Reverb will extend the soundstage and make
the instrument it's applied to sound larger than life.
With delay,
we can expand on that even further so we can get that expansive soundscape
we're looking for, but still retain the clarity
and separation of instruments if reverb seems like it's getting in the way.
Let's start by getting the lay of the land
when it comes to delay and understanding the principles
and the parameters so we can see how the two effects,
reverb and delay, can complement one another when we mix.
Delay is an Echo.
It's a repeat of the original sound.
Think of shouting into a cave or Canyon like we did with Reverb.
The original sound travels through air
and the reflection bounces back with a time delay and we hear it
as a fainter repeat of the direct sound later in time.
Delay first made its appearance in a musical setting by some clever person
in the 50s discovering how an analogue tape machine could be set
to play back a recorded sound a fraction of a second later to get a repeat
that sounded like nothing heard in music before.
Through the 50s and 60s,
this tape delay effect became the recognised sound of famous guitarists
and singers and Echo would come to define the sound of rock and roll.
This tape delay is known as slapback Echo,
and we'll look at how to create this in a later video.
Today, Echo is used to refer to a tape based unit.
While the more modern incarnation seen in pedals and plugins is called delay,
analogue tape isn't the only way to create
a delay, and likely more commonly, you'll be creating delay in the digital realm.
In your Daw,
an audio waveform, when plotted on a graph,
is shown as the path of loudness that a sound takes over time.
In simple terms,
that means how much signal and when it happened.
When we delay something, we are shifting it later in time,
and when we set the parameters of a delay plugin, we set the amount of time
we want the plugin to wait before it releases the sound that we hear
as a distinct, separate Echo to the original.
The released delayed signal also decays in amplitude across the repeats.
We use delay like Reverb to expand the stereo field,
widening the sound stage, and to create a modified
version of the original recorded sound for added depth and dimension.
Delay is one of those tools that we as
mixers can use to get really creative in a mix and put our own spin on a sound
and hopefully enhance it to add more excitement and energy to the track.
Delay can be used to add stereo width to a mono sound.
It can add thickness to vocals
and instil movement to any audio signal we apply it to.
If we feel the Reverb is too wet sounding, we can use a short delay instead
to lift a vocal just a little and prevent it sounding unnaturally dry in the mix.
Some engineers only ever use delay and never use reverbs.
If you feel like a Reverb is muddying up your mix, use a delay instead.
There are three categories of delay there's tape, analogue and digital,
and within those are the applications we can use when
mixing to get really creative and bring a track to life.
Tape delay is generally a delay of one to three repeats that are spaced very
close together, which we can use to fatten the sound.
Sometimes referred to as Slapback Echo.
The famous tape machines used to achieve
this were the Echo Plex and the Binson Echo Rec.
Later came the Roland Space Echo, where the concept of tape delay was taken
to its extreme and is a much loved device among musicians and engineers alike.
Whilst these physical devices can still be found,
there are many emulations available for use in the daw,
so the chance to get creative with this type of delay is easily attainable.
The signature sound of this delay is a lo fi,
warm delay, where the feedback tails get more and more distorted as they dissipate.
In a quest for a cheaper and more
robust method for creating tape machine delays on the road,
the analogue Bucket Brigade circuit was born to be used inside a guitar pedal.
These analogue delays are darker sounding than tape,
and they're able to create more accurate, shorter echoes than physical tape.
The name Bucket Brigade refers
to the capacitor arrangement inside the pedal that passes a sample
of the signal and sends it to the next capacitor.
And you can get an idea on how this works by thinking about the chain of people
each passing buckets of water along to the next person in the chain
in order to put out a fire at the end of the chain.
And that's where the name Bucket Brigade comes from.
Digital delay came about in the late 70s
and early 80s and sound much cleaner than analogue or tape delays.
The input signal is converted
from analogue to digital and stored in a buffer and then played back.
Depending on the parameters set on the device.
Digital delays
present us with an extensive array of options for getting creative,
such as Ping Pong delay, multitap delays, and looping.
To name a few.
We can place delays into three types based on their duration.
The duration of a delay massively affects
the tonal result on the signal it's placed upon.
So when deciding which type of delay
to add, it's good to set up a session with a delay from each length.
The three classes of length are short, medium, and long
doubling.
Echo is a medium delay that's added to the original recorded sound.
A maximum setting of 50 milliseconds is
common for this technique, and it creates a similar effect to double tracking.
This can be used to thicken up a sound and is used to great effect on vocals.
Slapback Echo is classed as a long delay
and uses a slightly longer delay than doubling Echo,
generally set with a delay time between 82 hundred milliseconds slap.
Back Echo is produced by sending a signal
from the playback head on a tape recorder to its recording head.
The duration of the delay is set by the speed of the tape,
the volume of the signal, and the actual physical distance
between the playback and the record heads on the machine.
Analogue and digital delays can easily replicate this effect.
Although if you can get hold of a physical
tape machine, the quality of the delays changes
as the tape degrades over time, making each machine quite unique.
The effect puts the source signal in a live-sounding space
because we hear it as a separate repeat.
To modulate something is simply to change it in some way.
Common forms of modulated delay are flanging and chorus.
Flanging is regarded as a short delay and was created by sound engineers
physically touching one of the reels on a reel to reel recorder.
This creates a phenomenon called
comb filtering and by modulating the comb filter
using delay, we get a sweeping swooshing sound.
Chorusing is a medium delay
comprising of several modulated delays in the 20 to 50 milliseconds range.
The modulation introduces pitch shifting
and that simulates the natural pitch shifting that occurs
when there are several performers singing or playing the same part.
Chorusing can be used as a special effect
on any instrument to thicken up the sound, making it sound richer and more full.
What you've just watched is a clip
from my new course for the Pro Mix Academy that's
all about getting started mixing with Reverb and delay,
you can find another video on the channel introducing Reverb taken from the same
course, and I'll link to that somewhere up here.
If you want to check that out.
As of publishing this video in October
2021, the course hasn't been released quite yet.
So to keep in the loop, add yourself to the waiting list and I'll
personally email you when it's released, you'll find the relevant links
in the description and I'll see you in the next video.