Delay is probably the most versatile effect in any guitarist or engineers arsenal. This is because many other effects that we use like modulation are actually delay effects repackaged with another name. In this tutorial I’ll show you 10 different delay tricks most of which can be achieved using the simplest of delay plugins.
Delay and Echo effects have been around since the 50′s in recording. From the first Echo Chambers to Tape Echos pioneered by players like Les Paul to the state of the art processors of today it’s hard to get away from this effect! But it’s not all about ‘echo’! Many different and surprising sounds can be produced from this time based effect. From Chorus to Reverb (thousands of tiny delays) there’s a lot you can do delay!
Here’s 10 of them!
Stereo Effects
Trick 1 – Stereo Spread
This is a very simple trick for increasing the stereo spread of a mono sound source. For this trick you need a stereo delay. Set one side to 0ms (no delay) and the other side to a very tiny amount (1-20ms). The effect should be 100% wet with no feedback. Splitting the sound into Left and Right channels with the delay and offsetting one of those channels slightly creates a faux stereo effect. Here’s our mono source example.
Now here’s the example with Logics Sample Delay on it. I find this to be the easiest way to get this effect. The right delay is set to around 500 samples which provides a nice spread. The higher the amount, the wider the image becomes.
Trick 2 – Automatic Double Tracking – ADT
In this example we’re going to emulate a double tracking effect. We start by sending the signal to a bus. The dry signal and return of the delay are manually panned left and right.
To get the effect we modulate the delay time with the LFO on the Tape Delay. With a Tape Delay when you adjust the time your essential slowing or speeding up the audio so you get a modulation in pitch, at lower settings this produces a slight chorusing effect.
This gives the effect of two performances with slight variations in timing and pitch, or a double tracked part.