Category: Music

I finished reading PEDAL CRUSH, the third of the “Bjooks” series…

Each of these is a big, heavy, beautifully produced book that’s somewhere between a coffee table book for admiring the art and design that goes into the equipment, and lots and lots of content. They skew more toward the latter, though.

PUSH TURN MOVE is a discussion and showcase of the interfaces of electronic musical instruments, both hardware and software. What controls should be provided, how they should be laid out and presented, and how the instrument or effect should look, feel and behave. It’s a big important subject with many facets. For me it was mostly a matter of curiosity and something of an art object, though I think it should be required reading for designers.

PATCH & TWEAK is all about modular synthesizers: the history, the different formats, the basics, types of modules, patching techniques, and interviews with instrument makers and musicians. For me, it was more of a review but still a fun read in places.

PEDAL CRUSH is about guitar FX pedals/stompboxes. Different categories of pedals, their histories and variations, typical and non-typical uses, why the order of placement matters, technical and creative considerations about amplification, and look and feel. Lots of interviews with designers and musicians again. Not being a guitarist, just an occasional user of a pedal or two with synths, I found it very informative and fascinating, but I was less interested in the interviews with guitarists.

As a result of reading it and doing some online research, I have a new list of techniques I want to try with my current hardware and software — and a short list of pedals that I would like to try myself.

Many pedals are convenience devices for guitarists to quickly dial in their sound and concentrate on performance — a synthesist can replicate them with little difficulty. But in many other cases, there’s something more complex going on, or a specific character unique to the pedal, vital to its sound, which ranges from difficult to monumentally difficult to imitate.

My list right now, in rough priority order:

• Red Panda Particle: a granular delay with a generally grittier and glitchier character than Clouds. I don’t expect I could imitate most of its capabilities. The older V1 is cheaper, but I’m convinced V2 is worth the difference with its nicer controls, enhanced sound and extra features.
• Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dweller: a phaser with a delay between each stage — a simple addition which greatly expands the effect’s repertoire into some neat places I’ve never heard before. I tried imitating it in Bitwig Grid to no avail.
• Digitech Freqout: I have no clue how it actually works. It creates “natural feedback at any volume” with particular harmonics emphasized or isolated. It may not be as magical on synths as guitars, but it’s cheap enough on the secondhand market that I feel like I should give it a try.
• Walrus Audio Slö: a beautiful ambient delay, heavily modulated and dark and dreamy, which can do extended freezes and gradual volume swells. I think I’d be smart to wait for the E520 first and see what I think of its shimmer verb and other potential ambience though.
• Montreal Assembly Meet Maude: a BBD delay with random modulation and a compressor. It has a lot of mojo and is widely loved… but I am particularly well covered in the delay department. Again, I think waiting to see how things fall out with the E520 is wise.

There are plenty of other interesting delays out there I could go for. Adineko, Black Fountain, Rose… but I can’t collect all the cool stuff, because that game is expensive and has no winning condition.

I decided I’m absolutely sure about selling my Dark World pedal, and was tempted by the cheaper Paradox Arquitecto Fictional Space Reverbator. There was one discounted on Reverb in custom colors:

It’s a dual modulated echo that’s pretty much retro, swampy, dubby and ambient. It seems right up my alley. I couldn’t quite imitate the demos with my current hardware and software, though I did reach some other fun places while trying.

The main doubt I have about it is the lack of knobs to control time or modulation rate, but I’ll see how it goes. That was one of my dislikes with the Pittsburgh Verbtronic — but that module also lacked some of the other flexibility this pedal has, and it was annoyingly sensitive to input and feedback levels. If it turns out to be too much of a limitation for me, it’ll be no problem to resell it.

---

I realized I have 256GB of storage on my phone, which is more than twice the size of my MP3 library — and MediaMonkey has an Android version that syncs to the Windows version. It’s supposed to sync over WiFi, but I haven’t had any luck with that yet — could be the VPN on my phone though. Anyway, this gives me more flexibility in music listening anywhere without relying on streaming, and might shortcut a couple of steps when I buy music on Bandcamp. I’ll still keep my GPM subscription though; it can be good for music discovery or casual playlists.

I am on the hunt for favorite compressor plugins, particularly for mastering purposes. I really would like to have one standard choice I can always be confident in, instead of hot-swapping several different plugins and tweaking them while tiring my ears with minute differences. I might have found it.

The fantastically named Magic Death Eye is a boutique, hand-built, retro-inspired modern vari-mu tube compressor, which happens to have an officially licensed version. And it’s excellent. (At least the plugin is, and I assume the hardware…)

I tested it against my recordings for the next album, and found it always beat something like 9 or 10 other compression plugins (some of which have multiple models). With some material, the difference between it and the best options is almost subliminal, but it’s there. In other cases, it’s a pretty clear winner. And the controls on MDE are nice and simple, and I feel like it just can’t sound bad even if you push it relatively hard. As some others have described, it’s “respectful” of the source material.

I’m pretty confident I could just use MDE for mastering 100% of the time with no worries. That leaves Supercharger GT, 6050 and a few Presswerk presets to cover more aggressive and “high mojo” compressor and saturator needs and limiting. Fair enough!

I have written a lot in this blog about music hardware, but not nearly as much about the software that is also a vital part of my sound. Maybe it’s time. I won’t go into Bitwig’s built-in effects, nor the occasional synth plugins, but here are the third-party effects plugins that I use on a relatively regular basis.

---

Delay: super important to me, adding space, movement, character, rhythm and of course just plain echoes.

• Valhalla Delay: for me this is the top of the heap for sure. A perfect combination of simplicity, flexibility and character, and it keeps getting better (there are three new variations in the current beta and they’re all fantastic).
• Arturia 3 Delays You’ll Actually Use: some nice character here, particularly when overdriven and using their parametric EQ. Second fiddle to Valhalla, but it’s nice to have alternatives.
• u-he Colour Copy: largely superseded by Valhalla, but for liquid, chorusy modulated delays it has a special lushness.
• Audio Damage Ratshack Reverb: while I can probably get a similar sound with Valhalla, it’s just right there on tap. And the distortion it offers is pretty special.
• Sonic Charge Permut8: when what I want isn’t a delay so much as a glitchy repeating weirdness thing, this is where I go.

Reverb: for making space and distance, smoothing out textures, as a medium to apply other effects in a feedback loop, or sometimes extending the duration of tails that I faded too quickly.

• Valhalla Plate, Room and Vintage Verb: All excellent, though Plate is my favorite.
• u-he Twangström: a fine emulation of spring reverb, when that kind of character is called for. I sold my real spring reverb because of this plugin.
• AudioThing Fog Convolver: for applying real acoustic spaces, including some weird ones. I usually keep this one subtle, but I’ve found building a feedback loop around it can be fun too.

EQ: the scissors to generally shape my sounds and the scalpel to cut out problem areas. My music doesn’t tend to have the same kind of mixing applications for EQ that more mainstream music does, but this is still pretty vital.

• Toneboosters Equalizer 4: My go-to general purpose and corrective EQ, whether full stereo or mid-side. It’s frankly unbeatable.
• u-he Uhbiq-Q: I keep finding myself turning to this one for character, and for “blind” EQing where I want to trust my ears without graphical assistance.
• Honorable mention: I just picked up McDSP 6050 and am learning it; among other things, it has 12 different analog-style EQ models with relatively subtle differences between them. There might be a favorite character EQ lurking here too.

Limiters: for keeping peak levels in check and feedback loops from exploding, and increasing loudness as the last stage in mastering.

• Toneboosters Barricade 4: combines a saturator, compressor and limiter, but I use it primarily for limiting — its saturation can often get ugly and I find it very situational. I could probably just use Bitwig’s peak limiter instead, honestly.
• u-he Presswerk: it’s a big fancy compressor plugin, but lately I’ve been using it almost exclusively for one of its limiter presets that can be pushed hard and does some nice soft clipping. The exact peak can’t be set, so I often use it as my first limiting stage before Barricade.

Compressors: I’m still trying to work out favorites here; this is an area I have long neglected in favor of the Graphic Dynamics tool in Sound Forge Pro.

• NI Solid Bus Comp: I feel like it works well for subtle compression, and is fairly easy to dial in.
• Klanghelm MJUC: a vari-mu tube compressor emulation, with a little more flavor than Solid Bus Comp but not over the top. For mastering purposes I’ve frequently found myself trying both of them and choosing my favorite (usually but not always MJUC).
• NI Supercharger GT: To me this is best for more aggressive saturation and compression, but works nicely when mixed in parallel at a low level.
• Honorable mentions: Graphic Dynamics still does have its uses. I used to try a couple of favorite Presswerk presets and A-B test them to see if they improved the overall clarity — and I should probably try its simplified modes against other options. McDSP 6050 has several analog style compressor models to choose from and seems promising. But I may find myself with FabFilter Pro-C2, since it’s very visual like my favorite EQ.

Tape: recording to tape is like acid-washing jeans — it adds character and/or grunge and it’s a good thing. In a plugin, you can control the variables with less hassle, expense and time than real tape.

• Wavesfactory Cassette: this is a relative newcomer. It’s great for a touch of saturation and subtle compression, or heavy blown-out saturation, or extreme “4th generation copy using a warbly microcasette recorder and worn-out tape” effects.
• XLNAudio RC-20 Retro Color: this one does vinyl, sampling and tape, with particularly tasty distortion and EQ sections. It’s really flexible and can do very non-tapelike things, and again works well both for gentle and extreme use.
• Denise Bad Tape: a very up-front effect, with heavy and weird saturation. Sometimes useful though!

Downsampling: for retro digital sound, or just another flavor of dirt.

• d16 Decimort: a pretty flexible sample rate and bit reducer with some anti-aliasing options, jitter and EQ.
• Plogue Chipcrusher: realistic bad old digital encoding methods, with added noise and filter/speaker/cabinet impulses to sound like it’s coming from an old PC or game console or handheld toy.

Utilities:

• haSound MSLR: mid/side left/right encoding and decoding. I use it pretty frequently with two different signals from the modular to create a wide stereo field. Needs some caution to prevent phase alignment issues though, and I may switch back to Voxengo MSED for its built-in scope.
• Izotope RX6 DeClick: doesn’t work on 100% of clicks and pops, but when it does, it “just works” with no hassle or side effects.
• Klevgrand Brusfri: a real-time noise reduction plugin that can listen to an example of your noise floor, and then dampen it pretty effectively.
• Melda MAGC: automatically compensates for volume differences caused by an effect, which can help remove the illusion that louder=better, or confirm that a compressor’s make-up gain is set wisely.

Metering/Visualization:

• Voxengo SPAN: an excellent spectrum analyzer with a phase correlation meter.
• Voxengo Correlometer: a multiband phase correlation meter that can show which frequency ranges have problems. It makes fixing those areas with mid/side EQ a bit easier.
• Youlean Loudness Meter: shows real-time true peak and LUFS readings, and can synchronize its display with the host’s transport time.
• Honorable mention: the Statistics tool in Sound Forge Pro. Much faster than Youlean, but it measures what has already been done to the file.

Weird stuff:

• Unfiltered Audio SpecOps: various kinds of spectral filtering, mangling, and freezing. There’s a lot going on here. It could be dethroned by the SynthTech E520 when that ships, though.
• Melda MTransformer: I find this pretty interesting mostly for spectral compression or formant shifting. Again, the E520 might bury it.
• Melda MCharacter: it attempts to synthesize extra harmonics, and/or spectrally filter the input, but it’s kind of touchy and situational.

Have any favorite effects plugins, or recommendations especially for dynamics? Let me know!