NPD: The Pill

[AinsleyWalker]

Been looking forward to this arriving! 

 

The Pill from Switzerland - sidechain compression / ducking effect.

 

You can use the touch sensitive controls to trigger the effect, but I've got some patterns coming out Ableton that I'll send into the trigger input. Looking forward to seeing what it can do!!

 

[HoorayForAnonyms]

Very cool. I’ve had my eye on this for a while. Will be keen to hear how you get on! Congrats. 

[AinsleyWalker]

1 hour ago, HoorayForAnonyms said:

Very cool. I’ve had my eye on this for a while. Will be keen to hear how you get on! Congrats. 

 

 

Thanks! And same, first became aware of the Pill in early 2020 but just wasn't able to get a preorder in until this batch

 

First impressions are that it's very cool, especially with long drawn out synths/pads etc for groove based ducking. 
Nice with reverb for volume swell type effects too, but you have to nail your timing so the note doesn't stick out before/after the ducking  

[LukeFRC]

It’s a very cool designed enclosure - but I missread the topic tiltle and PLL rather than PILL was thinking they normally have more knobs!  

[Rodders]

Apologies, but what's ducking? I'm not entirely sure what a sidechain is either.

Trying to learn 🙂

[AinsleyWalker]

11 hours ago, Rodders said:

Apologies, but what's ducking? I'm not entirely sure what a sidechain is either.

Trying to learn 🙂

 

No need to apologise at all, happy to explain!

Sidechain compression first. Trigger input goes in to compressor, and when that trigger crosses a set threshhold, the volume on another track is affected (usually reduced momentarily). A common application of this in production situations is to feed a signal from the kick drum to a compressor's sidechain on a bass track. This means when the kick happens, the volume of the bass reduces by a desired amount so the kick is clear and not fighting the bass frequencies as much. 

And then 'ducking' is just a more extreme version of that, I suppose. Rather than a subtle effect for getting things out the way for a moment, it can be used to create more dramatic volume swells, pulsing etc. It's very commonly used on synths in electronic music, especially house.

 

The Pill allows you to dial in the depth of the volume drop, and how quickly it recovers again. It's a simple effect in essence but a fairly unique one for pedals, from what I know. 

Demo:
 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by AinsleyWalker