brettworks

“I have loads of saved effects chains that I use constantly, created by myself, so I always think about these like my main plugins in a way.”

Tom VR

I was playing around with one of my piano sounds, but on the tiny keyboard, which isn’t the best for improvising because my hands can’t travel far playing on such small keys. One way around this impasse is to alter the sound so that it becomes hyper interesting in and of itself–so interesting that I forget about the ergonomic limitations of my controller and focus instead on the sound’s enchanting details.

I went to my library of effects chains and (randomly) tried out a few, re-familiarizing myself with sound design work I had done for other projects. In a DAW, an effects chain is two or more VST signal processors connected in a sequence so that a sound passes through, and is altered by, each of them. A simple example of this could be a reverb (which situates a sound in a space) and a distortion (which adds saturation, noise, and grit to a sound). Each of these effects has a wet/dry knob that controls how much of the effect is applied to, and heard on, the sound running through it. I usually set each effect’s wet/dry to less than 50 percent, so that the effects tint the sound instead of engulfing it.

A more complex effects chain example is a longer string of connected effects. Maybe you have two distortions, each one doing different things and panned differently. Or maybe you have multiple reverbs, each conjuring different spaces. The order in which you place your effects in a chain matters too. A distortion before a reverb creates a buzzing sound dispersed in a space, while a reverb before a distortion creates a space compressed into fuzz. You might also also include an EQ in your effects chain to filter out annoying frequencies, while a compressor placed at the end of a chain will foreground sonic details and artifacts that may otherwise remain hidden within the effects’ composite timbres.

One cool thing about effects chains is that there are no rules: you can build upon the simplest of chains (like the reverb-distortion example above) to create true timbre-warping beasts. Another cool thing is that the accidental discoveries you make while experimenting with chains will often inspire you to build more chains by iterating upon what already works. But the most important point about making chains is that it will lead you to notice a sound that sounds like some kind of potential musical idea. There’s a lesson here, which is not to expect musical ideas to present themselves before you begin. Rather, you work your way towards them, into them, or sneak up on them from behind while you’re ostensibly doing something else–like making an effects chain.

All this to say that making effects chains is a key part of what makes composing music in a DAW fundamentally different from jamming on an instrument or working with pencil and staff paper. In sum, effects chains are portals to ever-new sonic worlds. Building chains exponentially extends your sonic reach and imagination by teaching you how to transform conventional sounds into sounds you’ve never heard before.