(Without such delay and/or reverb effects, I find the dry part of the sound can seem rather too separate from the shimmer reverb tail.) Pretty much any basic reverb and a delay plug‑in that also includes variable filters will work for this part of the job.

Treating The 'Dry' Pathīy way of insert effects on the main source track, I like to add a little reverb plus some quarter-note tape-style delay, with the top rolled off down to maybe 1.2kHz to make the repeats sit nicely behind the main sound. The best place to start, of course, is with the plug‑ins you already have - not least your own DAW's bundled collection. Using a rotary speaker emulation, on the other hand, will give you something more akin to (surprise, surprise!) an organ sound.Īs a Logic Pro user, I have my own template for the shimmer effect that uses only Logic's built-in plug‑ins, and you can download a Zip file of that above. But I realise that many of you use other DAWs, so in this article I'll try to suggest third-party plug‑ins that will work well.

To reinforce the pseudo-strings effect, try adding modulation to the shimmer sound using a subtle chorus or ensemble plug‑in. But it's also helpful to place a compressor before the pitch-shifter - this can help to keep up the level and density of the reverb tail, creating something akin to a pad or string machine sound. The two key components of the shimmer effect are octave-up pitch shifting and a suitably long and washy reverb.

Some shimmer pedal designs also incorporate a little feedback from the output of the reverb back to the input, and this configuration makes replicating that trickier in most DAWs, but I've found that this step is usually unnecessary anyway. Taking the basic shimmer effect first, this is best set up as a send effect, as this allows you to use different processing to the dry part of the sound, such as a more conventional reverb and/or delay. But you can also set up your own variation on the shimmer effect using plug‑ins that most of us already have. An inexpensive software option is the excellent Valhalla Shimmer plug‑in. Numerous reverb pedals now include a shimmer effect, but those that do it well don't come cheap. Guitar players often combine this effect with a slow fade-in to the note, which can be achieved using a volume pedal, a little finger wrapped around the guitar's volume knob, or a dedicated slow-attack pedal, such as the EHX Attack Decay that we reviewed in SOS July 2019 ( ). One of the staples of ambient music is the so-called shimmer reverb effect, in which each note is followed by a reverberant wash of sound an octave higher than the original. For more instant gratification, you could try a commercial plug‑in such as Valhalla Shimmer!Ĭreating your own shimmer reverb effects is easy, and gives you plenty of creative control.

Download free valhalla shimmer reverb