This Week’s TimeLine Preset: Joel Gilardini Live

Zurich experimental composer and sound designer Joel Gilardini uses TimeLine to craft the unique and haunting soundscapes heard often in his live performances. Gilardini never plays the same piece twice as each composition is improvised on the spot utilizing live-looping and the three TimeLine presets he explains below. The results are a gorgeous combination of rich swells and hypnotic melodies that take the listener on gorgeous sonic journey. See and hear for yourself!

Joel Gilardini live at EXIL in Zurich:

The presets:

Megaphone
The idea behind this preset was to create a filter effect instead of a delay, a thing I like a lot about the LOFI engine. It gives a quite “bad” filtered sound to the guitar, which kind of reminds me of a megaphone.

On the expression pedal, I control the feedback, which pushes this filtering-echo into flanger territories and also siren sounds when up to the max.

Descent
While I mainly mostly use the ICE engine upwards, creating shimmer like textures, I decided to go the other way around. The pitch of the repeats is shifted down really slowly and uses a small interval, which creates a descending and hypnotic feel.

Crank up the feedback for an endless fall into the abyss and with the mix full wet it’s also a cool fake reverse delay too!

Dirty Swell
One of the main reason I got the TimeLine is the SWELL engine! This is the main preset I use to create soundscapes and “synthy-pads sound-a-like guitars.” I like to crank a bit of the Grit, which gives a cool crunchy, creamy texture.

Together with a long reverb after and a Wah pedal in front, it’s the perfect soundscape combo.

Download the preset:

Using the Strymon Librarian or our new Nixie preset editor? Download Megaphone, Descent, and Dirty Swells and load into your TimeLine.

Like what you hear? Check out Gilardini’s other music projects The Land of the Snow, Mulo Muto, and Black Machineries .

What do you think?

Post a video or clip online playing these presets, and please share by tagging #strymonpreset. Are there other preset/favorite types that you’d like to see in upcoming blog posts? Let us know what you think. Thanks!