FX, Risers & Impacts

Classic noise riser (Operator Noise + Auto Filter automation)

The white-noise sweep every drop in dance music has used since the 90s. One bar or 16 bars, same recipe: filtered noise with cutoff and resonance rising, width opening, reverb growing.

1. Operator: set Osc A waveform to Noise (bottom of the waveform list), other oscillators off. Amp envelope A 1500 ms, S 1.0, R 400 ms so the start is soft.
2. Operator's Noise type is pitched white-ish noise; turn the oscillator's Coarse down to 0.5 for a darker, pinker tone, or leave at 1 for pure white.
3. Auto Filter: Lowpass, 24 dB slope (the 12.2 redesign exposes slope directly). Draw a clip automation curve on Frequency from 300 Hz to 12 kHz over the length of the riser. Make the curve exponential (drag the line's curvature) — a linear sweep sounds like it slows down near the end because pitch perception is logarithmic.
4. Resonance 20–35 %. Automate Resonance too: 15 % at the start, 40 % at the top, which gives the "tearing" character right before the drop.
5. Utility: automate Width 100 → 150 % over the same range. Keep the first 2 bars mono so the stereo opening is itself a build element.
6. Send to a Hybrid Reverb return; automate the send from −inf to −6 dB. The last 1/8 note: cut the send and the track volume so the drop lands dry.

Variations: Wavetable Noise category wavetables (Noise>Water, Noise>Wind) instead of Operator for coloured noise with position automation. Add a Phaser-Flanger (Phaser, 4 notches, rate 0.1 Hz) before the filter for the trance-style "swooshy" riser.

Pitch riser: Operator pitch envelope, Shifter and Pitch Hack

Tonal risers that actually go up in pitch, from a subtle octave glide to the full-blown Shepard-ish scream. Three routes with different flavours.

1. Operator pitch envelope: in the Pitch section enable the pitch envelope, Amount 100 %, Initial −24 st, Peak 0, with Attack set to the full riser length (max envelope times are long enough for 4 bars; for 8+ bars automate Coarse instead). The note rises two octaves and settles at the drop pitch — tune it to the drop's root.
2. Shifter: put Shifter after a sustained saw or noise. Automate Pitch from 0 to +12 semitones over the riser; set Mix 50–70 % so the original and shifted copy beat against each other for a chorusing rise. Shifter's delay-based pitch shifting leaves grainy artefacts that help the aggression.
3. Pitch Hack: use the Interval control with Rate automated upward and Reverse on for the "pitch going up while audio plays backward" effect. The Recycle (feedback) control at 30–50 % stacks octaves into a Shepard-tone illusion — each repeat is pitched further up.
4. Auto Filter HP sweeping up at the same time thins the bottom as the pitch rises, so the riser doesn't fight the bass that's still playing.
5. End the riser on a note that belongs to the drop's key, or end on silence 1/16 before. A riser landing a semitone off the drop key sounds wrong even if the listener can't say why.

Variations: Drift with Env 2 → Osc pitch, Env 2 attack maxed; Wavetable with LFO 1 (one-shot ramp via Env mode) to Osc pitch; Meld Swarm Sine with Swarm amount rising for a cluster rise.

Reverse reverb and reverse cymbal (clip workflow)

The sucking-in pre-echo before a vocal, a snare or a crash. The reverse cymbal is its drum-kit cousin. Both are 60-second jobs once the workflow is in your fingers.

1. Duplicate the source clip onto a new audio track. Put Hybrid Reverb on it: Algorithm Dark Hall, Decay 5–8 s, Dry/Wet 100 %, Pre-delay 0.
2. Right-click the track → Freeze, then Flatten (or in 12.2+ use Bounce in Place, which does both and keeps the original muted). You now have the dry hit plus its full tail as audio.
3. Select the clip, press Rev in Clip view (or R with the clip selected in Arrangement). The tail is now a swell.
4. Drag the clip so the end (the original transient, now at the end) sits exactly on the downbeat where the real hit plays. Turn off Warp or set Warp mode to Complex so transients don't smear.
5. Auto Filter HP at 250 Hz and a volume fade-in: the first 50 % of the swell is nearly inaudible, so the drop still feels like it comes from silence.
6. For a reverse cymbal: same, but the source is a crash and you often skip the reverb — the crash's own 2–3 s decay reversed is enough. Shorten with the clip's end marker; a 1-bar reverse crash is the standard.

Variations: Reverse the whole last bar of the drum loop (a jungle/breakbeat staple). Reverse a Granulator III freeze. Automate Spectral Time Freeze on the reversed clip for a frozen smear that holds until the downbeat.

Impact: layered kick + noise + reverb + Drum Buss Boom

The "boom" on beat 1 of the drop. An impact is a kick with a longer tail, a noise burst for the top, and a short room that glues them.

1. Layer 1 — body: a kick sample pitched down 3–7 semitones in Drum Sampler, Decay long (800 ms+). Or Operator: sine, pitch envelope Initial +36 st, decay 60 ms, amp decay 900 ms.
2. Layer 2 — crack: Operator Osc A Noise, amp A 0, D 150 ms, through Auto Filter BP at 2 kHz, Res 30 %. This is the "slap" that cuts through on small speakers.
3. Layer 3 — sub thud: Operator sine at 45 Hz, no pitch env, amp D 400 ms. Mono. Keep it −6 dB under the kick layer; it fills the hole a short kick leaves.
4. Drum Buss on the rack: Boom at 50 Hz with Decay around 50 % adds a resonant sub ring — it is literally the device's job. Drive 30 % Soft, Transients +20 %.
5. Hybrid Reverb: Quartz algorithm, decay 1.5 s, Dry/Wet 25 %, low-cut the reverb at 150 Hz with its built-in EQ so the sub stays dry.
6. Saturator Analog Clip, then Limiter at −0.3 dB; impacts are allowed to be the loudest thing in the track for 100 ms.

Variations: Cinematic — add a Spectral Time freeze of the impact tail, 4 bars long, as the drop's atmosphere. Trap — pitch the body layer to the 808 root and shorten the room. Techno — remove the noise crack, keep body + Boom, mono the whole thing.

Sub drop (Operator pitch envelope down, Drift)

A sine that starts around 100–150 Hz and falls to 30 Hz over 1–2 beats, placed on the last beat of the build or on beat 1 of the drop. Felt in the chest, not heard.

1. Operator Osc A sine, note C0 (32.7 Hz) or the drop root. Pitch envelope: Initial +24 st (or +36 for a longer fall), Peak 0, Decay 500–1500 ms, Amount 100 %. Amp env: A 0, D 1500 ms, S 0.
2. Drift alternative: Osc 1 Sine, Env 2 → Pitch at +24 st in the mod matrix, Env 2 decay 600 ms. Drift's sine has a little more harmonics so a touch of audible top appears on bass-light systems.
3. Saturator Soft Sine 3 dB adds a 2nd harmonic at 65 Hz, making the drop audible on laptop speakers without any real low end.
4. Lowpass at 120 Hz, mono, −6 dB — the sub drop should be felt under the impact, not heard as a note.
5. Place on the last beat before the drop (ending on beat 1) for the "vacuum" feel, or on beat 1 itself for the "landing" feel. Try both; dubstep tends to the former, trap to the latter.

Tape stop and vinyl brake (clip warp, Beat Repeat, Shifter)

The sound of a deck powering down: pitch and speed collapsing together over 1/2 to 2 beats. Three methods, from the most natural to the most controllable.

1. Clip warp method (most natural): resample the last bar of the loop, turn Warp off, and automate the clip's Transpose from 0 to −48 st over the brake length. Because unwarped clips re-pitch and re-speed together, transposing down also slows down, exactly like a stopping tape. Draw the automation as an exponential curve.
2. Shifter method (real time, performable): Shifter Mix 100 %, Pitch automated 0 → −36 st. Shifter pitch-shifts without slowing, so pair it with Auto Filter LP sweeping to 800 Hz and Utility gain falling to −inf to fake the loss of speed. Map all three to one macro for a Push brake button.
3. Beat Repeat method (stuttering brake): Beat Repeat with Grid 1/16, Pitch Decay ramped to max over the repeats, Variation 0, Gate off, Mix Insert. Each repeat is lower than the last: a pitched stutter stop. Good for hyperpop and garage.
4. End the brake 1/16 before the downbeat and cut to silence. The next downbeat with full level is your transient.

Stutters and fills (Beat Repeat)

Beat Repeat on the drum bus (or the whole mix, pre-master) for the 1-bar stutter fill before the drop. Deterministic settings for fills, chance settings for performance.

1. Beat Repeat: Interval 1 bar, Offset 0, Grid 1/16, Chance 100 %, Variation 0, Gate 1 bar, Mix mode Insert (dry signal muted while repeating), Pitch 0, Decay 0.
2. Automate Grid over the fill bar: 1/8 for 2 beats, 1/16 for 1 beat, 1/32 for 2 eighths, 1/64 for the last 1/8. This is the classic "ramping buzz-roll" fill.
3. For a "no repeat" variation set Chance 0 and automate it to 100 % only in the fill bar; the device is otherwise transparent.
4. Auto Filter HP rising to 1 kHz across the fill thins the stutter so the drop's full-range kick feels massive by contrast.
5. Performance: map Chance, Grid and Variation to three Push encoders; Variation set to Trigger and 1/16 grid with Chance 30 % is a usable live fill generator that never plays the same way twice.

Variations: Gate mode with Mix set to Gate for gaps instead of repeats. Pitch −12 with Pitch Decay for a sinking stutter. Chain two Beat Repeats with Grid 1/16 and 1/12 for polyrhythmic rolls.

Granular riser (Granulator III)

Any sample — a vocal, a chord stab, a field recording — turned into a cloud whose density, pitch and scan position rise together. Less "stock" than noise, more organic.

1. Drop a 2–10 s sample into Granulator III. Set a scan rate so the file position travels from start to end across the riser length (or automate the file position directly).
2. Automate Grain size from 40 ms (smooth) down to 6–10 ms (buzzy) — small grains add a sense of pitch-like tension. Spray from 0 to 60 % spreads the grains in time for width.
3. Pitch (coarse) from 0 to +12 st; add FM amount rising from 0 to 30 % in the last bar for the metallic edge.
4. HP sweep and Shimmer reverb as above. Shimmer's pitched feedback adds another ascending layer for free.
5. MPE: with Push 3, pressure → Spray and slide → Pitch gives you a hand-played riser.

Variations: Reverse the whole thing after Freeze/Flatten for a granular downlifter. Drop a kick into the granulator for a rhythmic riser (grain rate synced to tempo in the device).

Spectral Time freeze swells and Hybrid Reverb Shimmer risers

Freeze a chord or a vocal into an infinite spectrum, then automate it open; or feed anything into the Shimmer algorithm with feedback rising until it spirals.

1. Spectral Time in Freeze mode: play one chord, engage Freeze (automate the Freeze button at the chord's attack). Set Fade In so the freeze swells in over 1–2 s instead of jumping.
2. Automate the spectral Tilt from dark to bright across the riser; this is the spectral equivalent of a lowpass sweep but keeps the frozen harmonic structure intact.
3. Optionally switch Spectral Time to Delay mode with Spread and feedback for a smeared, time-stretched riser instead of a static freeze.
4. Hybrid Reverb: Shimmer algorithm, pitch shift +12 st. Automate Decay toward 20 s and the shimmer feedback toward 80 %. Each pass adds another octave; by bar 4 the chord is a ladder of octaves climbing into the air band.
5. Bar before the drop: kill Freeze and the reverb send. The sudden absence of the 20 s tail is the drop.

Echo feedback runaway

Push Echo's feedback past the point of stability on a snare or a stab and let the delay regenerate into a self-oscillating swell. The build that dub producers have done on a Space Echo for 50 years.

1. Echo on a return. Sync, L 3/16, R 1/4 (or Ping Pong 3/16). Feedback 40 %, filter in the feedback path HP 200 Hz, LP 4 kHz so the runaway stays mid-range.
2. Send one hit (snare, stab) into it, then automate Feedback from 40 % to 100 % (Echo allows above 100 % — the sweet spot is 100–110 %) over 2–4 bars. The repeats stop decaying and start growing, filtered and saturated by each pass.
3. Echo's own Noise and Wobble (Character section) at 10–20 % add tape-like instability that makes the runaway sound analogue.
4. Saturator and Limiter after the Echo: the saturator gives the feedback a ceiling and shapes the tone; the limiter protects the master.
5. Automate the HP upward during the swell so the resulting riser thins as it grows; cut feedback to 0 on the downbeat and the tail vanishes instantly.

Variations: Grain Delay with Feedback 90 % and Pitch +7 st automated upward: pitch-shifting feedback that climbs a fifth every repeat — a wash that works as a riser or as a dubby texture. See dub FX & delays.

Resample, reverse, re-process: the FX factory

The most useful FX in a track are usually made from the track itself. Resample a bar of the drop, reverse it, stretch it, filter it, and you have a riser in the song's own timbre.

1. New audio track, Input: Resampling. Record 1–2 bars of the drop (or a single chord, or a vocal line).
2. Reverse the clip, set Warp mode Complex Pro and stretch it to 4× its length (drag the end warp marker, or change the clip's Seg. BPM). Formants and Envelope in Complex Pro at 100 % keep the smear musical.
3. Auto Filter sweep: LP opening over the first half, HP rising over the second half, so the riser starts dark, becomes full, then thins into air.
4. Grain Delay: Pitch +12, Feedback 60 %, Spray 20 ms, Dry/Wet 40 % — the pitched wash doubles the riser an octave up and smears time further.
5. Freeze/Flatten (or Bounce in Place 12.2) into a final clip. Keep it; this riser matches the track's key and timbre by construction.
6. Looper trick: Looper on a return, record one bar of the drop, then set Looper speed to half (−12 st) and reverse — Looper's reverse and speed controls are playable live from Push. Overdub on each pass with Feedback at 80 % to build a decaying wash. See resampling workflow.