How to use Delays?

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kiwisdontdrinktea
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2005/08/15 10:50:14 (permalink)

How to use Delays?

Lets have a discussion on applications of delay. I'll start with my very limited experience (one hour last night on rythm guitar tracks ). Hopefully the very experienced engineers will chime in with all sorts of good usages.

1. Recorded a single guitar track, panned it left. Sent it to effects bus with delay (Ratio = 1, Feedback = 10%). Panned Delay Bus right Mixed in at 100%. Effect is that there are two guitar tracks one left one right (delayed a 1/4). Did not sound as good as tracking a 2nd rythm track and panning it right.

2. Recorded a single guitar track, panned it center. Sent it to effects bus with delay (Ratio = 1/32, Feed back = 10%). Panned Delay Bus right, Mixed in at -6dB. This is what someone called slap back or richochet. Widens the guitar track. Did not sound as good as tracking a 2nd guitar track and panning it right.

3. Recorded 2 guitar tracks, panned one left and one right. Nice full sound. Sent both tracks to Effects Busses with delays (Ratio 1/32, Feedback = 10%). Panned busses to opposite channels mixed in -9dB. Fills in space between the guitar tracks nicely, fattening up the sound.

In all applications I did not use crossfade. This is just me having a go. I'd like to hear how the pros use Delays on other instruments too. Cheers.
post edited by kiwisdontdrinktea - 2005/08/15 11:29:45

She done stole my song - Otis Redding

http://www.beatkiwi.com
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    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 11:09:20 (permalink)
    I'll just jump in here with a thought...

    I use delay all the time Kiwi, but I have to tell you that I do not use it as a substitute for double tracking if actual double tracking is what I'm after.

    The problem with using delay to double a track is that the delay will precisely offset (by whatever degree you set it to do so) the original track. It can only copy a part exactly, and then delay that part.

    Actual double tracking has a quotient that the delay unit does not, and that is the HUMAN element.

    We don't play precisely the same part as the original. We play the same chords, or sing the same notes, we might even think we're strumming or picking in the exact same pattern, but we're not, because we can't. It will always be a different performance, whether slightly or dramatic.

    I double vocal tracks (and guitars too) all the time, and in the past I also hoped that using a delay would suffice in getting me what I wanted, but it didn't, and still doesn't, if actual double tracking is what I'm after.

    If I really want those thick background (think Queen) type vocals, or that really layered guitar thang, I've got to actually sing the parts twice (or play them) and track them that way. It's certainly more time consuming, which is why I used to try and emulate it using artificial means, but I was never satisfied with the result.

    Delay certainly has it's place, and it will always do what it supposed to do:
    Delay whatever you feed it. But, it will never give you an actual second performance or performed layer.

    I have a piece on Soundclik right now, it's a song I recorded many years ago that a friend of mine and his band want to cover, re record and put on their new album.
    The reason I mention this is that it has actual double tracked vocals and guitars all over it.

    LOL...disregard the tape hiss.. it was done before I had a DAW

    If you want to give it a listen, it's here:

    http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=318643

    The song is "And So It Goes".

    FWIW

    D.
    #2
    kiwisdontdrinktea
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 11:23:45 (permalink)
    Thanks Donny. Am listening to your track now. Sounds very good. I hear the double takes on guitars, but I think I also hear something doing stereo widening. Reverb, just a little? Not sure? Wish I could get something that crisp and well engineered.

    My post was mostly to point out that with my own tracking I much preferred the sound of double tracking. Also because I use different Pod setting on each track. And yet I still want to find a way to use Delay AND double track. I'm also interested to learn how people use Delays on other instruments.

    Not only is song well engineered, it's a very good song!

    She done stole my song - Otis Redding

    http://www.beatkiwi.com
    #3
    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 11:29:00 (permalink)
    but I think I also hear something doing stereo widening.


    No actual "widening" used, I think you may be hearing some panned verb, but most of the wide sound is the double tracking thing we're talking about...

    and thank you for the kind words on the song!

    D.
    #4
    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 11:43:43 (permalink)
    And yet I still want to find a way to use Delay AND double track


    Ya know, this is a great concept, and brought back to me a song I did years ago for an artist I was producing at the time. Not only did I double track, I think I might have even triple tracked the backing vox, and then I used three separate delays to offset each comp'd track, and then I threw those delays in all different directions.

    I'm gonna see if I can dig that one up...it's a good example of what I think you're describing. Give me a day or so to locate it..

    D.
    #5
    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 12:12:18 (permalink)
    Here it is Kiwi..

    I can't believe I found it this fast, just lucky enough to know where to look I guess..LOL

    The song was never really finished, it was a project that was ongoing when the artist was transferred out of town, so this mix is the last "working copy" mix from those sessions.

    It's a bit dated now, did it about 1997 or so, but it does illustrate the "doubled then delayed" thing you mentioned, especially on the backing vox..
    anyway, here it is:

    http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=318643

    "Except For You" © 1997 D. Thompson / R. Younts

    --D.
    #6
    nprime
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 12:43:10 (permalink)
    One thing about delays.

    I've noticed that most of the new plug-ins have a feature that allow you to sync the delay to tempo and then select perfect divisions of the beat for your delay settings. This seems logical, but...I have found that delays that sync perfectly to the beat are very difficult to hear. The delay gets lost because it is masked by all the other instruments, most especially the drums (which are all on the beat).

    In the old hardware delay days you had delay settings that were calibrated in milliseconds. Everyone had their little chart that showed which delays were good for which tempos. I soon discovered that these settings produced delays that got lost in the music. I learned to tune the delay time by ear, and threw the charts away. If the echo sounded good in the track I didn't care what the settings were.

    My suggestion is to turn off the sync function and use your ears. Spend an afternoon playing with different delay settings and see what a difference they can make. Shorter delays can accelerate the feel, longer will stretch things out. Play with panning as well (I see that you are already doing that).

    As to double tracking, ain't nothing like the real thing baby! You're not paying studio rates, make it real.

    Have fun!

    R

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    #7
    M
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 13:24:33 (permalink)
    Um, well, you know the saying about opinions. . . Here are some of mine!

    The hard-panned L-R thing does sound different with a delay vs. a true double-tracked part. But, often a delay is what you hear - because it *is* a perfect reproduction. Each technique has it's place, of course.

    My thinking, Kiwis, is that your delay times are much too long for this purpose. A quarter note? Usually you'd want to use a very small delay time - certainly 20 ms or less, I'd think. I'd probably be in the 10 ms range, myself. But, at 10 and below you can get some comb-filtering/flangey sounding stuff if you check it in mono. It all depends. But, a quarter-note delay is too long for this purpose!

    Another idea is to use a stereo delay on a bus (grab your Sonitus), sync it to tempo, and then use a different multiple or division on each side. I tend to start with an eighth note on one side and a quarter on the other (i.e. 1/2 and 1, on the Sonitus), but a dotted-eighth and dotted-quarter (3/4 and 1 1/2 on the Sonitus) can be nice, too, for some of the same reasons nprime mentions. I've been using no feedback and only about 10 - 12% cross-feed for this. Then send your lead instrument (guitar solo, lead vox, sax, etc.) to the bus and bring the bus fader up (mixing it with the source sound) until you can hear the delays, but only subtlely. This is a very common sound, but it works. Sometimes I'll send the delay to 'verb, too -just a bit! - but not the source.

    Those two applications are my most typical use of delays.

    M
    #8
    mlockett
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 14:25:07 (permalink)
    I often use a delay the way you describe, but I don't see it as a double... more like a stereo widener. To me it's a very different concept from doubling. You can also play with changing the EQ on one of them; the more different the sounds are, the more stereo the effect is. If you make the sounds more distinct, you can use a shorter delay.

    When using a delay for echo, I usually put the delay on a send, then EQ the delay (high pass and low pass filters) so that the echo is not identical to the original. I have a few delay VSTs that do some of that, or that gradually degenerate the echo, but I haven't played with them much.
    #9
    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 14:44:21 (permalink)
    back in the '60's, George Martin and Co. were looking for ways to artificially double track Lennon's vox. If you listen closely to the early Beatle's stuff, you can hear that Lennon actually sang the parts twice. In fact, on some cuts, you can hear it plain as day because he screwed up the second parts on occasion...LOL

    What they ("they meaning Martin, Emerick and Parsons) came up with was, in all reality, a very short delay. They even named it ADT for "automatic double tracking".
    But, even Martin in subsequent interviews stated that this term was misleading, because it wasn't the same as having Lennon actually sing his part on two separate takes and then combining them. He said that it was a cool effect for the time, but mainly invented out of necessity because Lennon wasn't really into the studio; that is, he liked to get his part done and then split. Unlike Mccartney, who actually used to be involved so much, that it occasionally got to the point where he was in the way..LOL

    Anyway, I don't think that "ADT" was all that new; the slapback you hear on old Sun recordings was really the same principle; if you break it down to it's most basic theory it's all just time-based effect anyway; at the time accomplished by adjustable speed on a tape head. The difference was simply the time between the original signal and the delayed one. The slap back was just wider.

    FWIW

    D.
    #10
    M
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 14:46:12 (permalink)
    then EQ the delay (high pass and low pass filters)

    Sure! A further refinement, yes.

    You also can get pretty radical with the high and low pass, on lead vox, for example. It's a distinct effect, but useful in some instances.

    M
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    yep
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 21:34:35 (permalink)
    I like nprime's advice (as usual) about using your ears. Back when we all had a delay chart pasted up on the wall and a calculator handy, I used to almost always prefer the dotted eigth note as a staring point to an actual eighth note (or quarter-note, or whatever), unless I was specifically looking for a performance effect, like the Edge uses to make his guitar parts seem more complex and layered, like he was playing a fugue almost.

    Very short (like, less that 5ms or so), low level delays have, in the past ten or fifteen years come into vouge as an alternative to reverb. They give a sense of ambiance without detracting from the modern, "in your face" sound, and tend to sound more, well, "modern" than the old reverb-drenched stuff of yesteryear. Done carefully, they can actually seem to INCREASE the up-frontness of a sound by widening the stereo spread and turning a "big mono" mix into a "big surround" mix, something like what mlockett was talking about.

    One interesting, and I think underused, use of delays is to DELIBERATELY create a bouncing-around, loud-sound-in-bad-acoustics environment. The king example of this, is, of course, Gary Glitter's "rock & Roll Part 2." You may never have heard of Gary Glitter, but I PROMISE you have heard this song. It stands alongside Queen's "We Will Rock You" as the all-time arena-rock anthem. If you have ever seen a pro sports playoff game or any NFL game, then you will instantly recognize this profoundly goofy, profoundly huge, mostly instrumental track. I live in a loud, late-night neighborhood of boston, and and on Friday and Saturday nights I can walk around and hear house parties that echo and reverberate off the buildings and the mix of phase-cancellation, random delays, and crowd noise just adds up to a sound that says "PARTY" like nothing else. Make this work for you on rap and hard rock anthems.

    A lot of beginners and many professionals get overly anal and scientifical about their use of delays. Having the ability to tempo-synch a delay is a mighty convenience when you want to use delay to create MUSICAL effects, but it can be a crutch and even an interference when you want to use delays to create ambient effects. I have never been in an acoustical space that adjusted its reflective characteristics to suit the tempo of a song, but I have been around players who subconsciously adjusted their tempo to suit the ambient space they were in. The funny thing is, they rarely played the tempo to suit even-note values of the space. What they did was to suit their tempo so that the decay of the space complemented the tonality of the chords and key of the song to give an approriate sense of fullness or spaciousness or density or hollowness to the sound.

    Cheers.
    post edited by yep - 2005/08/16 00:21:41
    #12
    kiwisdontdrinktea
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/15 21:46:54 (permalink)
    OK that takes care of geetars. How about bass, drums and vox? How do you use Delays there? Do you?

    She done stole my song - Otis Redding

    http://www.beatkiwi.com
    #13
    gullfo
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/16 00:24:09 (permalink)
    lately i've been using delay to create overall space by having my reverb slightly upfront in the surround panning and the delay all the way back with some feed back into the reverb. this allows me to add some longer timed/synced delays that help reinforce the mix and or bits that i put though the busses...

    i also like to add it to vox when the song just needs that cool echo thing happen on certain breaks... :-)

    [some examples on my soundclick site]
    i almost never use reverb or delay on bass but if the song has something where the bass notes stringing out along the song help, i've done that. "police state" the bass is fully bounced R-L (the guitar the opposite) - doubles the guitar and bass speed and in headphones is very freakish... on "breathe it in" i use delay on the bass, drums, and synth to add beats and notes. and in "in will be all right" the drums are delayed along with the lead solo to space it out... "cost of freedom" the drums are delayed to add a snare roll that gives it a march sound that drops off on the breaks...

    i generally don't do doubling with delay but tend to go with longer 300-1200ms delays...
    post edited by gullfo - 2005/08/16 00:35:16


    Glenn 
    www.runnel.com


    #14
    RAiN0707
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/16 09:59:39 (permalink)
    Yep, you touched on the usage of delays on drums instead of reverbs. I mostly work with hard rock bands that are looking for that modern drum sound you speak of and I have been reaching for the verbs 90% of the time. Putting them on a bus and making sends to feed the busses and blending in with the original. So far results have been good and acceptable but I do notice that my toms especially don't sound as IN YOUR FACE as some of my reference recordings. They seem to fall away in the mix when I add verb. Maybe I am adding too much but when I play the dry toms with the somewhat "wet" drum mix they seem out of place. Hard to explain. Maybe delays would be beneficial to me to get that sound I'm looking for. Could you perhaps enlighten us/me more on what settings you would use for delays on drums. As always, it's greatly appreciated.
    #15
    ed_mcg
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/16 11:24:44 (permalink)
    How about bass
    When a bass line is behaving itself, it shouldn't have any effect on it other than compression and eq.

    To add some character a little chorusing can be added (which is just a short delay with modulated delay times -which pitch shifts). This can be interesting on slap or when playing a higher register part.

    On a solo, you can add a delay to produce the simulated reverb the Yep was mentioning. You'll want to keep it short, within the Haas effect region (10ms to 40ms). On Tomorrow's Dreams, for example I enveloped boosted a send that had a light chorus and a 20ms delay; after the solo the envelop cut back the send to a near subliminal level.

    I generally avoid reverb on bass. For sure you need HPF and LPF to avoid the mush if you do.
    #16
    name1432
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/16 22:17:07 (permalink)
    fwiw

    a simple delay effectively applies a comb-filter to your signal--i.e. it cuts a harmonic series of frequencies. which frequencies depends on the delay-time
    post edited by name1432 - 2005/08/17 13:54:10
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    yep
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2005/08/17 16:27:26 (permalink)
    ORIGINAL: RAiN0707
    ...Could you perhaps enlighten us/me more on what settings you would use for delays on drums. As always, it's greatly appreciated.


    The thing with ambient effects is to listen to the dry, unaffected sound in context and figure out what you want to do with it. Nothing is a strong posssibility. When you hear an everyday sound in a real room, we almost never "hear" reverb as an audible artifact. But we can "feel" the difference in the acoustical space when we are in a closet, or a bathroom, or a kitchen, or outdoors. On a lot of Jazz and classical recordings, we can hear the room only as a sweetness and a richness and a "live"-ness that seems to be a part of the instrument sound as it exists in space. On a lot of modern pop music, even real drums often sound like sampled drums because a combination of close-miking, compression, and obsessively perfectionist production techniques lead to a sound that has few of the acoustical or performance cues that we associate with "real" sounds. In a parking garage, or a cathedral, or a gymnasium or at a sporting arena with hundreds of speakers, we DO "hear" the effects of the space and the acoustical transmission of the sound. So these are all different approaches to the treatment of ambience, and this is before we even start to talk about purposely using "special effects."

    Ambient effects can be used in different ways for different reasons. Do you want to push the toms further back in space? In that case, a reverb with little or no predelay and some high- and low-end rolloff with a decay timed to complement the feel and tempo of the song should work nicely. Do you want to keep them up front but mimic some room sound just to fill out and mellow the sound a little and try and make them sound a bit less present and a bit less close-miked? Then a reverb with medium density and a short decay timed to coincide with the natural instrument decay will do a good job of mimicing natural early reflections. The obvious use of delay is to create "echoes," but delays can also be used to create a sort of alternative to reverb. spacious multi-tap delays can give a big "arena" sound that is still "in your face" and isn't as "wet"-sounding as a faraway reverb. Short, fast-decaying (or no decay) delay gives an oldies-sounding "slapback" that lends a very bright, exciting, although artifical-sounding type of ambience. A little delay and a little reverb interacting on the same track can add up to a "big ambience" sound that doesn't wash out as much.

    The trick is to listen to the dry sound and figure out whether it's already where it needs to be, and if not, where you want to take it, and then play with the tools you have.

    Cheers.
    #18
    rainmaker1011
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2009/07/17 18:35:59 (permalink)
    Hi,
    I would like to finish my track with a delay effect so the delayed sound would fade out slowly. how can I do that in sonar? I have noticed that the delayed sound stops when the Time reaches the end of the audio data (not the end of the clip) and that is too quick...

    Thank you
    #19
    DonnyAir
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2009/07/19 11:41:05 (permalink)

    ORIGINAL: rainmaker1011

    Hi,
    I would like to finish my track with a delay effect so the delayed sound would fade out slowly. how can I do that in sonar? I have noticed that the delayed sound stops when the Time reaches the end of the audio data (not the end of the clip) and that is too quick...

    Thank you



    You could insert a new audio track, arm it to record and without assigning anything to it, record silence until enough time passes so that the delayed track will be finished.

    By doing this, you are fooling Sonar and the timeline into thinking the song isn't finished, because it's still seeing an audio track playing, even though there's nothing on that track.

    Your delay should now play for the length of time that your empty track does.

    http://www.donnythompson.com
    #20
    rainmaker1011
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    RE: How to use Delays? 2009/07/19 17:40:57 (permalink)
    thanks, but this doesnt work. still the same.
    to illustrate, this is how the track looks like and how it sounds. the delayed sound stops right at the Now Time...

    http://www.snapdrive.net/files/546566/clipFX.jpg
    http://www.4shared.com/file/119202030/5640cb5d/clipFX.html
    #21
    rainmaker1011
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    Re: RE: How to use Delays? 2009/07/26 16:53:50 (permalink)
    finaly, I have solved it. just added more "feedback" on both sides :) "try and fail" method works perfectly ;)
    #22
    MatneyX
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    Re: RE: How to use Delays? 2009/07/27 12:34:06 (permalink)
    To fatten a thin, but otherwise good, track, I like to use <10ms delays. I don't pan the delay any differently than I'd pan the track; it's just there to make the track a bit beefier.
    #23
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