Other than Wah and Volume, what do you use your expression pedal(s) for?

[bjjp2]

I'm assuming most people use them for wah and volume, but what other functions do most people use them for?

 

[Andrew Male]

 

[Cagey]

Somebody already sorta hinted at using one for a whammy, and there's also an argument for "rate". Such things as delay time, number of repeats, flanger/phaser/chorus/vibrato speed are all time-based. Of course, many tie them to tempo rates, but still.

 

[iaresee]

Whammy
Delay feedback and level
Tremolo speed and depth
Rotary speed and depth
Cross-fading parallel signal chains

 

[bjjp2]

Cross-fading parallel signal chains

Tell me more.

 

[iaresee]

Tell me more.

Do pictures tell a better story?




Toe down is AMP line, toe up synth line -- and then you've got all shades in between those two places.

The real master of the cross-faded tone is @clarky. He's got a whole thread on it here: http://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/tone-morphing-stepbystep.88679/

XL+ preset for that above example (which I literally threw together to answer your question) is attached. You want to change the external controller to be one of your expression pedals -- I just happened to be using Extern 7 for this.

 

[USMC_Trev]

Cooper Explains It All.

 

[Rex]

Amp Input Drive;
Amp MV;
Amp Level;
Rotary Speed;
Effect Mix;
Whammy;
Pan;
Input Level;
Output Level;
Crossfading all sorts of stuff.


And one weird trick, included here as a curiosity that's unavailable on the Axe: sweeping through every amp model in my old Roland GP-100.

 

[axifist]

I do as much as I can with my 2 expression pedals. I love having those!!!

 

[dsimms]

Synth glide for Queen's "I Want to be Free", changing from amp to talkbox for Bonjovi's "Living on a Prayer", changing synth chords between the 1 and 5 for Uptown Funk. I could probably do those last two with X/Y footswitches on the MFC101, but it's easier for me to do it with the pedal.

I notice that the poll results are currently showing 69.2% for Delay Mix and the same for *Other, so we may have a problem with the polling code. Unless you live here in Alabama where that math is perfectly fine.

 

[craiguitar]

Morphing between two amp blocks or effect blocks
Fading effects in and out
Pitch shifting
Boost/reduce gain level

To name a few....

When playing some tunes live, and the song has two sounds, say Verse and Chorus, it's often easier to just morph between those two sounds using an expression pedal than it would be stepping on different pedals. Especially when singing at the same time. In these cases, I'll just leave my foot parked on the expression pedal, and then I have no need to look down to see what button/s to push.

 

[bjjp2]

Synth glide for Queen's "I Want to be Free", changing from amp to talkbox for Bonjovi's "Living on a Prayer", changing synth chords between the 1 and 5 for Uptown Funk. I could probably do those last two with X/Y footswitches on the MFC101, but it's easier for me to do it with the pedal.

I notice that the poll results are currently showing 69.2% for Delay Mix and the same for *Other, so we may have a problem with the polling code. Unless you live here in Alabama where that math is perfectly fine.

Poll allows you to select more than one.

 

[grandinq]

I haven't tried on the Axe yet, but something I've done with the expression pedal on my POD was to shift between two sets of harmonies. I had a solo with harmonies in it, and the two sections of it were in different keys, so I assigned "heel" as section one, and then "toe" to section two.

I've also used an expression pedal for feedback time on a delay. I had a solo where I wanted the last note to keep repeating so I set one end of the pedal to a really long feedback and then I just shifted the pedal up to reduce get rid of it when the section was over.

 

[edo]

mostly parallel path (shimmer) blend. In some specific presets wah, whammy or filter. I only use 1 exp pedal btw and its assigned per preset.

 

[Rotti]

Whammy
Delay feedback and level
Tremolo speed and depth
Rotary speed and depth
Cross-fading parallel signal chains

This.

I'll also bring up reverb mix & extend decay as volume is rolled off, just makes for a cool backdrop.

At one point I had a cool dive bomb effect where the pitch block dropped 1 8va and a tremolo kicked in with ramped up mix & decreasing speed, but it was too much of a pain in the ass to set the modifier speeds for play at tempo on the fly...

...but it wouldn't be if we had note division values for modifier start/stop points. Just sayin'

 

[iaresee]

...but it wouldn't be if we had note division values for modifier start/stop points. Just sayin'

This would be a nice feature.

 

[6stringscott]

Cooper Explains It All.

I never saw that before, and it just turned on a light bulb for me. I've made similar patches but it never occurred to me to try it this way. I always did the mixing after the amp and some effects, and the hybrid sounds were not as satisfying as I would have hoped because it's a mix of the hard distortion and a clean tone instead of being somewhere in the middle with less distortion. Cooper's way of doing it perfectly solves that problem.

And, I have another patch where I use a pedal for Wah in most scenes but in one scene I use the same pedal to control Tremolo depth for a Born on the Bayou type sound. The programming uses two mixer blocks in different spots (with a total of 4 parameters controlled by the foot pedal) and is not immediately intuitive, but Cooper's way is more transparent to understand and simpler too (2 volume blocks and 2 parameters controlled) when looking at the patch.

 

[bjjp2]

Do pictures tell a better story?

View attachment 34404
View attachment 34405
View attachment 34406
Toe down is AMP line, toe up synth line -- and then you've got all shades in between those two places.

The real master of the cross-faded tone is @clarky. He's got a whole thread on it here: http://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/tone-morphing-stepbystep.88679/

XL+ preset for that above example (which I literally threw together to answer your question) is attached. You want to change the external controller to be one of your expression pedals -- I just happened to be using Extern 7 for this.

Thanks, although I'm not getting any sound out of that preset for some reason.

 

[mr_fender]

Damn that might have to be my new avatar!

 

[∞Fractals]

I'm digging the ability to fiddle with input gain/trim and take the amp from mellow to melting ... along with the other stuff like FX mix or play with the formants (ah a, e, i , o, oo)