This Week’s Preset: BigSky – “Bloombient”
If someone were to check out all the presets I’ve posted thus far, they might notice a pattern emerging: I like big tails and I cannot lie!
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To my ears, this patch is one of the most ghostly, other-worldly, sound-designy things I’ve personally ever come up with using BigSky. (Please let me know what you think!) It creates a long, super-spacey reverb that slowly falls in pitch. The way it works is that the pitch of the Shimmer voices is being shifted down by a small amount (10 cents), and with each regeneration of the reverb the pitch is shifted down again. For the sound example below, I merely strummed four chords, and BigSky did the rest.
Listen here:
Preset details:
The image below shows the knob settings and parameters that I used for the audio clip.
The way the Shimmer voices are applied to the regeneration chamber in this patch can cause the reverb to really swell after your initial attack, which is really swell (sorry), but might cause the overall volume level to get a little out of hand at times. If that is an issue for you, you might want to set your expression pedal to control the Mix parameter so that you can back off the wet signal as needed. As for the Parameter 1 and 2 knobs, rather than controlling Shift 1 and 2 (the default for the Shimmer reverb machine), I thought it would be nice to have hands-on control for the Amount parameter and the Mode parameter.
I think this preset sounds best with the Mode set to REGEN (Shimmer is applied to the regeneration tank but not to the input signal), but you might like it with the even bigger sound of IN + REG (input Shimmer + regeneration Shimmer). If you do that, the effect will get even louder, so you might have to adjust the Mix control accordingly. Setting the Mode to INPUT (input Shimmer with no regeneration Shimmer) loses the ever-falling-pitch aspect of this patch, so I don’t do that (although that could sound nice in a different sort of preset).
I like the bright clarity of this tone, but if it’s too shrill for your setup you can back off the Tone knob (which I have cranked to the max). Finally, I have the Mod knob turned halfway up, which is making everything a little wider and richer by modulating the pitch of the Shimmer voices, as well as the reverb tank’s delay line lengths.
Download the preset:
Using the Strymon Librarian? Download the “Falling Angel” preset and load it into your BigSky.
What do you think?
Made your own tweaks to this preset? Post them below or tag them #StrymonPreset online. Are there other preset types that you’d like to see in upcoming blog posts? Let us know what you think. Thanks!
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Matt Piper
Matt Piper writes words and makes videos for Strymon. He plays a variety of instruments, including guitar, but sucks at drums and a much larger variety of other instruments. He also makes electronic noises and teaches Fundamentals of Synthesis at the Los Angeles College of Music in Pasadena, California.
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One Response
I like this descending reverb alot. It reminds me of the preset “Inexarabul” from my old peavey profex.