RE: [Harp-L] Why use a delay pedal?

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert Gaustad" wrote:
"Is there any standard delay duration that people use?  Many of these
pedals, it seems, delay as long as a second.  I would guess that we
would want a very short delay just to thicken up the soup a bit."

The first thing to keep in mind is that delay, like reverb, is about
reflections of sound.  In nature we hear a "delay" when a sound leaves
us, bounces back from somewhere else, and then returns.  The farther
away the surface that reflects the original sound, the longer the delay
until we hear the reflection.  So the psychological effect of a delay is
to define the physical space around a sound. 

"Thickening the soup" is just one of the many, many ways a delay pedal
can be used to make great sounds with any electric instrument.  A very
short delay -- 25-50 milliseconds -- thickens the sound without obvious
echoes.  Many studio guitarists take a stereo delay, pan the outputs
hard right and left, and set one output to 25 ms and the other to 50 ms,
with the original, un-delayed sound straight up the middle. The result
is heard as a bigger overall sound, not as a distinct echo.  I used a
version of this technique to fatten up the harmonica sound on my piece
"Minor Kill", which has been heard by many members of this list.

A slightly longer delay -- 100-200 ms -- will be heard as  "slapback",
where the separate echo can be heard as a quick follow-on to the
original note.  The psychological meaning is that the sound is occurring
in a small physical space, where echoes bounce back very quickly.  It's
a dramatic sound.  

Delays can be synced to tempo -- at 1/8 note, 1/4 note, 1/2 note, etc.
-- to emphasize the rhythm of the piece and produce a complex, evolving
texture.  This is how the Edge, the lead guitarist for U2, often uses
delays.

Longer delays still -- say a half second or more -- can be used to
create the illusion that the player is in a huge space, like an arena. 
You hear a lot of delays like this from guitarists like Roger Waters of
Pink Floyd.        

In all these cases, the player should be careful not to use too many
repeats ("feedback") on the delay. Endless repeats make a great special
effect, but in most situations one or two is plenty, and more than that
just gums everything up.

This is a very short treatment of a very exciting subject. As I've said
in this forum previously, delay is the single most versatile and
important effect for any musician playing electric music.  Many harp
players will want to start their delay experiments with slapback, and
that's great -- slapback sounds terrific, especially for blues and
rockabilly styles, and I wouldn't leave home without it.  But I wouldn't
stop there, either.  Leaving the delay set to slapback all the time is
like eating plain vanilla ice cream three times a day for the rest of
your life, and making your audience eat it too. Even if you like it,
they'll start to wonder if you know how to do anything else after a few
songs.

There's a reason why guys like RJ Mischo switch from the bullet to the
vocal mic every few songs...

Regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com