Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [effects]

For questions related to various musical effects of all kinds. For guitar effects, please also use the guitar-effects tag.

68 questions
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How to obtain a Clean yet Distorted guitar sound?

I'm kind of a guitar effects noob so sorry if this is an extremely stupid question. How do you obtain a clean and distorted tone using pedals and amp? An example of the kind of sound I'm looking for is can be found in a lot of songs but my primary…
John Henderson
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Do hard rock singers use distortion effects on their vocals?

I've been wondering how hard rock/metal singers (e.g. Layne Staley, James Hetfield, Dave Grohl) manage to achieve such a 'gritty' sound with their vocals. Do professional rock singers ever use distortion effects to enhance the 'grit', either in…
Time4Tea
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What effect does compression have on music?

When I listen to and play around with a number of effects other than compression (reverb, delay, etc), I have no problem hearing how altering them changes the sound of the music. With compression it's not as apparent, though. I know that the…
Bryant Lewis
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What's actually going on with the Leslie effect?

Hammond organs often use the Leslie effect, which is produced by a rotating baffle and horn. They speed up and slow down at different rates, and have become the 'Hammond sound'. But what's actually happening? There's certainly a tremolo effect,…
Tim
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How to make a sound appear to be more distant?

I have made a recording of a source close to the microphone. How can I make it sound more distant than it is? Which effects do I need to use for this task? (I need an imitation of small room. Distance close to 3-5 meters) I'm using Reaper, but have…
Andrew
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How is the 'natural autotune' singing effect achieved?

This singer's videos were doing the rounds recently and have got some mainstream media coverage (1, 2) and I'm intrigued to know how the effect is achieved. It sounds a little like the voice 'breaking' effect used in yodeling, Irish music and…
Нет войне
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How does a "Talk-Box" differ from a Vocoder?

Both the Talk-Box and Vocoder combine instrumental sounds with vocal sounds to create a Singing Instrument (or a more precisely-controlled Singer). How are they different, beyond "One's for guitar and the other's a synthesizer"? The question was…
luser droog
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What do "Brilliance" and "Ambience" mean?

The digital piano I ordered, a Roland FP-30, let's me change the level of Brilliance and Ambience of some of its 35 available sounds. If I focus on just its Grand Piano sound, I think "Ambience" refers to Reverberation. I don't know what…
joeb
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How do I use my computer as an amp and effects processor

I have an electric guitar and an m-audio preamp-usb and would like to use my laptop to record music as well as listen to what I am playing. I would also like to use it as an effects processor. Ι have an amp but no effects or overdrive.
craig nicholson
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Decay vs Sustain on synths

Could you explain to me the difference between "decay" and "sustain" on synths? I'm using the Korg Kronos 2 and the synth engines have both sustain and decay and they seem to be doing the same thing unlike "release" for instance. I'm thinking there…
SovereignSun
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How to make something sound REALLY far away

I'm trying to add some trumpet solo into my film and I want to make it feel like you are in the school and someone is playing it in the far away playground/another building. For (1) post-production, I read some other posts and learnt some basics…
Jay
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What do the different reverb parameters mean?

Inspired by this question: How to make a sound appear to be more distant? What do all the different reverb parameters (like "ER" and "Diffusion") actually mean?
Todd Wilcox
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How to order VST plugins correctly

I have recently noticed that the order of the VST plugins on an audio track can make a great difference on its sound. I usually use virtual preamps, compressors, distortion and chorus effects, equalizers, reverb and delay. I also work with MIDI…
muffin
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Is there a guitar effect set up that can emulate the sound of Nashville tuning?

I really like the sound of Nashville tuning, where you typically replace the EADG (low to high) strings with lower gauage strings to get a really light sparkly sound. Is there a way of emulating this sound without having to re-string my guitar every…
rich2165990
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What do you call it when volume is decreased at bass beats?

I've noticed that it seems popular in some electronic music genres to quickly lower the volume of the music (except the bass) right around each bass beat. Not sure why you'd wanna do this, perhaps to make the bass more pronounced? Personally I find…
Magnus
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