Parallel effects processing

I’m not sure if this is the term people use to describe the technique I’m referring to, but it’s the term that I use. It sounds descriptive. We’re talking about “parallel effects processing.”

In creating your own synth sounds, one way to make them sound more professional and fuller is to use your effects in parallel with the original sound.

I use Reason 11 and the way I do this is by starting with some type of synthesizer like Thor, Maelstrom, or Subtractor, but I’ve also been using Massive and Reaktor a little more. After creating some type of sound using one of those I’ll add effects to it like chorus, delay, distortion, or filters. I used to simply add those effects onto the sound and use only the “effected” sound.

Now I often split the original output from my synth (Thor/Maelstrom/Subtractor/Massive/Reaktor) and send one straight to a mixer and the other to an effect. In Reason 11 this is fairly easy with a Spider Audio Merger/Splitter. After sending the original to a Spider Audio Merger/Splitter I can send one output straight to a mixer and other outputs to effects. Then I route the output from those effects back to the mixer that the original sound was going to.

That mixer has the original sound as well as a version of that sound running through an effect like distortion.

I’ll often go a few other steps further and do this with every effect I use.

That means that my mixer has the original sound from my synth, the output from my distorted effect, the output from my filtered effect, the output from my version with chorus, and the output from my version with delay.

That mixer often has as many as six different layers.

This allows me to have a little more control over the end sound because I can turn up or down how much of the distortion layer is being heard or how much of the chorus layer is being heard. It adds another level of control over the end sound, and it creates a bigger and fuller sound because you’re hearing multiple different versions of this one sound.

Once you get the hang of it, this can be done in about five minutes when creating a new sound.

I often start making new sounds by creating a sound in whatever synth I’m using (Massive/Subtractor/Thor etc.) and then quickly add a distortion, delay, chorus, and filter layer.

Depending on how you adjust the levels of those layers can change a whole lot about your sound. If you want an aggressive sound you can turn up the chorus and distortion. If you want a more mellow or subdued sound you can turn those layers down and turn up the original and filtered layers.

The possibilities with this type of synthesis are quite numerous and you can create a ton of sounds.

Give it a try.

ISJ