Hello! The day before yesterday I saw an article about delay. I thought whether to translate or not, well, I decided.

Many Ways to Use Digital Delay

There are two of the most important effects in a guitarist's circuit - distortion and delay. And if you're taking your sound straight from an amp, whether clean or buzzy muddy, digital delay is important.

The Deja vu delay from Seymour Duncan is an example of a delay pedal that has modulation control and so, in addition to the usual delay effects, effects such as flanger and chorus can be produced.

Many guitarists think that the delay (DDL - Digital Delay Line) is the effect that gives us the echo sound. This is all true, but only until you tell them all that the delay is capable of. A multifunctional digital delay, with precise controls, complex modulation circuitry and straightforward controls, can produce a range of sounds - from flanger and chorus, doubling ambience, slapback and discrete repetitions that can be synchronized with the tempo - depending on from the values ​​of the rhythm. D? J? Seymour Duncan's vu is an example of a delay that has advanced modulation controls, but other pedals including the Empress Superdelay or Diamond Memory Lane 2 do the same. Well, if you want to choose best analog and digital delay pedal, you can read our review! Here we describe all types of the analog and digital pedals, so, you need just to choose the best.

Some shrewd guitarists use more than one delay in their chain, giving each of them its own functions, even if these pedals have the same parameters. Digital delay is one effect that works especially well when coupled to itself. Let's take a look at what digital delay can serve as a guitar player.

Basic operations with digital delay

Most people know or have guesses about how delay works - it makes an exact copy (sample or, in fact, digital recording) of the original signal in real time, and then mixes the signals together. The usual controls for delay are Delay Time, i.e. time in ms, showing how much later the recorded signal will be played after the original; Effect Level, i.e. the volume of the repeated signal relative to the original, Feedback is about the same as saying "the number of repetitions", which can vary from one to infinity.

Almost all delays have two separate outputs, which allow separate switching of the processed and dry signals to different places. Of course, you can take a mixed signal from one output (the most common use case) and just plug into the input of an amplifier, as most guitarists do. But it is also possible to connect different outputs to different places and devices, for example, to different channels of a stereo amplifier, or to different inputs of a mixer, or even to different amplifiers, to get a true stereo signal.

By using long delay times, you can get an exaggeratedly "wet" sound, for example, to fill in a slow solo note in a ballad, or get the famous "cascading" sound like Van Halen in Cathedral, Nuno Bettencourt in Flight of the Wounded Bumble Bee And Albert Lee in Country Boy or his solo in Luxury Liner by Emmlou Harris. With very long delay times (from a few seconds), you can turn your delay into a live recorder by overlaying and looping the played passages on top of each other and jamming. Such devices as the DigiTech JamMan, Line 6 DL4, Boss Loop Station - this loop recorders ( Looper ) (cyclic recording devices), which are in fact several digital delay in a single package, which allows you to overlay and looped sound.

We've covered the various delay options, now let's see examples of control values ​​to help you get the various effects available in your delay.

Delay Time and Effects

The delay time is the main factor in determining what kind of effect you want to get, be it modulation type (flanger, chorus), or more atmospheric echo and reverv. Figure 1 shows a graph of various effects versus delay time in milliseconds and modulation. Most high end delays have a modulation function, which is a variation (or variations) of a Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO). The LFO will decrease or increase the delay time depending on the oscillation of this lowest frequency. Depending on the initial delay settings and the amount of feedback, modulation control will help you get a falnger or chorus sound, or just make the sound sibilant. Set the modulation knob to zero if you want the delayed signal to be exactly the same as the input signal.

Some gadgets do without modulation adjustment, in which case you can hardly get a deep flanger and chorus sound. But the subtle effect that comes close to real chorus is, at times, what it takes to give the sound a little "movement".

Feedback control, also called regeneration, determines how many times the processed signal will be fed back to the processor input. With feedback set to zero, only one repeat will be produced, which is good for cascades, harmonies and loops, but not very good for ambient sounds or more "swirling" sound textures.

If the feedback is set to maximum, then an infinite number of repetitions will be produced, an infinite feedback, if you like. About 5 or 6 repetitions are good for reverb and slapback (an effect that is quite popular in rocobilly vocals), if every next rep is quieter it will emulate a natural echo effect.

The Effect level indicates how loud the processed signal will be in relation to the dry signal. When the effect level knob is set to zero, you will not hear any effect (only a dry, unprocessed signal will pass). When the effect level is set to 100%, the processed signal will be equal in volume to the original. Therefore, if you take the following three steps: 1) set a large delay (200 ms or more); 2) Effect level by 100%; 3) feedback and modulation to zero; then you will hear two identical notes or chords with a delay. This is a key element in the “cascading” sound, which also works well for rhythmic repetitions in sync with the tempo of the song.

Settings

Figure 2 shows an example of a delay pedal setting for some delay-based effects. The exact settings will depend on the musical situation and your preference. In general, it's better to set the delay time first, then the level, and only then move on to the Fibback and Modulation settings.

Conclusion

The short delay time for the delay is a set and forget. You just tweak the settings based on how the delay sounds and not worrying about how it interacts with the rest of the music. In other words, the same settings are suitable for both fast and slow tempos, it doesn't matter if the 16th or whole notes. But when the delay time goes beyond the slapback, i.e. 200+ ms, you have to fit the delay at a certain tempo and your rhythm patterns. It sometimes takes some math, but this is where the real fun begins.