Dub Delay in Action (Video)

Dr Funkenstein - Live Looping

Recording loops on the fly, live mixing, and jamming at the mellow end of the Dr Funkenstein material.

The whole piece was created using just two short loops:

1. Two bar drum loop
2. A one bar Rhodes piano riff based around Amin9

The variety is created using realtime tweaking of filters, effects, dub mixing, fading stuff in and out with faders and track mutes, adding some loops on the fly and guitar improvisation.

Equipment:

Slaptop running Ableton Live and a bunch of plugins (exclusively Live's native plug-ins btw) , NIO audio interface, PEAK midi footswitcher, Digitech guitar multi FX pedal (including an octaver for the bass sound) , Wah pedal, Novation Launchpad, Korg Nano Kontrol, Ibanez plank.

Question:

>what's the trick to the delay + verb you have on the send? it's almost like there is a fade-in to the delay. for example you using it on the rhodes and the rhythm guitar via a dial at 1:09, 1:21, 1:50, etc.<

Answer:

The Ibanez is going thru a Digitech RP350, I use the same box onstage for the Cosmosis gigs.

Delay tweaking is just standard old school dub delay technique. All the channels send to the delay via the top knob on the little Korg which I've configured as a send knob per channel, and I have a knob to control the feedback of the delay.

The delay runs through a slightly modulating band pass filter to simulate how the "real" thing sounds when doing this on a proper analogue console.

How I used to do this on a real as opposed to virtual console would be to cut the bottom and top and make a tiny mid boost on the delay return channels using the e.q. on the delay return channels (which would be returned to 2 x standard channels panned Left and right rather than standard aux returns which are often used for fx returns)

The e.q. curve would reiterate on each loop through the delay circuit causing the tone to change over time giving that Jamaican studio flavour.

As you observed, the delay returns can also be fed into a big verb at appropriate moments via a switch on the little Korg for truly humungous dub outs.

Question:

>what's the trick to the delay + verb you have on the  send? it's almost like there is a fade-in to the delay. for  example<
 

Answer:

but to specifically answer your question, the fade up comes from having the delay send on a knob.

There's more options available with a send knob rather than say, a send switch. One option is to impose a fade envelope on a sustaining sound - as you heard.

Question:
>an we expect a funkenstein album at some point? <

Answer:
That's a damn good idea...

The Dr Funkenstein project was actually thunk up as a live project to bring some spontaneity/chaos back into live performances - it's so much more interesting that way for me.

I have my second Dr Funkenstein gig the weekend after next at Summer Never Ends Festival in Switzerland, (after the Cosmosis set) but a live album is a really good idea...


Billy Cosmosis