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Understanding Versatile Uses of Delay Pedals
Looking for refreshing your sound with some fancy delay? To add more spice on your sound and enrich it, delay pedal plays interesting and versatile role. Music will be monotonous if there is no variation in the sound.
There are lots of pedal options which are really pretty fascinating. Delay pedal is one of the most popular effects among all as it gives your sound a professional and qualitative dimension. So before you move forward, first decide your requirements that you want and match it to all the features that the Pedal offers.
1. HOW DELAY PEDAL WORKS
Delay helps you to play with time. It memorises the note you play and repeats it back to you. Delay is an audio effect that is used to record input signal to an audio storage and after a length of time plays it back. Since the beginning of 50s composers and guitarists have been employing delay or echoes. After that it has become the important ingredient in modern music. The delayed signal could be played back several times or played back again to the recording. This will then create the sound of a repeating. Delay effects create a blending of previous sounds with a new sounds. It gives you the control to set the volume compare to the original sound, the amount of gap between the repeats and the number of repeats. If you want to explore soundscape, a versatile and great delay can make it happen.
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DELAY ON THE PEDALBOARD
Delay should usually be placed last in the chain. If your board has a volume pedal feature, it will allow your tones to sustain after placing the delays in front of it, doesn’t matter if you scale down or mute your volume. Some guitarists prefer to have one delay on each side of the volume pedal.
But if you want to use your delay combined with other stompboxes, have to decide where you want to place these effects in the chain. For example, if you are using distortion pedal, place the dirt before delay that means distorted signal will be delayed. This is important because a distortion pedal has the strongest impact on your fundamental tone.
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THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN A DELAY PEDAL
Apart from the consideration of cost benefit, quality, size, features etc., the important consideration will be to make the decision between analogue and digital delay.
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DIGITAL DELAY
Though it varies from one guitarist to another, digital delay is considered to be more perfect delay as it is algorithmic. Computer chip controls the digital delay. Digital delays were introduced in the 1984. Sometimes you want some sounds that is pure not mixed with other ingredients. There is no coloration to the sound in digital delay. The benefits of digital delay are that, it is more versatile and are much longer delay times. Other effects like stereo delay, tap tempo, looping, reverse echo can also be used to process delays.
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ANALOG DELAY
It depends on the personal taste. If you want a clean signal and no need for a long delay, analogue delay would be preferable as it is less perfect and adds some more characteristics. Coloration and imperfections are introduced when every sound reuses the previous repeat. Here the delay times will be shorter. Analogue delays were introduced in 1970.
You may want to avoid analogue if you are thinking to feed a distorted or big sound, on every repetition have to reproduce the harmonics. Some unpleasant results can arise. So if you want long delays or want to feed a dirty signal to your delay pedal, you might choose to go for a digital delay. It will not introduce any unpleasant or unwanted surprises with every repeat.
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VERSATILITY
Many popular and famous guitarists often suggest that you should have both types of delay pedals in your pedal board. Both have two different characteristics. Analogue delay is simpler and adds quality and warmth whereas digital delay adds more versatility, whistles and bells and offers more features.
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MOST VERSATILE EFFECTS
Most of the pedals colour the signal of your guitar to enrich the tone, to add little variation or to give a new tone. The notes you have played, the pedal plays back the note. Few effects have power to modify guitar’s sound. Musicians get inspired by the versatile effect for innovative use. Effects pedals are electronic devices which help you to modify the tone, pitch or sound of an electric guitar.
2. 3 CONTROLS OF DELAY PEDALS
There are actually 3 control options that are available in all delay pedals. Time, feedback and control.
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TIME
Time control simply controls or determines the length of time in the middle of any two signal points. It is counted in milliseconds. You typically have to adjust the knob of time to get the approximate timing depending on the available range of the units as most of the delay pedals do not have delay-time readout so that you would be able to determine the exact delay time.
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FEEDBACK
This unit controls the amount of repetitions. It is the singular repetition of the original signal. You will get additional repeats when you turn up your feedbacks. When there is a maximisation of this controls, some delay pedals allow repeats up to infinity.
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LEVELS
Level regulates the volume. It is just simple as that. There will not be any repeat if the level at its lowest setting. The repeats will be loud like the original signal when the level is all the way up.
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SUITABILITY OF DELAY WITH YOUR STYLE
The quality and size of the pedal depends on how important the delay is to your style and sound. So ask yourself that, is the pedal suitable in your sound or will the delay pedal help you to enhance your creative and enrich yourself as a musician. If you are playing in live programmes, you have to make sure that the pedal have a good beating and remained functional. The pedal that has comparatively no robust quality is much more affordable. When it comes to the point of size, the delay pedal is considered to be larger which has more features and according to the size it will be more expensive.
3. HOW TO USE YOUR DELAY
There are not any indicator which can show the exact delay time in most of the delays. The guitarists who love delay think it as a rewarding effect that they can easily and quickly develop a feel to control the time. Now many pedals have a feature of tap tempo which will give you an advantage to set your time with a few rhythmic taps.
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LONGEST DELAY TIME
Slapback is one type of doubling echo with longest delay time between repetitions of the sound. This echo reproduces the organic delay between the record and playback. To make a slight separation between the guitar’s original sound and the delayed repeat, put the volume of the delay down to about half, set your time and keep the feedback at minimum for a single repeat. You will be able to notice the difference.
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SHORTEST DELAY TIME
For a more strengthen sound the shortest delay times help to create the impression of multiple guitars. For a single repeat the counter clockwise should be adjusted with your feedback control and set your shortest delay time about 20 to 50 milliseconds. Just a small change over per milliseconds will copy the effect of having another guitar playing in the same place with perfect unison. At these rates you will find a doubling effect also with some chorus effects and phase that occur automatically.
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REVERB
Delay can be used for reverb. The reverb effect has been designed to help you explore the space and dimension that you get while playing in the different environment. The sound is effective and great especially in big rooms. To find this effect, scale down your effect level to about half, set your delay time between 100 to 200 milliseconds and put your feedback level for 3 to 5 repeats.
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DOTTED EIGHT NOTES
Dotted eighth note rhythm is a tempo based delay which generally means the song or beat you are playing has to be matched with the pedal’s timing. There are many settings for this effect. It is much critical to set the delay time and your timing. To get started first you have to set the delay to the tempo of the song and stick on it. If there is a tempo feature on your delay, you can work with rhythm section that will give you more flexibility. But you have to keep each and every little variations and be prepared to adjust with it. This will improve your sense of timing to perfection but it is too easy to lose all time tracks with this effect.
Finally, It is not possible to decide which is the best pedal for a person. Guitar gear is much costly and before you are going to invest your money make sure the purchase is going to work for you and take you towards your goal and last but not the least enrich you as a musician.
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