Instruments and Effects

544 Chapter 28 Sculpture
Reverb and Reflections
As a rule, basses are mixed without effects (dry) and you probably haven’t missed any
reverb or delay effects in the examples, so far. Having said this, a little bit of reverb can
be quite appealing on a fretless bass, when it’s used as a solo instrument. Use
Sculpture’s Delay section to emulate this.
In order to create an unobtrusive atmospheric space, proceed as follows:
1 Load the Fretless Chorus Dry setting.
2 Turn on the Delay section by clicking on the Delay button.
3 Set the Input Balance slider to 1.00.
4 Switch off the tempo synchronization of the delay by deactivating the small Sync
button (found directly to the right of the Delay Time slider).
5 Set the Delay Time slider to 90 ms.
6 Set the Xfeed knob to 0.30.
The individual reflections are still too brash. In order to make the effect more discrete
and unobtrusive, adjust the frequency spectrum and amplitude of the reflections. Start
with the frequency spectrum:
7 Set LoCut to 200 Hz and HiCut to 1000 Hz (in the Delay section).
The LoCut at 200 Hz excludes the low frequencies in the reflections, thus avoiding a
muddy sound. The comparatively drastic cut to the highs with the HiCut parameter
blurs the individual reflections, thereby creating the impression of a small room with
soft surfaces.
8 Reduce the total level of the effect by setting the Wet Level dial to a value of 25%.
9 Save this setting as Fretless Chorus+Ambience.
This example shows that the Delay section can be used as a substitute reverb for small
spaces. For sophisticated reverb effects, it’s best to process Sculpture’s output with one
of Logic Studio’s reverb plug-ins.