A stereo tremolo: the level of the sound rises and falls in a steady rhythm. It is the oldest effect in the book and still one of the quickest ways to turn a held chord into a part.
The idea
A sine wave swings the volume of each channel. Spread is what makes this more than a volume pedal being rocked. With no spread, both sides dip together and the whole sound pulses. At 180 degrees the sides move in opposite directions: as the left dips the right swells, so the overall level stays fairly even and what moves is the stereo position. Settings in between give a pulse that also drifts across the image.
Rate changes the character as much as the speed. Slow settings are heard as rhythm. Past roughly ten cycles a second the dips blur into the tone itself as roughness, closer to a ring modulator's grit than to an amp's throb.
Controls
- Rate: how fast the level moves, from 0.1 to 20 Hz.
- Depth: how far it drops at the bottom of each cycle. At full depth the sound is cut to silence every time.
- Spread: the phase offset between left and right, from 0 to 180 degrees.
- Mix: the blend of the effect with the dry signal.
The picture in the panel draws one cycle of the volume curve from the current settings. It shows the shape of the effect, not a live reading of the audio.
Getting started
Tremolo is a stereo audio effect: play a guitar, keys or a pad through it. Try Amp Throb for the classic guitar pulse, Slow Swell for a gentle breathing, Rotary Sway for a sound that circles between the speakers, and Chop for a hard on/off rhythm. Ring Edge pushes the rate past rhythm into texture.
