Shadow
Polyphonic Harmonulation Wizard
Part of Studies
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The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
Description
Shadow is a polyphonic pitch and delay wizard that can conjure up everything from wide choruses to slapback delay lines. Used lightly it stays subtle, but it can also glitch, mangle and completely obscure your sounds into crazy cosmic dimensions.
Shadow makes two pitch-shifted copies of your input, which we call shadows. The first can sit anywhere from four semitones below your input to three above it, including every microtonal step in between. The second sits an octave above or below the first, so you can make rumbly sub bass and octave splits, and with PITCH near the middle it turns into a slow pitch wobble instead. The shift is spectral, so it works on chords as well as single notes.
The shadows follow your dry sound after an adjustable lag. At the lowest settings FOLLOW gives you a slapback or a chorus, and turning it up adds some interesting repeat effects between the dry and pitch-shifted signals. CAST does a couple of secret things with an extra LFO and the stereo field. FOLLOW combined with CAST is a powerful combo, with radical modulations in the delay and across the stereo field.
Shadow delays your input by the FOLLOW time and shifts it in the spectral domain into two shadows, the primary and the octave. CAST pushes the right side further back and pulses the octave shadow. The two shadows are mixed, and BLEND sets them against your dry input, which is never delayed.
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Cast modulator
- CAST
- Delays the right side's shadows by up to an extra half second, which pulls the two sides apart. Moving it makes the right side swoop in pitch as its delay changes. From about 5% up it also adds an LFO that dips the SHADOW 2 level twice per cycle, from slow pulses up to six dips a second fully up.
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Follow delay
- FOLLOW
- Sets how long the shadows lag behind your dry sound, from almost nothing up to one second. Low settings give a slapback or a chorus, and higher settings make the shadows answer your playing like an echo. While you move it the shadows drop out, and they fade back in when you stop.
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Primary shadow
- SHADOW 1
- Sets the level of the primary shadow.
- PITCH
- Shifts the primary shadow from four semitones down to three up, through every microtonal step in between. In a small zone just below noon, from about 0.7 semitones down to no shift, the primary shadow stays at your input's pitch. PITCH also decides where the octave shadow goes.
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Octave shadow
- SHADOW 2
- Sets the level of the octave shadow. With PITCH above the middle zone it plays an octave above the primary shadow, and below the zone an octave below it, for rumbly sub bass. Inside the zone it stays at your input's pitch and wobbles a tenth of a semitone either way, once every ten seconds. It keeps the formants of your input, so voices shifted an octave sound more natural.
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Master
- BLEND
- Sets the mix between your dry input and the shadows.
- GAIN
- Sets the output level, from silent up to double. Noon is unity.
Try thisKeep FOLLOW short and turn CAST past halfway. The shadows split across the stereo field and the octave shadow starts to pulse. For sub bass under a synth line, set PITCH below the middle zone and bring SHADOW 2 up.
In Studies
Shadow is in Studies Effects, under Modifier, Pitch & Time and Spatial.
Standalone
The standalone plugin, shown further down the page, calls BLEND and GAIN MIX and VOLUME, and plays the left side's octave shadow on both sides. In Studies each side keeps its own octave shadow.
Bundle
The standalone plugin is also part of Cinematic Shadows.
- Formats
- Studies: Audio Units, VST2 and VST3 on Mac, VST3 on Windows · Apple silicon native
- Systems
- Current macOS and Windows 10/11 x64
Standalone version
The original plugin with its own interface, as a one-time purchase.
AU · VST2 · VST3 · macOS · Windows