Sooooo...what are you express(ion)ing?

somata

somata

Inspired
After many years with this beast, I finally programmed an expression pedal and am using it as a wah. Used a small bungee to keep my Dunlop Volume X pedal in heel down position, set it up for auto engage, and now I'm probably going to Kirk Hammet every song my band has written...:eek:

I'm curious what off-the-beaten path kinds of things people are doing with their expression pedals? I'll probably set one up for some whammy/pitch stuff, but apart from blending in delay or the like, how are you using your expression pedals? I have 3 at the ready and once a new footswitch for our sampler pedal comes in, I'll have room on my auxiliary board to maybe add a fourth.

I play in a tech-y death metal band, but we have an experimental streak, so I like using noise and weirdo patches to add a variety sounds into the mix. We've got kind of a King Crimson meets Suffocation thing going...

So I guess I'm looking for ways that people use their expression pedals that aren't the usual. Links to vids or bandcamp pages always appreciated!
 
I run 4 - perhaps a bit excessive buuuuuut ... it goes like this:

  1. Volume
  2. Wah
  3. Delay mix and repeats
  4. Preset specific - Input Drive/Level (inversely - however scene controllers are better/more common for me), Formant, Delay repeat hold/freeze, Drop-tune (pitch), Rotary speed/mix, etc.
 
I use 4:

Wah
Whammy (not really a whammy, but sort of so I call it that)
Rotary speed
Delay mix + feedback

The first 3 are auto engage.

Search the forums... This topic comes up on a regular basis.
 
I use 2, and most of the time one is Wah and the other is Volume. In a few patches I'll switch the volume out to be Whammy. I have a couple presets where I'll use one to cross fade in a Synth for either a Ray Gun effect or a drone note, or maybe even cross fade between 2 amp blocks. More recently I've been attaching the bypass state of several blocks to one pedal, like Delay, Drive and and EQ set as a boost. I'll use this for leads instead of switching Scenes or Presets. This way I can keep my full weight on the pedal while I'm playing a singing and kick the lead sound in and out quickly without having to balance on one foot and look down for where my switch is for the right scene or preset.
 
I have two continuous pedals with one dedicated to volume and the other for preset specific stuff (wah, delay time, rotary speed, etc.). And then I have a cheap keyboard momentary switch that I use to have all kinds of fun with.
Recently I've used it to mimic the Chase Bliss Thermae with the little pressure switch guy.

But the most fun I have with them is playing classical solo pieces and setting up my pedals the change eq or increase reverb as an expressive parameter of the music. Technology can be art too, yo.
 
I have 2 expression pedals with toe switches as well as two Mission Engineering expression knobs (discontinued, I think). Typical use is
  • Pedal 1 - Vol/Wah, switched using the toe switch
  • Pedal 2 - Delay mix/feedback boost for ambient sounds
  • Knob 1 - Amp input trim (don't use it much, but it's there in case I want to fine tune the drive when switching between single coil and humbucker guitars.
  • Knob 2 - Overall delay/reverb boost or cut, kind of like the built-in global mix option
Some of the atypical uses are more fun though:
  • Using a pedal to fade in the synth part under the guitar intro of Pink Floyd's Time. Sounds really big to drop in a sawtooth synth an octave down and fade it in underneath single-note lines as it tracks your pitch.
  • I had a pretty complex patch where the toe switch would engage a multi delay and eq. Once engaged, toe down would mute my guitar output, but allow the signal into the eq/plex delay input. Then when I rocked the heel back, my guitar would come back into the mix. This would let me play chords with the attack muted, then the plex delay would smear them into a nice synth pad-esque sound to solo over.
  • At some point, I augmented the previous patch to include a pitch shifter that would let me change those backing chords as I changed scenes. Obviously this won't let you change major to minor or anything, but it was kind of fun.
 
I use 1
Some presets it is just for volume. For most presets I use it to avoid toe tapping buttons. I try to make the pedal my one stop control for morphing a preset within a given song. (e.g. clean to dirty, a 5-10 db boost, enabling effects blocks on toe down). There are limitations with this method, but generally works very well and eliminates my bad button tapping skills as a stumbling block (pun intended).
 
There's already a long thread on this by the way.

I use 1 for Wah, 1 for volume and 1 for delay mix.
For certain songs, the Wah becomes a whammy.
That's it. I'm know there's a lot more I could do.
 
2 pedals: One is always volume and the other is a floater, depending on the preset. It might be used for delay mix/feedback, wah, rotary speed, or synth/sequencer volume.
 
Two pedals. No pedal permanently assigned to volume, no pedal permanently assigned to wah. I'm not big on either so why waste pedals permanently assigned for that? I much prefer my pedals to be preset specific assigned, which is most of the time harmonizer related.
 
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