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Guitar Noize regulars will know that I recently started using Abelton Live 7 (check the review here) and while I am still putting the finishing touches to my first Techno track I am still yet to produce a decent original guitar track. However I am always looking for inspiration and the other day I stumbled across a plug-in that I thought looked very impressive and unlike any other plug-ins I had ever used and wondered if it be useful to creating the ultimate shredder track. The plug-in is called Effectrix by a company called Sugar Bytes and unlike most plug-ins I have used before it is actually a loop based effect. Now normally I use plug-ins for effects like Reverb, Delay, Compression etc. but Effectrix does a number of different effects in pattern based sequences, now initially this might seem a little confusing but within seconds of feeding a drum loop through Effectrix I was blown away.

Let me explain a little about how the effect works. You have a grid that has 14 rows, each containing a separate effect you can then choose how you want the effect to loop, from 1/4 notes to 1/32 notes with the option of 1/8 & 1/4 triplets. You then draw where you want each effect to trigger, or cycle through the presets to get some ideas. The plug-in takes the tempo from the master tempo so that your effects will always be matched perfectly. Each effect can be customised at the bottom of the plug-in window, simply select the coloured row of the effect you wish to change to see the parameters appear under the grid. Now these effects range from Reverb to Reverse to Loop and I found the X-Loop and Loop effects to be the most fun, especially mixed with the Phaser or Stutter! The best thing is that you can set up a pattern then when you are happy with turn on the ‘Pattern Keys’ and click on the next note in the keyboard octave shown. This means you can assign a different pattern to every note of the keyboard, just be aware that you can only assign variations of the pattern not the actual effect parameters.

So how does this work as a guitarist. Well the ‘Pattern Keys’ had me very interested. Imagine setting up some patterns and then connecting a midi foot controller which allowed you to affect your playing in realtime! Well I don’t have a foot controller but this didn’t stop me trying a few patterns that I had set up using a drum loop. The only thing was that while doing crazy drum looped effects is great when you are playing live guitar and it suddenly reverses your phrase and then loops the first note of your riff in 16ths for a bar it is actually distracting so you really need to think about what is useful as a guitarist. I think you would need to steer clear of the top end of the spectrum, but you can get some great gated effects with the Stutter effect and the filter allows you to draw an envelope which you can assign to a low pass, band pass or high pass filter double that up with a Phaser and the Crush (a distortion effect that allows you to change the sample rate or bitrate). Actually I should mention that every effect has 2 modulator tracks (A and B) that allow you to draw in a curve or steps (or randomize) and then assign that to one of the effect parameters and these 2 modulator tracks are unique per key pattern, that means every pattern assigned to a different midi key can have a different modulator track. These modulator tracks are a very powerful feature so this a welcome feature.

As a guitarist I think you really need to spend a lot of time playing around with combinations of patterns and effects to find something that is usable and not too crazy sounding, mind you if you are wanting to write a crazy piece of music than this will make your life much easier! I am going to experiment over the next few weeks and post a few examples for Guitarists to give you a better idea.

As an electronic music producer I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t jump onto the Effectrix website right now and download the demo, it is a VST plug-in so it will work with probably every audio sequencer out there whether you are a Mac or PC user. It will inspire you to add variation to your loops and the midi assignable variations mean they can be easily triggered or programmed into your compositions. If you are a live musician you can set up patterns and trigger them in realtime via midi using “Run on MIDI note” mode where the effect sequences will only be played when you hit a MIDI note. That way you can modify your live audio using an external controller, whether that be a keyboard or foot controller. There are so many possibilities I can’t begin to explain them all in this review so I recommend you download the demo and check it out, or check out their demo video to see it in action!

The only problem I could find with this plug-in is that it is very tempting to use it on every track, it is very addictive and you have to use a bit of restraint! That and the fact that I now want to use it on my Techno track so it is now going to take me even longer to finish…

Effectrix website.