How To Dial Up a Massive Ambient Tone for Worship Guitar
One of the questions we frequently receive is about achieving that big, ambient tone that’s perfect for worship guitar. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the specific effects and settings I use to create this sound. Let’s dive in!
Setting the Stage
Before we get into the technical details, let’s first listen to a snippet where I use the ambient patch:
Tone Breakdown
The key to creating this ambient tone lies in carefully combining several effects: compression, chromatic pitch, different types of delay, and a lush reverb.
Compression
Compression helps in leveling out the dynamics and adding sustain to the notes. Here are the settings I use:
- Intensity: 5.1
- Attack: 6.4
- Squash: 1.6
Chromatic Pitch
This effect adds an octave higher and lower voices subtly:
- Mix: -23.9%
- Voice balance: 15.8%
Delay
I use two types of delay to enrich the sound:
- First Delay: 80% mix, 74% feedback, with some pitch modulation.
- Second Delay: 30% mix, with quarter note delay and a 17% feedback.
Reverb
The cornerstone of the ambient tone:
- Mix: 100%
- Decay time: 12.69 seconds
- Pre-delay: 214 milliseconds
The pre-delay ensures that the initial dry signal is heard before the reverb kicks in, creating a spacious feel without muddying the initial attack of the notes.
Putting It All Together
To get the full picture of how I put this sound together on my Kemper, watch the full breakdown video below:
I hope this breakdown has shed some light on how to achieve a massive ambient tone for worship guitar!
