Long Lost Delay Techniques

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AK
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Long Lost Delay Techniques

Post by AK »

I was experimenting today with midi delay and wondered if anyone still uses this? It's great for certain stuff and although I was using a hardware synth for it, there's tons of free midi plugins around to give it a try.

For those who grew into music from a relatively recent time, you may or may not know about what midi delay ( the effect type ) is. Essentially, it uses polyphony from your synth to create delay effects like a normal delay does but obviously without any internal or external delay units. Sounds a bit meh right?

Not quite, as well as doing your basic delay effects, because it's all midi, you can easily create pitch changes to the delay tails ( they're not actually delay tails in the true sense of the word but hey, who care? ) Still sounds meh?

You can play a chord, set the delay to a syncopated time and then have the delay pitch the chord up/down. Can be used to create some wacky effects or straight up chromatic/parallel chord changes. A quick 1 step or 2 step delay with a chord ascending in 8ve's will give a weird eerie lingering echo effect to the chord, you can run in 5ths up the scale or play monophonic melodies and have ascending or descending scale related and syncopated tails and suddenly develop quite complex counterpoint style melodies and interesting harmony.

You can also use on GM drum patches, map a drum kit to a GM standard ( or not ) and the delay tails will trigger different drum sounds, so your basic kick and hat could then trigger other sounds like congas/percussion/whatever at whatever increments you like. Instant 1 finger jams and synth/keyboard artistry...

You get some really interesting effects when the synth patch has its filter tracked to either + or - on keyboard scaling too. Literally tons of stuff that's actually quite hard to achieve with some effects ( esp. perfect pitch shifting delays )

Anyway, thought I'd give it a mention as I don't hear about it much these days with all the sophisticated plugins and stuff but with software, where polyphony isn't an issue, you can tap into something really inspiring and useful :D
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skept
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Re: Long Lost Delay Techniques

Post by skept »

midi delay is a staple of my production. one of the ways i use it is exactly as your describe with drum elements. your chord ideas are really awesome. i will definitely be experimenting with them.

currently i am using one of the tools that comes with max 4 live for midi delay. its under midi effects -> max stuff -> building blocks. something along those lines. i'll put a correct path if someone is interested and can't find it. its an awesome tool. i modified it to have a wet dry to mess with but my code, while correct and working as expected, was not too efficient and bogged down my computer a bit.
Digital Fist
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Re: Long Lost Delay Techniques

Post by Digital Fist »

I would be intrigued to hear an example of this in effect. :)
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