The effects sequencer
It’s no great leap of understanding to recognise that a modular synth has much in common with a guitarist’s pedalboard. If we look at each pedal as we would a module, we can see that adding a sequencer or step modulator to a collection of effects might be very useful indeed.
And we wouldn’t be the first to do so. The idea goes at least as far back as The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, wherein Pete Townshend routed an organ through his VCS3 synth and used an LFO to modulate the filter for an interesting rhythmic texture. Brian Eno would do something similar to treat Robert Fripp’s guitars for the title track on David Bowie’s Heroes LP.
Vintage hardware also virtually begged to be sequenced. Eventide’s first Harmonizer, the H910, had CV inputs, as did Digitech’s venerable Time Machine line of digital delays in the 1980s. These were rudimentary but effective for the few musicians who bothered to tap into them.
As we’ve said so often in these pages, MIDI changed everything when it came along. In this case, it gave manufacturers (and then subsequently software developers) a standard means of applying control over instruments and effects, resulting in powerful MIDI-enabled boxes like Eventide’s H3000 and Alesis’ MIDIVerb series.
Using MIDI, producers can easily sequence multiple effects parameters via MIDI sequencing. This may be used for increasing delay feedback or reverb tails at apt moments for dramatic effect, or for more experimental passages rife with multiple effects changes on each step. The latter is easily facilitated by a DAW’s piano roll or with dedicated plugins from the likes of Sugar Bytes and Audio Damage.
In fact, your DAW may already offer such a plugin built-in. The most recent update to Apple’s Logic Pro X includes a variant on Camel Audio’s classic CamelSpace in the form of StepFX, a rollicking collection of effects with a built-in gate sequencer. We’ll look at that below.
Alternatively, if you don’t have such a plugin on hand, you may find that some of your synth plugins can be loaded into effects slots in your DAW. In this way, you can route external signals through the synth’s filters and effects, using the host’s piano roll or step sequencer to modulate the parameters.