In the following video, Floyd Steinberg touches on a powerful technique to create a shimmer reverb effect. But this video only scratches the surface… If you want to take your timbral experimentation even further, keep reading.

The Technique – Creating a Shimmer Reverb

In the video, Floyd carries out the following steps to create a shimmer reverb:

  1. Create a note sequence on a track.
  2. Duplicate the note sequence to a new track using the “Copy Track” job.
  3. On the newly copied track, transpose the notes up (or down) using the “Transpose” job.
  4. In the “Effects Send” menu, change the copied track’s Dry signal to zero, and Reverb to 127 (max).
    • On this track, you will now only hear the reverb produced by the transposed notes—not the notes themselves.

And just like that, you will hear the original notes combined with the transposed reverb, resulting in a beautiful shimmering sound.

But Don’t Stop There – Think of All the Other Pitched-FX Possibilities

Sure, this makes for an amazing Shimmer Reverb, though why not make use of some of the other assignable FX that are available in the “Effects Send” menu?

Rather than maxing out the Reverb, we could instead max out the Vari knob while keeping the duplicated/transposed track’s Dry knob at zero. This will result in hearing the pitched-up or pitched-down track after it’s passed through whichever effect we have assigned to the Variation effect.

The Variation effect can be assigned by pressing the “Song” button, or the “Pattern” button twice. Depending on which effect is assigned and which QY sequencer you are using, you could create:

  • Pitched-Delay
  • Pitched-Echo
  • Pitched-Chorus
  • Pitched-Flanger
  • Pitched-Phaser
  • Pitched-Tremolo
  • Pitched-Auto Pan
  • Pitched-Distortion
  • Pitched-Overdrive
  • Pitched-Amp Simulation
  • Pitched-Auto Wah

…and more!

Sculpt Timbre Even Further – The Voice Edit Menu

Another menu you will definitely want to take advantage of is the Voice Edit menu. This menu will allow you to take the duplicated/transposed track and adjust any of the following:

  • Voice
  • Pitch Bend Range
  • Cutoff
  • Resonance
  • Attack
  • Decay
  • Release

Changing these brings endless creative opportunities to shape the Pitched-FX as you wish.

Some Ideas

Just spitballing a few things that could be done with this:

  1. Pitched-up Echo with Alternate Voice – Let’s say your original sound is a piano. The duplicated/transposed track could be pitched-up an octave which is fed through the Echo effect, and assigned a guitar voice. This would result in the piano notes sounding, followed by an echoing out guitar sound one octave higher.
  2. Pitched-down Shaped Distortion – If you want a heavy shapeable guitar sound that still cuts through the mix, you could begin with a crisp guitar voice, then pitch-down the duplicated/transposed track and run it through the Distortion effect. The effect can be shaped to taste by adjusting the Cutoff and Resonance in the Voice Edit menu.
  3. Perfect Fifth Phaser – Consider you have an organ sound setup on the original track. The duplicated/transposed track could be pitched-up 7 semitones resulting in a perfect fifth, then fed through the Phaser effect. This would be excellent for getting a subtle perfect fifth timbre often utilized in rock music.
  4. Pitched-down Long Attack Riser – You could drastically change the quality of your pads by having the original pad play out using held notes or chords, then having the duplicated/transposed track transposed down an octave with its Attack set very high in the Voice Edit menu. This would result in a pad which starts out simple but becomes more lush as the note or chord is held since the underlying effects track will slowly ramp up, joining the initial notes in unison.

I could go on and on about different combinations of effects and sound shaping setups but it’s more fun if you try this stuff out on your own. Hopefully you now have the fundamentals established to begin experimenting.