There's something rather defeatist about using the same effects presets as everyone else, but programming those killer effects takes time. Rather than do all the work yourself, it makes sense to swap patches with other readers, then perhaps fine-tune them to suit your own requirements. The Special FX page allows you to do just that, and every month we'll be inviting you to send in your own patches for publication. Just to get the ball rolling, RM contributor John Harris has kindly provided two simple but very effective patches for the Yamaha SPX900, but of course patches for any popular effects processor are welcome. Just send in your patch information and we'll do the rest. If there is a blank programming grid or form in your manual, please enclose a photocopy.

Noteverb

This program is really a misuse of the 'White Room' (memory preset 6) reverb to create up to three notes simultaneously every time the reverb is triggered. By making the room parameters ridiculously small and setting the wall variance parameter to its absolute minimum, you get Yamaha's version of the resonant notes you would expect to find in a small acoustic space. Varying the room size will vary the note pitch, so experiment. For the more adventurous, try mapping the room size parameters to incoming controller information using the control assign section on the Utilities page. You can then alter the notes from a sequencer or keyboard using continuous controller information. This is an effect which is best used on percussive sounds.

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Wide Pitch

This program is a simple edit of one of the existing pitch-change memory presets. Pitch-change two (memory preset 29) is a stereo harmoniser that gives a pleasant widening effect to any sound that is fed to it. With its fine detune of -9 cents on the right and sharpening of +11 cents on the left, it can be used for many instruments and also for voice. However, most producers would add some sort of pre-delay to this type of pitch-change to make the sound even bigger. Something of the order of 15ms on one side and 20ms on the other will do the trick, but you should experiment. I've even seen pre-delays of 80ms and more being used. On vocals, this long delay gives a sort of 'Phil Collins' sound.

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