roboctopus — LSDJ & You: Echo Chamber (2014)

Four echo techniques for lsdj, from one that costs no channel at all to one that spends a second. The framing is arrangement, not effects: "Echoes can help fill an arrangement out and give it a greater sense of depth and, if you want, space. In the final stages of working on a track, I often look for every bit of free space in the patterns and see if I can add an echo here and there."

Key claims#

• Single-channel echo: a second instrument, same channel, lower volume and a short envelope, with echo notes typed into the gaps between the melody notes. The pitch rule is the interesting part: "the echoed note corresponds to not the note it immediately follows but the one before that" — in a C – B – G – E run, the echo after B is the C, the echo after G is the B, and so on. The echo of the last note of the previous phrase opens the phrase, "so there will be continuity when the two phrases loop".
• Works for melodies as much as for the arpeggiated Cmaj7 / Amin7 he demonstrates on.
• Panned echo: set the echo instrument to one side. "Panned echoes are often used in professionally produced tracks, and the trick works well in LSDJ" — with the aside that "stereo space is often an area LSDJ composers neglect".
• Automated ping-pong echo: "you can also set up an automated table to pan your echoes from left to right every other note to create a spacier feel."
• Two-channel chorus echo: copy the phrases into pulse 2, shift them down one tick, drop the instrument volume, and set PU FINE TUNE to 2 — "which will create a sort of chorus effect when the notes play in unison with pulse channel one". Expensive but "great for creating spacey interludes or for really rich-sounding lead instruments. You can sometimes squeeze in quick chorus-y echoes to beef up your lead."
• Echoes need not be constant: "even intermittent echoes can add interest and complexity".

Practical takeaways#

• The echo lags the melody by two note positions, not one — that is what makes a same-channel echo read as a repeat rather than as a wrong note.
• Echo instrument = same sound, lower volume, shorter envelope; pan it, or table-pan it side to side.
• One tick of offset plus FINE TUNE 2 on the second pulse channel is a chorus, not just an echo.

Notable quotes#

"In the final stages of working on a track, I often look for every bit of free space in the patterns and see if I can add an echo here and there."

Relevance to the wiki#

Gives fake-echo its concrete LSDj recipe — including the two-position lag, which none of the wiki's other echo sources state — and a rare piece of sourced advice on stereo depth in Game Boy music.

Pages touched#

fake-echo · stereo-panning · detune · arrangement · instrument-design · lsdj · roboctopus