. I use this technique almost always on vocals, but it works on all sorts of stuff. There are certain situations where I manually ride the delay level on vocals to get the most comfortable level, though I leave this kind of thing to the end of a mix.

Have some fun..

Sometimes I like to process my delays with lots of random effects like pitch shifters, chorus, even reverbs to make them that little bit more ear catching, meaning I can sit them further back in the mix.

© Nathan Boddy 2006 unauthorised copying or duplication prohibited.

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