MusicRadar

View in gallery

The thing about modulation effects is that they have almost no parallels in nature. In fact, the closest approximation to flanging in the real world is a low-flying jet aeroplane skimming a concrete jungle (so much so that almost every single explanation of flanging you'll ever read uses this example), and that's about as close to natural as any of these effects really come.

Consequently, they fall into the category of effects that we like to call 'special'. Why? Because, with a very few exceptions, any time you use them they will be very apparent and are nearly always meant to be noticed (there are very few reasons you might add them to impart realism and subtlety). As with any such effect, they can become tiresome very quickly, so restraint is the name of the game. We wouldn't recommend you try all of the forthcoming suggestions and techniques in one track, but don't let that put you off trying them all at some point and coming up with some of your own. With that in mind, we've put together a selection of tips to get you thinking about some creative (or useful) applications for these potentially extreme effects...

Modulation tips

1. Modulation effects will almost always take away from the sense of presence of a sound at the same time as they give it size and space, so be careful what you use them on. Used on lead elements they'll detract from energy and prominence in most mixes.

2. To counter the tendency of chorus to push sounds into the background, try applying it only to the reverb send signal - or insert it into the reverb bus itself. This gives some lush thickness to the sound, but will allow you to keep the main sound upfront.

3. If your phaser or flanger enables you to sync its modulation action to track tempo, be sure to do so, as you can set up some nice cyclic patterns (over eight bars, for example), which make the effect much more useable and easy to manage when mixing your track.

4. Try playing with the modulation rate on your phaser. Slow speeds create nice long sweeps, while much faster speeds can have a great old-school rotary cabinet effect. You can even alternate between the two, or have one panned left and the other right.

5. If you're after a classic ensemble effect, take a leaf from the synth programmer's book and use a pitchshifter in detune mode to generate another version of your signal, slightly detuned from the original. This avoids the distinctive cycling of the LFO.

6. The sound of the electric guitar is, quite simply, the sound of the effects being used on it, and some of the most enduringly popular are chorus, phasing and flanging. So if you're ever working with an electric guitar riff, you'd be crazy not to at least try one or all of them.

7. Modulation effects all rely on a very critical wet/dry balance, so it's generally more convenient to use them as insert effects rather than as part of a send and receive effects loop. They should also usually come near the end of an effects chain (ideally, penultimate).

Around the web: