What's Next?
 

We've got our fuzz and our overdrive. We've got filters, flangers, choruses, compressors, whammys, wahs, delays, tremelos, ring mods and so on.

So what type of effects are we gonna see next? Or maybe posed a different way, what kinds of sounds do you wanna hear out of a pedal that aren't currently available?

Step filters
arpegiators with all sorts of crazy arrangments
more bit crushers

Effects that do more WITH the note you give it rather than doing stuff TO the note you give it.

what he said!

Something unique that I've never heard before.

I have to admit that the quadrature setting on the Mobius is the first unique effect I've heard in a while. Great stuff.

I just got a Reverse Delay for my iOS setup. It's a pretty cool effect, fun for intros and atmospheric stuff.

http://soundcloud.com/rip_topaz/saturday-morning-exorcism

Envelope controlled EQ's!

I'm really surprised Envelope Generators -- stuff that can genuinely map entirely new ADSR parameters onto your bass sound -- aren't more prevalent. Maestro made a primitive one way back in the early 1970s that was really cool, and the technology to do envelope manipulation has improved tenfold since then (think Transient Designers). But aside from some attack delayer/slower-downers, I haven't seen anything too comprehensive.

Also, would really like to see Parameter Animators/Exaggerators... imagine something that takes a control voltage (generated by, say, an envelope follower, so that it's closely tied to your playing technique) and then scales that dramatically and/or processes it to reshape it, before assigning it to, say, filter cutoff frequency or resonance... Stuff like that would allow you to make radically weird morphing tones that were still organic and related to your playing gestures.

This is interesting! Can you elaborate a little further on this?

Consider a big muff. It adds distortion to your note. That is doing something to the input.

Doing something with the input would be this.

You play a clean note.
The frequencies are 0123456789
The effect will select and effect only particular frequencies so that the note now looks like

12 56 89

The filtered note freqs are 0, 3, 4, and 7.

The effect does something with 0, 3, and 4.
It does something else with 7.
So now you have an effect that is breaking apart your input and doing different things to different parts of your input.

Let's say 7 is bit crushed.
frequencies 0, 3, and 4 are converted into some rating of light brightness that controls a photo cell that controls the modulation of phase applied to frequncies 125689.


I would like to see more frequency manipulation and not rehashing wave manipulation over again. I love all the distortions, but let's do something else already.

With all the various tones and frequencies that come out of even one note, I would like to see effects that can parse out particular frequencies and only do stuff to them. Imagine a 10-band EQ. But instead of boosting frequencies, the sliders dictate how much of a given effect is added to that frequency.

Also, i would like to see frequencies of an input manipulate the output of the effect. Let's go back to those EQ sliders, the ones we are now just calling frequency sliders. Beneath each one there is a switch. when the switch is engaged the sum of each engaged frequency (or difference or whatever) of those frequencies is divided by some ratio. That ratio then dictates the amount or impact a defined effect has on the rest of the frequencies or a defined set of other frequencies.

This would allow the modulation, for instance, to change based on what notes you are playing due to the amplitude of the parameter control freqs.

(If anybody uses this idea, it's gotta be named after me and I get a cut of the cash pile.)

I'm sold! That sounds pretty sweet!