Fake Reverb

By using a long-sustaining, relatively quiet background wave in combination with a strong foreground wave, you can give the impression of reverb to the foreground wave without having to eat up an effects slot. This is an old trick, and was employed by many synths in the days before on-board effects were commonplace (my Yamaha TX81Z has plenty of these!)

Although it does eat up a little polyphony, if used primarily to give atmosphere to a solo-voice patch, it won't eat up a significant amount. And this technique can add 'body' to the soloing voice that sets it into the mix more comfortably.

Simply add another wave, perhaps of a string-effect or similar, and set its envelope to have a fast attack, but not quite as fast as the foreground voice. Then give it a nice decay and sustain and a moderately long release. Ideally, it should linger just a little bit behind the foreground voice, but still get out of the way fast enough to not be cutting into the polyphony by its persistency. (explanation: Tones with long release times have to fade away entirely before their oscillator-space is freed-up for use by future notes. If you run out of oscillators -- the WS has 32 -- , the most recent note played takes priority, and an older note still lingering will simply be 'cut out' on you, making a noticable drop-out that is only occasionaly desireable. That is what is being referred to when you hear someone talking about "note stealing.")

Keep the volume low enough to merely add presence without adding too much to the character of the foreground sound, and it will do its job of simulating reverb, and also give you the added benefit of its strengthening the body of the foreground sound without significantly altering it.

Do try a variety of waves to get the effect that has the sparkle or mutedness that you want. Some of the VS waves really cut through even at very low volumes, and are ideal candidates in place of string-sounds.

For pads and other chord-voices, rather than using the above technique, you can play with the release times in the envelope section -- if the release STARTS at a significant volume-drop away from the sustain volume, it will give the impression of a reverb effect when you lift your fingers from the keys. Just don't go overboard, for the polyphony reasons discussed above.

To which Paul A. F. Carter added:

One thing I like to do, to preserve effects, is to create stereo delays using the delay parameter in the part details of the performance edit page.

I find that you can get a nice stereo delay on relativeley punchy patches, by setting the same patch on 3 parts, and for example setting one part to full level C&D routing, the 2nd part to C or D routing with a big delay (could be something like 200 ms) , and set the third part to the opposite side of the stereo image to the second (either C or D), and make the delay slightly longer than the second parts delay time. Also reduce the levels of delayed parts to around half the level of the centred part.

This gives you a delay effect, and leaves the two FX free for other uses.

This won't eat up too much polyphony, provided you use patches with reasonably short envelope decay times.

To calculate delays to be in time with your music you can use the famous delay equation, which I think goes like this (for 4/4 time at least): 240000 divided by the tempo in BPM, divided by the beats division (eg: 16 for semi-quavers)...gives you a delay time in milliseconds. Correct me if I'm wrong!

later, Paul.

(see my bank pafcweb1.mid, sounds:Twangphase (use sustain!), and VS Bells. for examples..(pafc101)