Toying Around
Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM, BY JOHN McJUNKIN
SoundToys, indeed: The plug-ins from the outfit formerly known as Wave Mechanics are precisely that — a whole lot of fun and games. On the other hand, they are abundantly powerful tools for sound design. A huge proliferation of pedestrian plug-ins is available for EQ, dynamics and reverb, and there are even some pretty wacky, off-the-hook plug-ins for bending and twisting your signals. But SoundToys developed the plug-ins in the UltraFX bundle to approximate analog circuits as perfectly as possible, and the company nailed it. These plug-ins take you just about as close as you can get to actually owning a mammoth array of vintage analog signal-processing equipment, with the occasional twist.
As an added bonus, these plug-ins have tweakable parametric controls that go way beyond the capabilities of their classic ancestors, as well as the portability and repeatability of plug-ins. In particular, the ability to perform automated modulation of numerous parameters can really open the doors to some wild and wonderful DSP. I got to play with a bunch of this stuff in my laboratory/studio and found myself making a lot of gleeful noises at all hours of the night. I'm going to give you some ideas about how to use these Toys to add some spice to your mixes. Due to space constraints, I'll just scratch the surface, but I strongly recommend downloading the demo and digging into the deep and marvelous features.
HIGH-END HI-HAT
If I were stranded on a desert island and could have only one signal processor, I would want a filter. If I could have any filter, I would want SoundToys' FilterFreak. This filter sounds more analog than any I've ever heard, and it lets you do stuff that real analog filters simply cannot do. I decided to use it to pep up a very boring hi-hat loop, which consisted of robotically identical 16th notes. I dialed up a nice 4-pole (24dB/octave) lowpass filter and chose Random for modulation. The plug was set to an eighth-note pattern, so every two hi-hat strikes had the same filter characteristic. The random pattern modulated cutoff frequency, and with the resonance cranked up, the signal had even more bite. I also got a bit more punch by turning on FilterFreak's Analog mode, which causes the input and output to behave in a distinctly analog way (adding some subtle harmonic distortion). And I could have turned up the Smoothing, which would have smoothed the transitions from one random cutoff frequency to the next, but I chose to turn it all the way down in order to have distinct cutoff frequencies for every two strikes of the hi-hat. I used FilterFreak's MIDI Sync mode to synchronize to the project's tempo and set the modulation amount relatively low, which resulted in a subtler randomization. Of course, I could have cranked up the modulation amount and really tweaked the loop, as well. To save some CPU overhead, I saved the preset I had created in the RTAS version of the plug-in and then processed it using the AudioSuite version. The other benefit of this method is that I still have the original hi-hat loop, and because it is phase-coherent with the tweaked version, I could crossfade from one to the other at various times.
SYNTHS IN 3-D
If a single filter is all you want, try FilterFreak in Single Filter mode. If you need more swishing, swirling sweetness, you need FilterFreak's Dual Filter mode. I wanted to make some swirl happen with a lead synth line, so I dialed up FilterFreak and selected two lowpass filters. To get things moving, I turned up the resonance a bit, and using the modulation tweak window, I set the modulation depths for both the frequency and the resonance of each filter to go in opposite directions by choosing positive values for one and negative values for the other. That way, one filter is sweeping down while the other is sweeping up. This really lends a nice swirly feel to the output. I chose to modulate with a triangle wave synchronized to complete the sweeps in the time of two bars. This really added some nice animation to the synth, but it could also be really effective on any number of things, particularly percussion. Try this out — you'll love it.
OUT OF STEP
Okay, you've done flanging, and you've done chorusing, but there's no sound in the world quite like phasing — especially when it's done correctly and creatively. SoundToys' PhaseMistress is Promethean in the realm of phasing. As with all SoundToys plug-ins, you have abundant and modulatable control of the important parameters, and that's where the real power lies. The modulation section lets you control various parameters (frequency, resonance and so on) with LFO, rhythm, envelope, random, step and ADSR.
I got a wild idea for a rhythmic phase trip, so I pulled up an instance of Spectrasonics Atmosphere set for a plain, vanilla Moog sawtooth wave. I opened up an instance of PhaseMistress and set the modulation to Rhythm mode. With the plug-in set to sync with my host sequencer, I then pulled down the Rhythm Edit window, which allowed me to create a rhythm by turning notes (essentially gate events) on or off. The grid of the edit windows can be set to virtually every useful note value, and you can create rhythm patterns in different lengths (from one bar up). Multiple wave shapes are available for modulation, and I chose a downward ramp. After toying around with some nice eighth- and 16th-note patterns, I set it for six quarter notes. I created a pattern with both 16th and eighth notes that modulated the notch frequencies of the phase shifter a bit differently each time the loop came around. In other words, the pattern starts on the one of the first bar, the three of the second, the one of the third and so forth. Ultimately, I also automated (within Digidesign Pro Tools) the fundamental notch frequency and resonance amount to sweep over a four-bar pattern, which really made things interesting. This is really fun stuff! Of course, you can also do synchronized long, lush sweeps over pads or whatever. A stereo phaser over bright percussion sounds simply awesome.
NOT SO MILD TREMORS
David Gilmour's splendid guitar work on Pink Floyd's “Money” is one of the most famous examples of a tremolo in action, and there are countless other examples. Although tremolo is a pretty basic, simple effect, the modulation of amplitude can become pretty powerful when you introduce automation, user-definable waveforms and synchronization. SoundToys' Tremolator does exactly that and proves to be quite a formidable processor for your signals. Now, everyone knows what a sidechained gate can do to a signal, but it's messy and complicated. Knowing that Tremolator would give me better results in even less time, I plugged it into the signal path of a synth pad and started twiddling. I listened to quite a number of presets and found one called Morse Code that really sounded cool. It was a bit reminiscent of the rhythmic synth part in New Order's “Bizarre Love Triangle.” The original Morse Code preset used a square wave for modulation, but I wanted a less gatey-sounding envelope, so I dialed up a ramp-down wave (not unlike the rhythmic pattern I used in my PhaseMistress example) and bam! It was just like “Bizarre Love Triangle”! And to think, this whole time, I had admired Gillian Gilbert's rhythmic perfection when playing that synth part!
The really cool thing I discovered here, however, was the ability to automate the depth of the rhythmic chopping within Tremolator. I literally just set up automation of the depth parameter in Pro Tools and set it up to increase from zero to full depth during the course of four bars. The figure starts with a full, unfettered pad; then, the “chopping” begins to subtly arrive, increasing to a full-range chop at the end. Indeed, this is a very cool effect. And after much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, I was unable to think of how this exact effect could be accomplished any other way, and I realized that it's simply not possible.
NOT THAT KIND OF CRYSTAL
The wizards at SoundToys were originally responsible for the development of Eventide's legendary H3000 Harmonizer, among other things, and they brought some of that tradition along when they formed Wave Mechanics — in particular, a preset on the H3000 known as Crystal Echoes. (You've heard it on countless records throughout the years.) Crystallizer is the plug-in embodiment of the Crystal Echoes idea, with a lot more power. The manual describes it as a “granular-pitch-splice-forward-backward-echo-plus-space-drive-shimmer-accumulator-effect-device.” Say that five times real fast. What this effect does is sample a slice of your signal and play it back with as long as two seconds of delay, either forward or backward, and pitch-shifted up or down by as many as four octaves. Now, imagine taking that severely twisted signal and feeding it back into the inputs for regeneration. Talk about some quantum weirdness! It actually sounds more psychotic than it really is. It can yield some truly beautiful “crystalline” results, but it can still mangle stuff beyond recognition, as well.
I was doing a cover of an '80s tune in which a Moog Minimoog plays a low note that filter-swells for six-and-a-half beats, then bursts into a minor 9th chord two octaves up, which is then echoed at eighth-note intervals. I used Native Instruments Reaktor for my Moog sound and then piped it through Crystallizer, knowing that I could get something similar but a bit more warped than the original delay. I set the splice time for just short of a third of a second and the delay time for just over a quarter of a second and then cranked up the regeneration to get my echoes to decay and then become more diffuse, almost like a reverb. I introduced 3 cents worth of pitch shift, as well, which thickened things nicely. The result was a rich Moog that builds slowly into an explosion of a minor 9th chord, then ping-pongs away into a diffuse cloud. Another interesting thing happens when you reverse the slices of sound, which really changes the nature of the delays. As much as four octaves of pitch shift in either direction can also be introduced to create some truly thrilling stuff.
This collection of SoundToys plugs will keep many mad scientists locked in their laboratories until all hours of the night. This article only touches the surface of what this collection can do. If your productions are yearning for some creative, analog-inspired treatments, do yourself a favor and check out the demo at www.soundtoys.com. You'll be glad you did.
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