[BLANK_AUDIO] Now we're going to increase our delay time even more, to a category I would call the long delays. And in these you hear a very distinct echo, I say a word and I hear it again a little bit later. And you've experienced this in the real world. You go to a big canyon or a really big room, say something, and you hear it again later. And these, these can be difficult to use in a mix because they were, they make such a distinct delay that we often want to make sure it happens in time with our music. And one of the really common ways to use long delays is actually to have it tempo set. And that's a great feature that's available in most of our contemporary. Delay plugins is the ability to set the delay time, not in milliseconds or seconds, but in metric units, like quarter notes and eighth notes. Really useful because now the delay will emphasize the underlying musical content, which is great. As we also get into these longer delays, we want to think again about the stereo spectrum. In that we don't have to have the delay in the same exact place as the original dry signal. In fact, very often we'll have the delays out to the sides. We might even have a delay that's called a ping pong delay which is a specialized type or a setting on a long delay where the sound bounces from left to right, to left to right. Can be kind of overwhelming, maybe a little psychedelic, but can also fit really well and kind of thicken up and support the music. One last consideration when you start getting into these longer delays, particularly when they have high feedback and we continue on a long time. You want to make sure that the listener can perceive a difference between the dry signal and the delayed signal. If the delayed signal is the same exact sound as the dry one, it's hard to make the distinction. And it just sounds like the person maybe is talking over, and over, and over instead of it being a delay. So, many of these long delay plugins have filters built into them. So every time time the signal repeats, every time it delays, it changes slightly. Maybe the high end diminishes or the bottom end goes away. And this makes it easy for the listener to distinguish within the dry and the wet signal, and really makes it fit much better in a mix. One more thing about long delays, they can tend to get in the way of your harmony. If you have a piece of music with a complex harmony that's changing rapidly. When you have a delay, if you think about it, the previous note is hanging on for a long time. And if you have a long delay in a complex piece of music those harmonies might clash. So, be careful. Always make sure, just like with the dynamic effects, that what you do with the effects has a relationship to the underlying music. The song is the most important part. You're just polishing it here. But delay effects can be a lot of fun to play with. And let's look at some parameters that we have on long delays. A medium delay like a slap back delay is meant to emulate the sound of a real space. But some songs require a more exotic sound, and having an extended number of tempo sync delays can be very effective in many contexts. And I'd like to try that out here. I'm going to synchronize the timing of the delays to my tempo. And most contemporary delay plug ins have this functionality, and it's a great one. First, I'm going to synchronize both the left and the right to quarter notes, and I'm going to put the feedback up fairly high. This way, we'll get a nice, repeated wash of delays. Let's hear it. [MUSIC] It's a nice sound but it can be kind of overwhelming. When we have a set of long delays, it's really important that the listener understands what they're hearing. That there's a dry signal and a bunch of copies after. So it really helps to make the copies or the delays sound different than the original dry. A great way to do this is to use a built-in filter. And many stereo delays or tape delays or long delays will have a filter built in, which allows you to make the delays sound different than the dry signal. Cutting some high end and cutting a little bit of the bass from the delayed signal really helps to make the listener really understand what they are hearing. Lets hear it again after we have introduced the filtering in the delay path. [MUSIC] It's more subtle and it has depth. And it's really interesting. One other thing that can be very helpful is to change the delay time in the left and right to give us a wide evolving ping pong kind of delay. So I'm putting the left side synchronized to quarter notes but the right side synchronized to eighth notes. Let's hear this. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] I really like that. Now let's hear it in the context of the whole mix. [MUSIC] So those medium slap back delays are great for creating the sense of a space. But we keep feedback quite low with those because we don't want to have a buzzing note as part of our delay. And for the long delays, we can bring feedback up a bit and it's really nice when they are synchronized at tempo to create a delay that emphasizes the meter and fills in the mix.
