13. Chain reaction

A great way of creating your own weird, customised special FX is to place a long chain of creative effects on a return and send elements of your mix to it. To make this one work well, being bold is key! As an example, we’ve chained together a cave-like sound design preset from Sound toys Effect Rack, followed by some distortion courtesy of Audio Thing’s Valve Filter CM, and an octave’s worth of pitchshifting from Melda Production’s M-Unison. After sending a healthy slug of vocal through the chain, our dull vocal chops turn into an evolving, spaced-out texture that will work well as a synth pad. Once you’ve made your chain, a glitch plugin such as i-Zotope’s Stutter Edit can be used to mangle the sound even further on the fly via a MIDI keyboard – ideal for making the chain into a bespoke performance instrument.