Thanks a lot for the TremoloPan Slow Gear program. I’ve heard about that for a long time but I couldn’t work it out. I look forward to trying this!
Premature cutoff: With the UltraTap approach, UltraTap provides the swell and something else (usually reverb) provides the decay. Making a smooth transition between the two requires work and it has to be done for each time length (each hotswitch version). I try to set the reverb predelay so the reverb kicks in just as the swell dies out. Too much overlap and there is an unnatural bump in there. Not enough overlap and the sound becomes anemic from the transition forward.
You are correct about the “taps” attack. The program requires a playing technique with a rest between notes to allow some kind of gate in there to reset. With practice, it’s pretty doable because the reverb decay keeps sounding while the player rests. I’m not sure why, but I concluded that using very few taps worked better for the Slow Gear thing. So if you hit a second note with out a rest in between, what you hear is those few individual taps (there might be 2, 4, 6, or so) with no swell. Try exaggerating the rests a bit if you don’t want them. BUT sometimes those unintended notes add interest … maybe in an abstract ambient soundscape context.
You’ll notice that Eventide’s UltraSwell program uses the maximum number of taps to make the swell smooth. It’s possible that their approach works better than that discussed immediately above. I simply don’t know.
The UltraTap approach actually gets better with the longer swell and decay times. Swell time can easily get very long. I’ve posted some of these larger soundscapes on PatchStorage (user apalazzolo) using the terms Ambient Pads and Soundscapes.
TremoloPan: It’s possible that mashing up the TremoloPan swell approach with the tail/decay from my Ambient Pads results in the best of both worlds. I’ll try that someday.
Please post any successes you achieve!!!!
~Tony
