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Effect to Sustain Chord while Playing Lead


xoypij
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23 hours ago, xoypij said:

Hi,  I'm looking for a why to strike a chord and an effect to sustain that chord while I play a lead over it.

Is that possible?

 

Yep, sure is - watch Sean Halley do that very thing in this old video.

 

 

 

 

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On 8/31/2020 at 10:42 AM, datacommando said:

 

Yep, sure is - watch Sean Halley do that very thing in this old video.

 

 

 

 

Cool.  He failed to actually do the swell and sustain with decent level - he should have retried it to show what he was trying to do.  I tried that patch and it actually was pretty simple to do even with built in controller setting the feedback....

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Hey!  Just saw this thread and thought I'd take a stab at creating something like that EFX pedal where you hit the button while holding a chord and it records the chord, hit it again and you can play over top as much as you want.  EHX Freeze I think it's called.

 

With a couple limitations of what the footswitches can do, it's not quite the same (it takes 2 buttons), I think I managed to do a pretty decent job.  It's not like OMG it's the same effect, but it's close enough to be useful!

 

I attached the patch to this post.

 

What I did is I took one of my favorite stock patches (Flood in Texas), which works great with my RG in single coil mode (a high output strat, basically), and built a freeze effect into it.

 

There's one switch that turns on or off a delay effect and also sets they delay effect's feedback to 100% when on and 0% when off... so this button is the effect on/off and freeze reset all in one ... to clear the freeze sound that's playing you hit it to turn the effect block off.

 

This also clears the feedback delay buffer after one last playthrough at 0% feedback, so next time you turn it on there's no sound until you enable the freeze thing.  Otherwise, turning it on again just started playing back the previously frozen sound again... there was no way to reset it. 

 

This also gives the extra feature of letting you supplement the current freeze with more tones... get a freeze going, set it to play over top, play a super amazing harmony up high on the neck or something that will go well with your already frozen chord, turn on path 2 for a second or two and then turn it off again, and now your freeze is the combination of the two chords, and you're back to playing over top. 

 

If you want a way to record a new, different, freeze chord to replace the currently playing one without turning the button 1 effect off and on again, try this:

  -- play a new chord (different key or whatever now for next part of song) with button 2 turned off while the freeze is still playing, then quickly hit button 1 button 1 button 2, wait a second or two then hit button 2 again.  You've just wiped the old freeze effect and turned it off, turned the freeze effect on again, turned on record freeze for the chord you are already playing, waited a couple seconds for it to fill in the freeze effect nicely, then turned off the freeze record setting so you can play over top.  It's a foot dance, but doable.  From what I've seen of the ACTUAL freeze pedal, this is honestly not that much harder to use.

 

There's a second switch that toggles between 2 paths (using volume blocks with preset state toggles).  I currently am using it in an on/off state, but possibly it could be setup as a momentary thing... Not sure that's important though as this works really well. 

 

So when this 2nd button is OFF, it takes path 2, which bypasses the "freeze" effect path.  So this is for normal playing even when the freeze effect is turned on, and it prevents anything going INTO the freeze effect to be added to the freeze loop.  Just play normally, and normal sounds come out - no freeze.

 

When 2nd button is ON (assuming the freeze effect is turned on), signal is routed into the freeze effect path (there are I think 3 effects in this section - a soft attack thing, a digital delay with roughly half second loop and 100% feedback when enabled, and an ethereal kind of reverb effect). 

 

So to use it, you turn on 1st button to enable the effect, then (ideally) play a chord and right after attack turn on the second button for like a second or two then off again, and voila, freeze effect!

 

You could just not play until both buttons are on then strum a chord and then turn off the 2nd button, but it'll have a lot of attack in it.  The first effect in the block of 3 could, potentially, help take care of that, but it's just easier and way better sounding to strum right before you hit the 2nd button.

 

I'd say 1st button is effect enable and disable/reset.

2nd button is record enable and disable for what gets frozen.

 

I then put some other nice delays/reverbs in the other path and have lots of fun playing various styles over top of that freeze.

 

To me it sounds just like the demos of the EFX freeze pedal.

 

Update:  I just attached the patch!  Hope it's fun for people!  The buttons are 10 (2c) and 11 (2d): Button row 2 C and 2 D are buttons 1 and 2 of the freeze effect.  1B is just a delay for playing normal guitar, 1C is a reverb for playing normal guitar, and bottom row 2B is a really atmospheric reverb, again just for playing normal guitar.  bottom row 2C enabled/disables/resets freeze effect, and bottom row 2D enables/disables recording the freeze part (bottom row 2C must be turned on for this effect to work properly though).  There's a wah too you can enable by stomping on the pedal.

 

The freeze just sounds like a sort of mystical version of the chord you played, as though held on an organ or something.  I purposely kept the freeze level lower than regular playing so you can play over top of it (the output of the delay stage).

Strat+Hold DBK.hlx

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i'm gunna try and figure how to make volume pedal do delay level for swells

editing thispost... k making pedals do what i want is beyond me still.  its my first try.  but it is real great how it is anyhow

 

editing again... it isnt me.  the patch has the wah pedal messing up the delay record path thing.  donkelley can you fix the wah pedal please?  try using wah when playin over top of freeze thing, it records to the freeze.

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5 hours ago, Dogaral said:

i'm gunna try and figure how to make volume pedal do delay level for swells

editing thispost... k making pedals do what i want is beyond me still.  its my first try.  but it is real great how it is anyhow

 

editing again... it isnt me.  the patch has the wah pedal messing up the delay record path thing.  donkelley can you fix the wah pedal please?  try using wah when playin over top of freeze thing, it records to the freeze.

good ideas!  Actually, no I can't do that.  I can't even figure out why the wah pedal changed the sound source!  I'm sort of new to this level of patch editing.

 

I will absolutely keep trying, though.  I created this on the device, not in the computer editor, so maybe it'll be easier once I see it in the computer version.

 

I'm very happy that it works for you!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Actually besides the wah pedal problem, this patch "STRAT+HOLD DBK" is my number one fav now.  not the one from youtube earlier in thread.  The one from donkelly.  You are wrong, donkelly, it works great, maybe best, if you enable the effect, then without playing anything, turn on record mode, hit your chord, let it sing for a couple seconds, and then turn off record.  It's like completely smooth then just like the EHX FREEZE!  I used a friends freeze pedal and showed him this patch and he says its a perfect copy.

 

I am gunna try to fix the wah thing myself cuz i guess the guy who made this patch is busy.  its gota be that the built in expresion pedal somehow is set to trigger the record mode or hwatever by accident. 

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Oh ok, that's good then!  It was supposed to work that way, but I didn't put much effort into the effect that handles the attack.  I guess the default settings in it seem to work well for you!

 

I think I found what's up with the wah pedal - I'll confirm and upload a fix later today or tomorrow.

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  • 3 months later...

UPDATED: By the way, I still find this useful in 3.0, and I have finally fixed the problems with the expression pedal.

 

K, uploaded my (finally!) fixed strat+and+hold helix patch in the post below.  Fixed all volume/wah pedal interactions, so now you can use volume/wah as I'd intended.

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ok here is my fixed version of my strat and hold patch.

 

It works really well to me.  2 different amp models you can switch between (A), Mod/Chorus echo (B), reverb tank (C), Tube Screamer (A2), super long ambient verb (B2), and C2 and D2 are the hold effect (C2 is on/off, D2 is on/off of recording your chord, C2 must be on before you turn D2 on for a few seconds then off again, and chord will hold as long as C2 is on.  Clear it by turning off C2 until the recording finishes (roughly a few seconds) and then you can turn on C2 again and record a new chord to sustain by enabling D2 again with your chord playing, then turn off D2.

 

Harder to describe than to use, and it really is working very well. I find it works better to enable C2, then play chord hard, then enable D2, wait a couple seconds, then turn off D2.

 

This version of the patch no longer has the broken interaction with the wah pedal (volume pedal footswitch enabled).  Now you have volume/wah as intended.

 

Cheers

 

 

Strat+Hold DBK.hlx

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