Audio effects in music:
shape your sound

Contents

• The most used sound effects and their effect
• Delay effect: Magic dynamics
• Hall effect: spatial sound and tension
• Chorus effect: Rich sound and doubled tones
• Guitar effects: Overdrive and tremolo
• Timestretching: speed up or slow down music
• Audio effects in MUSIC MAKER

Audio effects are modules for sound processing, they assume an existing audio signal and modify it. Effects can completely transform a recording, for example by bending a clean guitar sound into a distorted rock guitar. However, audio effects are also used to add the finishing touches to an instrument recording or to perfect the sound in the mix. Then they work rather inconspicuously in the background, for example by enhancing the sound image with some surround sound. Finally, some sound effects can also be used for audio editing, for example, when combining recordings in a mix that are not at the same tempo or pitch.

Accordingly, there are three ways in which effects are used: as creative effects, as optimizing or refining effects, or as editing tools.

These are the most commonly used effects:

• Delay (or echo)
• Reverb
• Chorus
• Guitar effects like overdrive or tremolo
• Time stretching

Below you'll learn what these audio effects sound like and what effect they have in music.

Everyone knows the delay effect: with a normal echo, the audio signal is repeated several times and at equal intervals, becoming quieter and quieter until it finally fades away. But this is only the most natural of many possibilities. With some delay effects, the signal is altered during repetition, for example alienated with more and more reverb, filtered or tossed back and forth in the stereo image like a ping-pong ball (stereo delay).

Dreamlike, futuristic or psychedelic atmospheres are created. For some music genres, such as dub reggae, such delay effects are almost style-defining, but they are used in all music genres.

Reverb is also counted among the delay effects. Delay simply means delay, and with reverb, too, the sound is reproduced with a delay, but in the process it is blurred, so to speak. Both effects are generated by the same effect module: a "Delay Reverb", which can generate different types of delay or even reverb, depending on the setting.

Delay and reverb are closely related, both can create a magical atmosphere. Unlike delay, however, reverb can also be used to simulate a natural room environment. This modulates the original dry sound recorded in close proximity to make it sound as if it were in a specific room - for example, a small chamber, a larger room, a church, or a cathedral.

This is less about magic and more about simulating a specific space. The reverberation algorithms are created from carefully measured real spaces. The sound behavior of these rooms is recorded and analyzed, and this is then used to create algorithms for the so-called reverb tails, which are used to perfectly imitate the room conditions, including expansion, ceiling height or the nature of the floor.

Reverb can also be used to create spatiality in other ways. Depending on the effect component, the impression of greater proximity or distance to the sound source is created. Imagine what it sounds like when you are standing way in the back of a church and someone is speaking in the front - you will hear a lot of reverb and have trouble understanding the words. The higher the reverb content in the overall sound, the more distant the sound source appears.

Reverb is a universal sound effect for enhancing recordings. Reverb is mixed into virtually every recording afterwards. In music, the reverb effect is used equally in all genres. But it can also often be heard as a striking creative effect, in extreme forms in the ambient and dub genres, but also in many electro pieces and more generally in remixes.

The Chorus effect produces a wide, rich sound. It belongs to the so-called modulation effects, where the original sound is doubled and slightly shifted.

Chorus sounds as if another, similar, but not quite the same tone is resonating and overlapping the original sound - just like a choir. The trick is that the signal is not simply played back again with an extremely short delay, as is the case with the delay, but the sound is also detuned a bit in the process, so that both signals - original and copy - are perceived as two separate voices. Because even the best choristers are never exactly on the same note; there are always minimal differences that make up the experience of polyphony.

Chorus is especially a popular guitar effect and is also often used for bass sequences. The sound with Chorus sounds richer, firmer and full of harmonic oscillations - reminiscent of the typical sound of the 80s, when chorus effects were particularly popular. Guitarists and bassists know the chorus mainly as a small footswitch in a colorful plastic case that lies on the floor in front of the guitarist next to the wah-wah, phaser or flanger and is switched on when needed in a live performance.

Guitar effects are generally among the most popular creative effects. Besides chorus, there are also many other typical guitar effects. The most important guitar effect and almost ubiquitous in rock music is the distortion, also called overdrive or distortion. This effect makes the sound wide and rough. A simple harmony of two strings can create a massive rock riff, as in the famous opening riff of "Smoke on the Water", a rock classic from the 70s by the band Deep Purple. If you play this riff on an acoustic guitar, you might wonder how two thin notes can become such a fat sound just by distortion.

The tremolo effect is also one of the guitar effects. Literally translated from Italian, tremolo means "to tremble" or "to flicker". The audio signal seems to oscillate or fluctuate in volume depending on the speed. Unlike the vibrato effect, the pitch remains unchanged. Tremolo is simply a modulation of the volume. The tremolo lever, which can be used to temporarily tension and release the strings on many electric guitars, does not actually produce a tremolo at all, but rather a vibrato that modulates the pitch.

Finally, we introduce an effect that is rarely used for creative effects, but is all the more significant for audio editing. Timestretching changes the playback speed of the audio material. This allows you to speed up or slow down music without changing the pitch. However, a little tact is required. If the speed is changed too much, this can create annoying noise. Music tracks can usually be slowed down or sped up by 15 to 20 percent without causing artifacts.

Previously, the change of the playback speed was always directly coupled to the change of the pitch. In analog times, recordings were stored on a tape, and if you played the tape faster, the recording was sped up and the pitch was raised at the same time (Mickey Mouse effect). Conversely, the pitch decreased when the tape was played back more slowly. Digital editing then made it possible to separate the two aspects. Today, for example, tempo and pitch can be edited independently of each other, using tmestretching or pitchshifting. And if you want to change both in dependence on each other, as before, select the effect "Resampling".

The free program version is not a limited demo, but a full-fledged program with all the basic functions and effect selection you need for music editing and music production. Included in the free version are:

• Echo (delay)
• Reverb
• Distortion
• Vandal SE, a guitar amp with integrated distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay and reverb
• 10-band equalizer for sound settings
• Compressor for more pressure and loudness

Many other sound effects can be purchased in the program's internal store for little money and then used directly in MUSIC MAKER. For example:

• Guitar effects like chorus, flanger, phaser or vintage distortion
• Editing effects such as time-stretching, pitch-shifting, and resampling or stereo FX
• Professional effect modules such as delay, reverb, equalizer and compressors in a wide variety of designs, tremolo, gater, vocal tune, bitcrusher, filter, vocoder, tape machine and much more.