Hello! Welcome to what will be a semi-regular column highlighting the pedals we love and some interesting or downright weird ways to use them in the studio. I'll kick this off with a deeper dive into my own discoveries (and missteps), while building out several mix-centric pedalboards for my home studio.
Why mix with pedals?
Stompboxes! Those insane little boxes o' fun lying around in every nook and cranny of your studio – or maybe that's just me? It's of no surprise to this audience that these versatile tools, which have long been used in outboard gear signal paths, can add fresh creative spice to our more extensive cookbook of available sounds when tracking or mixing. With most home studios relegated to digital interfaces and finite acoustic flavors, it makes sense to use as many options as possible to spark unexplored ideas or nudge mix elements into a more organic (and maybe less predictable) place. With the addition of MIDI control options in many modern pedals, we now have opportunities for all manner of time-synced effects or modulation, which, again, exponentially enriches the sonic feast we're creating. Plus, pedals are just fun, tactile little color (and colorful) boxes. I'm constantly finding new and mesmerizing creative applications for my growing pedal collection by simply changing the order in which they are connected. Entire worlds open up when you patch a reverb into a modulated distortion and then back into another reverb. Listen to most of Prince's studio work on 1999 and other classics, and you'll hear a variety of Boss stompboxes and other effects printed straight to tape – pulling otherwise dry instrument tracks into a vibe that will always be uniquely his. In short, why not mix with pedals?
What?