i’d like to take two, please

after reviewing some high priced pedals, i’d like to discuss a pedal, which offers some interesting results at a rather low price tag: the auto-swell pedal by behringer. the SM200 is basically a budget clone of the sought-after boss SG2 slow gear. in this recent review, i’ll focus just on an application, for which the pedal was absolutely not intended: drum machines…

some background:
the idea was inspired by the sound esthetics of the plumbutter, which is the so-called drum-and-drama-machine by the innovative company ciat-lonbarde. it is an experimental drum machine with a very unique philosophy. however, i don’t focus on the details now. for those, who are interested, i can recommend listening to a digital release which is mainly played on a plumbutter (see acknowledgments).

the SM200 in action…

the two important properties of the plumbutter made me sold to the sm200. the first is the auto-pan, which is a left/right transition triggered by individual notes, and second, slow transients of the attack phase in some of the drum voices, which makes the sound softer and less percussive. especially the latter aspect, namely the lack of an attack parameter on many drum voices, gave the initial idea to apply the SM200 on drums. however, i have to admit that this is not like adding an attack knob to the synthesis of a single drum voice, since the operation of the auto-swell strongly depends on parameter such as amplitude or repetition of the notes. why i do not use simply a compressor? the attack is often too short for the usage as an auto swell. moreover, many devices are much more expensive and bigger than this stompbox.

application on drums:
principally, there are two ways two apply the SM200: first, as an insert effect on a single voice and second, on the sum output. in this demo i’ll focus on the second application. i connected two SM200 to the stereo output of a vermona drm1 mkiii. now, it’s getting exciting: since the SM200 is triggered by the amplitudes of all voices, the mixing, i.e. the volume and panorama settings, of the individual drum voices is crucial for the overall slew effect. as a result one can achieve complex beat variations, which strongly depend on the pattern or better the combination of simultanously replayed drum voices.
another important aspect is that this stereo effect will not suffer from phase cancellations in the signal, which makes the effect mono compatible. the result is a special kind of a triggered auto-panner which is much more vivid and dynamical than a conventional periodically driven panner. just, give it a try!

the demo:

a vermona drm1 mkiii was sequenced by flames 6-in-a-row. two SM200 were applied in parallel to the  main (left and right) output of the drum machine.

1. 00:00-00:10   dry beat without SM200
2. 00:11-00:41    three variations with fixed parameter,  i.e. the vol and pan of the drum voices were adjusted prior to the recording
3. 00:41-01:13    increasing the volume of one drum voice
4. 01:13-01:22    disengaged SM200

thanks for tuning in!

acknowledgments:
the digital release by mudlogger can be listened at soundcloud, e.g. “hoan-kiem-chess-team/viet-khang”
the official distribution of the beautiful instruments can be found on
http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/plumbutter/