Effects Cookbook

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Introduction
Effects like EQ tend to be used for 2 broad reasons. Correctively or Creatively. But before we look
at the various effect types, let’s see how to route them into a mixer, either hardware or software.

Effect Routing Basics

I'm going to use Reason to illustrate this as it has a really cool way of flipping the virtual rack
around so we can see the connections in the back.

I have a drum machine in my rack with a kick, snare and hi hat playing and they're coming into the
first three channels of my mixer. See how I can individually adjust the volume of each drum sound,
it's EQ and pan. But let's swing the rack around.

You can see that each drum sound is directly connected to it's own channel, but let's change that.
I'm going to add some spices in the form of a reverb and a delay. Now let's disconnect the snare
drum for the second channel and plug it into the reverb, then I'll plug the output of the reverb into
channel 2. Now we have a lot of reverb on the snare. Can you follow the signal flow? The out of
the snare drum sound goes into the reverb and the output of the reverb goes into the mixer.

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We've INSERTED the reverb into the signal path and if we swing the rack around, we can see the
signal going into the reverb and the snare volume can be adjusted on channel 2 just like before. If
I kill channel 2, then the snare and it's effect get killed immediately. Notice down here on the
reverb we have a mix knob. This adjusts the blend between the dry snare and a fully drenched
snare.

Let's do the same for the kick drum. I'll swing the rack around, we'll disconnect the kick and take
that output and place it into the delay input, then the output of the delay goes INTO the channel.

See the signal flow? I'll flip the rack around and we have delay on our kick. I can adjust the level
of the delay effect down here just like before. So that's how to add an effect in the real world. You
might not have the cool graphics like this in a Tascam, Boss or Zoom multitrack, but when you
select an INSERT effect, this is essentially what you're doing. You are inserting or interrupting the
signal flow from the sound source to the mixer channel and placing something in between.

So let's flip the rack around and for argument's sake, all we have is 2 effects. Imagine that we
have a whole band playing with drum sounds, bass, guitars, keys and vocals. How would we add
any more effects if we've used them up already? Anybody? Yep, using an effects loop.

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Let's look at this mixer and can you see that there are some knobs called aux or auxiliary sends.
These knobs send off a variable amount of signal off of all these channels out of a single common
jack out of the back of the mixer. If we could connect that out of this aux send into an effect, then
we could SEND variable amounts of each channel out to that effect.

Let's follow the routing. I'm going to disconnect the effects that we just used and we'll connect the
drums back to their channels. I'll also connect some congas that I have programmed. So now we
have kick, snare, hat and 3 congas playing.

Now...I'm going to take the aux 1 send out of the mixer and place it into the reverb effect and then
take the out of the reverb and place it back into the aux 1 return. You can see that the signal
routing is kind of a loop. It goes out here, through the reverb and loops back into the mixer.
OK...big deal. What's really happening here? Let's flip the rack back around again. Now the little
aux 1 knobs right across the mixer can send variable amounts of each channel out to the reverb
via aux 1 out and then the reverb returns back via this common knob.

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So let's hear it. I can add a little verb to the kick...maybe a little more on the snare. Maybe a ton
on the hi hats. Or totally switch it around. You can see that we have no limit to how many
channels can get effected. They ALL have aux sends that can send variable amounts of each
channel independently. In fact on this mixer we have 4 independent aux sends. Let's add delay to
the second aux send.

So around to the back and let's connect the aux 2 send out into the delay in. Let's flip it around
again and add some delay. But do you hear any? You can see that the signal is getting to the
delay, why can't we hear anything? Yep, we didn't make an effect LOOP. You can see that the
signal path is half completed. We have a connection going FROM the aux send into the delay, but
the effected signal has not completed the loop and come back into the mixer. Complete that
connection and we're good to go.

So let's review what we've learned here. There are basically 2 ways to connect an effect. Either in
line with a sound source by inserting it directly in the path of a single channel....or you can share an
effect across a bunch of channels by using an effects loop. If you use an effects loop then all the
channels share the SAME effect...if you changed this reverb to a different type of reverb that it
would change across all the channels that went through it, right? Also note that a lot of mixers
have a master aux send which could adjust the overall level going into the reverb and also a
master return that can kill the reverb coming back in at any time.

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Effects Types
Dynamic Effects (Comps Limiters/Gates)
Let's start with the dynamic group of effects and that would be the Compressors, Limiters and
Gates.

We looked at compression briefly before lunch and we said that the compressor job was to squash
down the dynamic peaks of a signal. If you have the big guy in the picture, squash him down so
that we can zoom in and get a better average level that can cut through a mix. It can also prevent
peaks distorting your signal.

I've included some compression recipes and examples in your book and disc but I'll quickly go
through the parameters that are on your average compressor. The big three are threshold, ratio
and makeup gain. The threshold sets the bar at which all signal ABOVE it is squashed down by a
certain RATIO. A 2 to 1 ratio would half the signal above the threshold. Let's imagine our ratio is 4
to 1. Then any signal above the threshold will be compress to a quarter of it's original size. If you
pump 4db in, only 1 db will come out. Once the peaks have been tamed, then we can makeup for
that reduction by amping up the entire signal...that's the makeup gain. Using our photo analogy,
the compression ratio made the tall person squash down and then the makeup gain was zooming
in so we could see everyone. Check o9ut the difference between the original and the compressed
version. Much hotter.

Let's look at a compression example on an instrument that has a wide dynamic range.

So here are the typical controls on your average compressor. The Threshold is where the
compressor kicks in. Any signal below the threshold is not effected.

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We then have the ratio which is how much compression. 2:1 or 4:1. Note that this effects only the
material that lives above the threshold.

Then we have the makeup gain where we can amp up the resulting signal confident that there
won't be any big peaks that distort.

There are typically 2 more controls on a compressor and they are attack and release. Attack
define how quickly the compressor reacts once the threshold has been passed. Fast attacks
clamp down on the signal immediately, slower attacks let the initial transient slip through before the
signal is compressed. Well why might you want a slower attack on your compressor? Sometimes
the first few milliseconds of a sound can really define it and you may not want to compress it. Take
toms for example. The sound of a tom it really 2 sounds. The initial stick sound of the stick hitting
the head....then the tone of the drum as it resonates. The T and the boom. If you set the attack to
be really short, then the stick sound will get compressed. If you slow down the attack a little, the
initial stick sound will start to come through better and the compressor will take care of the
boominess and clamp that down.

The release is how long the compressor holds on to the sound before it kind of let's it go. These
are really fine details to go into particularly when compression if new to you. For most applications
just set the attack and release to about half way and even press the auto setting if there's a button.

Now limiting is really just a compressor that has an infinity to 1 ratio. Once the signal gets to a
certain threshold, it just hangs onto to it and doesn't allow the signal to get any bigger than that.
It's like the ultimate bouncer at the door. It doesn't let anything get past it above a certain
threshold. Some people even call then brick wall limiters. A limiter is good for a number of
applications. One use that I use it for all the time is for in ear monitors. When a musician on stage

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places an in ear monitor just millimeters from their eardrums, you REALLY want to be sure that the
volume doesn't take off with feedback or anything. Place a limiter in line with the monitors and it's
a great safety barrier.

Now gates are kind of the opposite. A noise gate will take a signal and allow you to drop down a
threshold and it will just cut any signal below that right out. It's kind of like an automated mute
button. Really great for noisy guitar amps.

Let's take a recording like this. It was taken in a really noisy environment and you can hear the
background hiss. But a gate can be set to only let through signal that is above a certain threshold.
That way it kind of filters out the junk. The junk is still there above the threshold, it's just masked by
the loud material.

Don't lean on this effect as an excuse to be lazy with setting your levels or isolating your
recordings. It can help, but it's not a magic bullet. Imagine if your vocal quiets down to a whisper
and it's below this threshold. It's gonna get cut out. Having said that, a noise gate is great for
applications where a signal is just inherently noisy like a guitar amp.

Now in all three of these effects, which method of routing would I use? Insert or Loop?

Yep…Insert, because this is effecting the entire signal, we'd INSERT these effects in line with our
signal.

EQs/Filters/De-Essers
EQs are an effect that we've all used in our daily life. We mess with the bass and treble of our
guitar amps, stereos, car radios...and their function is to either boost up, or pull down certain bands
of the frequency spectrum.

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Let's take the most basic EQ we have...a typical bass and treble control. It the 12 o’clock position
we are doing nothing to the signal. Turn the treble dial to the right and we are boosting the high
end. To the left, we are cutting the high end. Boosting the low end...or cutting the low end. These
types of EQs are the most basic and that can be used to highlight parts of your mix. If your bass
track is too boomy, then you'd go over to your bass track and pull out a little low end. If your vocal
is too dull, then go over that that channel and add a little top end.

Having said that, I would always use EQ sparingly. If you need to add a ton of top end to have
your vocal cut through, then the vocal was probably not recorded well. Maybe the talent was too
close to a cardioid mic and the proximity effect was coloring the signal. Maybe you need to pull out
some of the other parts of your mix that are in that neighborhood. If you're using more that 6 db of
boost, I would really take a step back and ask myself what it the problem with the track and or the
blend of other instruments.

So let's look at several of the main EQ types and a great way to do that visually is to see a quite
comprehensive one that's inside Reason or Record.

The first one we've seen is a basic shelving EQ. It takes the signal above or below a certain
frequency point and boosts or cuts it from that point on out. So for instance the standard bass and
treble controls on a mixer like this will most likely bet set to 100hz and 10 kHz. That means that
adding bass with boost all the frequencies from 100hz and on down. The treble will boost or cut all
frequencies from 10khz and above. The types of controls you have are where the shelf frequency
will be, how much you want to boost or cut it by and how steep the curve will be.

The shelving EQs work for a certain point down or up. In the middle, we have more of a bell curve.
Which we can slide up and down the frequency spectrum. Listen to the differences as we boost
through certain frequencies. We can also adjust the width of the bell. From a very wide general
EQ down to a tiny notch that could be used to pull out just a tiny sliver of frequencies.

You could imagine if you had a 60hz hum coming through a guitar amp from a bad power supply or
whatever. Apply an EQ with a really narrow width right at 60 Hz and you could suck out those
frequencies without effecting too much else.

By the way, some EQs will have high pass filters like this one which will pull out all frequencies
below 80 Hz and they are typically pretty steep.

Take not that each channel on your mixer will quite often have the same types of EQ controls.
They won't have the fancy graphics...but they operate in the same way. See we have the lows, lo
mids, hi mids and highs just like down here.

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I have some EQ recipes in the workbook with examples that you can practice on. There are
definitely certain frequency ranges that you should be familiar with and please take note of the
tonal character of the material you're dealing with. For instance boosting 10Khz on a kick drum
track is probably not the wisest thing to do as the kick drum does not live up there. Conversely,
boosting 100 Hz on a guitar track is just going to get in the way of the instruments that do live down
there. Kick drum and bass guitar. I'm really careful to carve out a lot of stuff down there as that's
where the oomph instruments are and where you need a lot of power to move the speakers. The
stuff that thumps you in the chest. I want to get everything out of the way so that those important
instruments have space to use all the energy they need.

Anyway, we'll talk about EQ in the mixing session next hour, this is just a good place to start.

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Now, a De-Esser is a cross between a compressor and an EQ. Anybody want to take a stab at
why I chose this graphic? Yep...a De Esser squashes certain frequencies.

In other words it is a frequency specific compressor.

Have you notices that some sounds that we produce with our voices are kind or harsh? The
sibilants such as S's and T's that work by rushing air over our palette. Check out our alphabet.
(say the alphabet highlighting the sibilants)

Noting how harsh these sounds can be, it sure would be a cool idea to have a compressor just
zero in on these particular frequencies which depending on the individual can be from about 4K to
10K. So a De-Esser just compresses a small sliver of frequencies and your job would be to slide
around those frequencies until you hear the sibilants start to tame down. OK...onto the salt and
pepper kinds of effects and that is delay and reverb.

Delays
Delay is a time based effect that just holds a signal for a certain amount of time and then plays it.
Or we just call it echo! We all know what echo is, right? In nature it happens because it takes time
for sound to travel (about a foot a millisecond) so if you are 250 feet from a big wall, the sound of
your voice will travel 250 feet there and 250 feet back for a total of 500 feet which takes about 500
milliseconds or about half a second. Now that's a long echo. If the distance is shorter then the
echo will be shorter...and if it bounces off multiple walls, then we could have multiple echoes.

In terms of using delay in a musical sense we use it for basically three different applications.
Traditional Echo, a Thickening Slap...or to Widen a sound.

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Let's check out some examples...

The most obvious one is to give an echo to a sound and typically you want to have this fall on a
beat... in other words you want the echoes to be synchronized to the BPM of your song. Listen to
this example.

I placed the BPM calculator in your workbook to work out exactly how many milliseconds you need
to have your delays set so that they'll fall exactly with the BPM of your song. In certain software
recording solutions you can actually set up your delays to the musical measures like 1/4 notes or
1/8 notes or whatever.

Delay Calculator
60/BPM x 1,000 = Milliseconds
(for ¼ note delays)
Example…
How many milliseconds is a ¼ note delay at 120BPM?

60/120 = .5 x 1,000 = 5000 milliseconds or a half second. An 1/8th note delay would be half that or
250 milliseconds.

So the main parameter in a delay is the delay time and a feedback control which controls how
many echoes there are. With feedback set to zero then you'll have one echo the further you turn
the feedback to the right the more echoes you'll have.

So here's a good question... how would you route a delay effect? Using the insert method or an
effects loop.

Yep, the best way to route a delay effect is through an effects loop so you can add differing
amounts of delay to each channel by using the aux sends.

The second way to use delay is just to thicken the sound with a very short delay well under 100
ms. By having a very short delay it has the effect of basically hearing 2 voices rather than one.
Listen to the example of just a single voice... now we'll add a very short delay with no feedback.
Hear the difference? It just seems to thicken up the sound a little bit.

The 3rd application of delay is to use it to widen up sounds in the stereo field. An interesting thing
happens with echo is that once the delay gets very short... usually around 70 ms we no longer hear
two sounds. But if we pan the original to the left and that very short delay to the right we can start
to widen up the sound and it can really help widen the sound in the stereo field.

So delay can basically be used in three different applications... your typical echo, a short delay
which gives us a thickening sound, and finally a way to spread a sound out wide in the stereo field.

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Reverb
Now reverb is closely related to delay...in fact reverb can be thought of as nothing more than a just
a ton of delays so closely packed together that we can't even keep the individual delays but we
here in effect like this. DEMO.

So if reverb is very closely related to delay we'd probably see a lot of similar parameters...and we
do. We have decay time which is the length of time that the reverb dies down. We have a
parameter that is called pre-delay and that is the amount of time that it takes for us to get an early
reflections off of the walls.

You can imagine in a room like this will probably take about 30 or 40 ms for the initial echoes to
come off the wall and then obviously a series of other reflections that would just bounce around
until it died down maybe a second later.

In most of your reverb effects you'll find a certain settings like a plate, room or hall. We can all
imagine a room or a hall but what the heck is a plate? In early days the only way to make artificial
reverb was to use a big metal plate that the old guys to send their signal through and at the plate
vibrated it gave off an artificial reverb. For whatever reason we all kind fell in love with that artificial
sound and some people still prefer it to this day particularly on vocals.

So again what kind of routing we would normally put reverb on? Yep, an effects loop is the way to
go as we can give differing amounts of reverb to all the different channels.

So why do we use reverb? Reverb places our sound into an environment. It might be a small
room on a guitar. Maybe a larger room on a vocal....or a big hall on a snare drum. For the most
part, reverb places a sound more off into the distance so it can be really helpful to bring a 3d
position to something that really has only 2 dimensions in terms of a stereo signal. The more
reverb, the more it tends to drift off behind the speakers. So adding a bit more reverb to backing
vocals tends to place them further back in the mix.

This is a bit of a dated effect, did you guys ever remember the gated reverb effect? It was made
popular by Phil Collins in the 80s when you want a really big drum sound by adding it to our reverb
to it but then abruptly chopping off the end of the reverb with a noise gate. Check out how this
sounds.

So I have to say probably using the 80/20 rule we get most of bang for the buck with our salt-and-
pepper effects which are delay and reverb. We'll learn how to use them to bring space into a mix in
the mixing section next, but for now let's look at some of the modulation effects.

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Modulation Effects
I've grouped together a number of effects in this category that I'll call modulation effects. They're
called modulation effects because the parameters that are within these effects are modulated or
changed over time.

The first and we'll talk about is the chorus effect. It's achieved by placing a really short delay
usually about 20 ms and moving the length of that delay back and forward very slightly. Listen to
this guitar dry... and then with the chorus effect. Do you hear how it's thickens up the sound.
Actually not unlike a 12 string. Have you guys heard a 12 string guitar.

The application of the chorus effect is typically to bring more voices to a sound. In other words to
artificially create a chorus. Typical applications are background vocals, guitars and keyboards.

An effect closely related to chorus is the flanger. A Flanger takes a slightly shorter delay and ramps
up the feedback to give you sound like this. This is a pretty specialist type of effect that I would use
pretty rarely but there are some pretty cool applications of this in fact was used across the entire
mix on a very early single that I bought as a kid. Would anybody remember this song?

Ichicoo Park.

Another modulation effects is a phaser. A phaser combines a copy of the original signal that is
slightly out of phase and sweeps them against each other to give you this kind of sound.

All of these effects use what is called an Low Frequency Oscillator or an LFO. This has a wave
like effect that changes something about the sound. In the chorus, it add a wave effect to the delay
time, flanger the same, the phaser sweeps the phase of the signal.

There probably a few more in this category. Tremolo and Vibrato sweep volume and pitch
respectively. Even Wah-wah is probably in this category even though it's your foot working as the
LFO.

So out of all of these effects...I would say only chorus is in my short list of effects that I would use
everyday.

I put some recipes in your workbook and some examples in the companion DVD.

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Pitch Shifter/Split Harmonizer
A pitch shifter can shift the pitch of a signal ;) Either in complete intervals like this or in very small
intervals like fractions of a semitone. If we're going to use a pitch shifter to shift in entire
semitones, then we could artificially create some harmonies like a fifth interval up. demo. But we
all know that the intervals change in any scale and if we were going to do anything any more
creative that just dumb fifths, then we'd need to tell the processor what key and scale we're in.

There are some really amazing vocal processors out there that can make some really realistic
harmonies and this might be a good effect if you have limited tracks on your multitrack. You might
be able to route your single vocal into a processor like this and create multiple harmonies from it.

Now there's another use of harmonizers that has been used for decades and that is to send a vocal
through it will a slight detune down on the left and a slight detune up on the right. If you pan these
two effects out hard left and hard right, you'll have the effect of really widening your vocals. This
work particularly well on doubled or backing vocals. Once again, recipes and examples in your
workbook and DVD.

AutoTune
OK...onto the most abused effect in the world today. Auto tune. IN the eighties when drum
machines became all the rage, there was a process that you used when programming drums
called quantising. It autocorrected the timing of your beats so that they we EXACTLY on the beat.
Now up until that time, there were no PERFECT drum tracks. There were drummer with really
good timing, but no-one with perfect to the millisecond timing and people started hearing these
drum tracks as being pretty robotic. Kinda creepy.

There's something about the

slight imperfections of us
musicians that makes us
human. Well several years
ago, someone thought it
would be a great idea to
take that concept and apply
it to auto correct the pitch of
a performance...and Cher
has never been the same
since. (do you believe?)

Now that effect is called AutoTune and it can be used subtly to tighten up the pitch of a vocal...or
really coarsely to correct every note to a perfectly in tune semitone. (Will Ferrell)

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There are a few AutoTune effects out there. But I believe that Antares has the corner on that
particular phrase. More generally known as pitch correction some portable studio have a version
of it. Most notably the BR-600.

To illustrate the main controls, let's bring up Auto Tune.

You can see that we have all 12 notes in a chromatic scale. We can decide to include or exclude
notes so that the AutoTune will simply not play those notes but substitute it for the nearest
available note.

You can go into an advanced mode that will show you the pitches of all your notes and you can
massage those notes up or down and obviously there are controls to adjust how subtle or extreme
you want the corrections to be. There also is a way to connect a MIDI or USB keyboard to input
the notes that you want to play if you want some really wild effects like this one (Blame it on the
Alcohol).

To “Print” or not to Print

So all of these effects can either be placed INLINE with the signal or in an effects loop. The rule of
thumb would be that if you want t a touch of effect, then an effect loop would be the best way to
route. If you want to completely take control of an entire signal like a compressor or AutoTune,
then the insert method would be best.

Also, the effect loop gives you bang for the buck because you can use that ONE effect across
many channels by using an aux send and return. This goes to your budget as in the real world of
my $2,000 reverb I told you about. Ain’t no way that I'm gonna use that on just ONE track, right?
I'll want to put that on an effect loop so that I can use it in varying amounts across ALL my tracks.

Now this is less of a concern for you guys and gals who use software solutions as your effects are
virtual. You can just drag unlimited instances of your effects across so you might want to add
some verb inline with a single track. You can always adjust the blend of dry to reverbed signal on
the mix knob.

In fact that's one big reason to go over to software recording. For a few hundred bucks you are
done with buying effects. Everything is built in and you have unlimited effects for that one price.

In the hardware world, most multitracks have built in effects and they normally have a loop effect or
two being most commonly reverb and delay. Then they might have an insert effect that you can
place inline with your input signal, which ties perfectly into a discussion of whether to record with
effects or not. We commonly say it this way. Do you want to print your effects or not?

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Here are the pros of printing effects. If you have ONE insert effect like on a lot of BR recorders by
Boss, then while it is only ONE effect, you can use it many different times as you record. If your
first track is a guitar, then you can set it to distortion and record that DISTORTED guitar onto track
1. Now that that effect has been recorded or printed, there's nothing to stop you from switching the
effects to a chorus and putting it on your bass guitar as you record to track 2. Then a compressor
as you record vocals to track 3.

As you are printing the effect onto

the track, you have the benefit of
using the insert effect as many
times as you want, with as many
different types of presets as you
want. But what is the possible
downside? Yep, those effects are
married to that track. Once you
record with it, you can't UN
DISTORT the guitar. It's on there
for good. If you have unlimited
effects, then I would record
EVERYTHING dry and add effects
at mixdown, does that make
sense? But for many of us, we don't have unlimited effects so we tend to use insert effects and
print their effect onto our track. Certainly, the loop effects can be added and taken away easily as
they are never recorded. Just added in varying amounts by using the aux sends.

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Resources
Use some of the links below for some great Effect articles. Also look at the Effect Video on this
disc for 50 minutes of effect examples..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processing
http://www.tweakheadz.com/effects_for_recording_studios.html
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/news.php?action=view_story&id=1470
http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-audio/plugins/
http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/effects
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/signal-processors

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