Using the Modifier modules

- I'm going to show you how you can use modifiers to automatically control parameters within components. These are handy if you're looking to create movement within your effects, that you don't get stale and lifeless sounds. First let me play this guitar loop that Todd just recorded. (guitar music) As you can see, it's just a dry guitar loop. Let's play around with the sound now. First I'm going to load a Pro-Filter. Let's see what that sounds like. (guitar music fading in and out) So now I'm going to load the Analog Sequencer Modifier, which is a type of step sequencer.

You can place this anywhere on your rack. No matter where it goes, it doesn't modify a sound until you assign it. So let's drag it in right below Pro-Filter. The first thing we want to do is click and drag the arrows here to the parameter we want it to control. So let's assign it to Cutoff on the Pro-Filter. Now let's play it. (warbling guitar music) Now you can see here by the steps, when the slider on the step is up, the cutoff on Pro-Filter is up. So you can adjust each of these to different parameters.

Let's go through and change some of those. (guitar music) See how it changes the cutoff in time with the loop? Let's play with some of these other parameters. I'll change the resolution as well as a few of these sliders so you can see how it sounds. (guitar music) So now each of these steps are playing in eighth notes.

(guitar music) Let's try sixteenth notes. (guitar music) The slider knob changes the amount of slide between values. If it's all the way down, it sends absolute values according to the sliders. If it's all the way up, it slides between values instead. (guitar music) Here in this menu, you can save or load presets.

I'll just save the one we just made. We do that by clicking on this arrow, Save As, we'll call this "Todd Guitar." Now if we click here in the menu, we can see that under User, we have "Todd Guitar." So if you want to load this, just click on it. Awesome. Let's move on. The next one I'm going to show you is the input level modifier. This one works by analyzing the incoming signal, and then generating envelope data based on the amplitude of the signal. Let's load that and assign it to the cutoff as well. First I'm going to delete this.

Hit delete. Let me drag these arrows to our cutoff. Let's play it. (guitar music) There are four different controls: volume, offset, attack and decay. All of which control how it responds to the incoming signal. (guitar music) The same preset menu is on the left, where you can save or load presets for the component.

Call it "Todd Guitar 2." Now again if we click here, under User, "Todd Guitar 2." Moving on. Let's load an LFO modifier next. Again, we'll assign it to the cutoff. For those of you familiar with how LFOs work, you already have an idea of what this is going to do. LFOs work by generating a lower frequency waveform that can be used to control certain parameters. This can be synced to the DAW's tempo, or it can be run freely and can be adjusted by the rate knob.

Let's drag these arrows over to the cutoff knob, and let's play it. (guitar music) All right, so what we're going to is hit the sync knob, that'll sync it to our DAW's tempo. Let's turn the rate up to one cycle per half measure. Actually, that's a dotted half note. Let's make it...

All right, here you can pick the waveform the LFO will be assigned to. You can choose from triangle, square, saw up, saw down, which are essentially sawtooth waves, random, and sine. Let's hear what those sound like. (guitar music) You can even control the phase and amplitude offsets by moving these triangles. (guitar music) And again, the same preset menu is on the left to load and save your settings.

Let's load the envelope modifier next. This works the exact same way as the others by assigning with these arrows here to the parameter you want to control. This one works very much like the LFO modifier, except you can draw in the curves you want instead. Let me play this and show you how it works. First I've got to drag the arrows to the cutoff knob to assign it. All right. You can sort of see how this is going here. Basically, drawing these automation curves. (guitar music) If you want to add another point, you can right click and you can add a second envelope point.

(guitar music) Cool, right? The last modifier to show you is the step sequencer. This works exactly like the analog sequencer, except the difference is that it only sends on and off values. So let's drag the arrows over. Let's hit play. (guitar music) Notice how the cutoff corresponds to the step. Let's play it again. I'm going to start adding some other ones. (guitar music) Let's change the resolution.

(guitar music with effects) And that's it for the modifier section. Hopefully this helps you wrap your brain around how a few of these modifiers work. These are really the pulse of Guitar Rig, giving your sounds more movement and sheen.