Thomas Hsu

IMP 101
Assignment 5 – Effects

For this assignment, I’ve recorded some guitars through the LA-610 with some light
compression applied through to the UA Apollo.

I sent the “RHYTHM GUITAR” track to a Reverb buss (through Bus 1-2). I use D-Verb to add
some space to the track and make it a little more three dimensional. I set the reverb to Medium,
Room 1 and the decay to 420 ms because I wanted the reverb to be light yet noticeable. Setting
the decay to 420 ms allowed the reverb to be apparent without becoming too muddy and ruining
the transients of the guitar. The HF cut is set at 15.05 kHz to help tone down the high frequencies
and acts like a “treble control”. I automated the reverb bus after I was satisfied with the sound as
I bussed out the track to other effects in order to balance the volume of the track. The reverb is
turned up gradually towards the pick strumming section as all of the other effect busses are
silenced.

I sent the same track to a Chorus buss (through Bus 1-2) and I used AIR Chorus. The rate was set
to 1.06 Hz and the depth was set to 2.16 ms because I found it to provide a shimmering quality
and all of the individual pitches produced by the effect was perceivable as one. Although it is
customary to set the mix to 100%, I left it at 43% and used volume automation in the aux track to
find balance. I automated the Chorus buss so that it is consistent throughout the finger picking
intro and the pre-chorus section with long-held chords because I found it to work well in
conjunction with the wah-wah effect that was inserted to the guitar track and it created an
interesting rhythmic texture. The chorus effect is turned off (through volume automation) when
the track reaches the pick strumming section because I found it to be too much in conjunction
with the reverb.
Finally, I sent the rhythm guitar track to a Delay Buss (through Bus 1-2) because it helped add
rhythm to fill in the empty spaces between the finger picks. I set the delay at 4 as it made the
most rhythmic sense – it filled in the spaces without taking up too much room. I adjusted the
feedback to 33% because it took away enough of the tail of the delay so that it did not interfere
with the following chords. Again, I mixed in the effect using volume automation on the Delay
Buss. This effect was applied in the same areas as the chorus to add texture and rhythmic
interest; it is applied at the intro and gradually increases in the pre-chorus, and is taken away
when the pick strumming comes in because it made the track too busy and muddy (rhythmically
and sonically).