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Shimmery shenanigans

edited April 2019 in App Tips and Tricks

@McD This ones mainly for you as I saw you looking for tips on this the other day.

And lo and behold in this months Sound On Sound the editor (Paul White) wrote a great piece on rolling your own Shimmer reverb with Logic stock FX. I can't copy/paste all the content here but I can post an excerpt from the intro (which is publicly available), and a few screenshots that fill in the blanks. The stock Logic FX are nothing special and any of them can be replaced by the great options available on iOS. And the results will be richer and offer more control than the simple 'Shimmer' reverbs currently offered on the platform.

Here's the intro:

Shimmer reverb is, at its simplest, a reverb tail that has been shifted up by an octave, although other intervals can also be useful on occasions, and sometimes the octave reverb is mixed with normal reverb. However, getting it to sound as smooth as the output from a high-end pedal requires more than just sticking a pitch‑shifter after your reverb plug-in. The better shimmer pedals may also add in some filtered delay with lots of feedback, EQ and even compression, so setting up a dedicated effects chain that you can save as a user preset is the way to go. If this is something that you think you might use a lot, you should also add it to your default song template.

The full article is made public after 6 months or if you really want the detail now you can purchase the article for the princely sum of £1. :)

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/logic-pro-creating-shimmer-reverb

But as I mentioned above, the images paint the proverbial 1000 words. However, spend the £1, it's really well written and will help you take things a little further.


Comments

  • Very nice, I love this stuff :)

    Is that last image everything required? 6 effects on Aux 4... what order do they go in?

  • @Hmtx said:
    Very nice, I love this stuff :)

    Is that last image everything required? 6 effects on Aux 4... what order do they go in?

    I'd say explore things in terms of the chain order.

    But specifically with these screen grabs, the top two are the insert effects and the last 6 are set up as a send/return chain, beginning with the compressor, ending with the EQ. With those sorts of chains I'd often top and tail with compressors (can be useful to glue the delay and the verb), the last compressor would generally be very gentle, similar to buss compressor type settings, and as ever play with EQ both pre and post that final compressor, especially if the compressors are adding colour of their own.

  • There is also an article here

    https://valhalladsp.com/2010/05/11/enolanois-shimmer-sound-how-it-is-made/

    I must admit that I've had fantastic results "... just sticking a pitch‑shifter after your reverb plug-in"

    :-)

    I did eventually buy the Valhalla DSP shimmer plugin because - a) it's Valhalla and I love their reverbs and b) it's easier just to dial it up :-)

  • @pagefall Money well spent. Valhalla Shimmer is a cut above.

    But I still think it's good to experiment with your own FX chains. It's not seriously nerdy stuff where you lose a day and wonder what you've achieved. And in the long run it saves you time as you can create a richer palette of colours with fewer tools.

    But it's obviously not for everyone, and that's where great presets come in. With Valhalla stuff, your getting both easily dialable FX and finely crafted presets. :)

  • I enjoy articles such as this immensely. Just vague description gives enough inspiration to try and build something similar of my own, usually in the SuvNox. Thanks for posting.

  • I haven't spent a lot of time in Sunvox in recent years but I'm a huge fan.

    I never really used trackers back in the day (Cubase on an Atari ST was my intro to computer music). I only started exploring trackers with Renoise as I loved the step sequencing options.

    You've reminded me to set aside some time to hopefully regain some familiarity with SunVox.

  • The search for Valhalla in the App Store brought up RF-1 from Kai Aras for no apparent reason.

    :o

  • @jonmoore said:

    @Hmtx said:
    Very nice, I love this stuff :)

    Is that last image everything required? 6 effects on Aux 4... what order do they go in?

    I'd say explore things in terms of the chain order.

    But specifically with these screen grabs, the top two are the insert effects and the last 6 are set up as a send/return chain, beginning with the compressor, ending with the EQ. With those sorts of chains I'd often top and tail with compressors (can be useful to glue the delay and the verb), the last compressor would generally be very gentle, similar to buss compressor type settings, and as ever play with EQ both pre and post that final compressor, especially if the compressors are adding colour of their own.

    Thanks for the advice. In reality I don’t have the patience to set up this type of thing. I’m sure I’ll just be happy with using ShimmerFX in AUM and maybe tweak it a bit with a LPF before or after it.

  • @tja said:
    The search for Valhalla in the App Store brought up RF-1 from Kai Aras for no apparent reason.

    :o

    Probably some kind of metadata keywords or suchlike.

  • edited April 2019

    Thanks for the advice. In reality I don’t have the patience to set up this type of thing. I’m sure I’ll just be happy with using ShimmerFX in AUM and maybe tweak it a bit with a LPF before or after it.

    The basic version really is easy in logic - I normally have two aux tracks - pitch shifter +12 semitones in one, long reverb in the other (and somewhere it is best to have an EQ that takes off everything above 8-10k) both full wet, one channel 'sends' back to the other and you send the input to that channel as well.

    As mentioned above - it's kind of worth trying - it's not hard, good sense of achievement when you make it work - and it's actually a really useful trick to add a bit of subtle 'air' to a track if you don't turn it right up Mr Eno style

  • @jonmoore said:
    @McD This ones mainly for you as I saw you looking for tips on this the other day.

    When I read your posts I know it's going to cost me money. You mainline the pure
    stuff. Good to see you sharing. We should be strong enough to resist.

    I'll apply the advice to ShimmerFX until my next total loss of control. I'm busy trying to
    convert Audio Impulses into a type of MIDI controller which is costing me $0.00 after
    buying 5 MIDI FX Apps.

    I showed my wife the new input and she was just drumming away for several minutes.
    That happens every 6 months or so. I haven't mentioned the Valhalla Delay "Birthday Gift" yet. Now, Shimmer? I get it. Trade $5 buys to $50 buys. It's a just placeholder: string of zeros.

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