Unleash the Chroma Console: The Greatest Sound Design Pedal EVER!

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[Music] hey how's it going all right so right in front of us we have the uh newest release from hologram Electronics the chroma console and after I dropped my first video which was really like the first sounds that I'd made out of it had a lot of comments about this thing being thought of as a multi pedal and while it is it also is not let's get a little bit more of what I'm talking about everything you're hearing right now is coming out of the chroma console completely it's a little Loop that was captured and yeah let's just leave it at that turn it off all right so let's talk about this okay so the chroma console here is um it's really an homage to a lot of the older Studio Effects that really gave you a lot of limitations not as much Headroom or only four four tracks or um you know a lot of noise in the tape things like that and it's one of those things that to best understand it uh you have to think of it in my opinion more as a sound design tool where you embrace the limitations you're not bound to them or Bound by them there's something that help you be more creative so real quick let's just do something real quick let's turn this all off and I think we will just make sure that's there okay all right just double checking some things all right so um let's real quick you have a total of 20 effects that are all labeled here um but they're broken into four different sections so you have the main um they're colorcoded right so the red is your character and that includes Drive sweet and fuzz howl swell yellow is movement a doubler vbr phaser tremolo pitch green is diffusion so Cascade reels space collage and reverse and then blue here um is texture so filter squash cassette broken interference uh the gray is kind of like an overall mix um but in true hologram fashion there's a lot more in here so you can control uh you can control how these are ordered uh um it's not just right to left you can control um which one's first which one's second that sort of thing you can turn them on individually um you can do micro Loops you can do 30 second Loops you can do uh knob recording like KN knob change recordings something they call gesture um so it does a whole lot and let me show you some just some things right um and not like I'm not going to show you how to copy and save and find presets let's you can find that in the manual let's just talk let's just look at like some of the the cool things you can do with this so let's put everything kind of at noon here um for fun noon is always a great place to start except mix that's going to be at about 3:00 um so here's the clean signal I am playing out of my um Fender Custom Shop Telly uh with um a humbucker in the neck and a reversed single in the bridge playing into uh going into the 29 pedals Yuna and then straight into the chroma console my amp so to speak is all in the box it is the Benson Chimera collection um the VST made by mix wve and I'm using Protools to record everything so here's the clean tone and let's take from [Music] there all right so let's talk this through um so you could use it as a multi effect so you could just say oh I just want to fuzz um turn on I just want to fuzz okay well green is fuzz you [Music] got and go more more [Music] fuzz little EQ make it [Music] dark make it [Music] bright so you can it can absolutely be that or you can have it as like a dual effect let's get out of there let's make it just a sweeten sweetener have it pretty there um and let's say I want it to be a reverse Okay so we've got that like that so here's what that sounds [Music] like [Music] right um and like so depending on how you move all these knobs it does different things there's also secondary features of course um you tap these two buttons there it goes like a little aquamarine and then you can adjust sensitivity the drift of things the effect volumes the output level all that fun stuff oh and by the way um when you are diving into some of the second secondary features uh such as um the gesture which is the knob functions the secondary which is the the light gray things there doing your effect setup there's a little uh code right here tells you which of the four buttons to press and it's not a press and hold it's a press so press let go and then to get out of it press and let go again if you press and hold you might go into something deeper that you don't want to do like the global menu so all right um let me just see where the things are at all right so you have a tap Tempo which is cool over there um but it's that's like the momentary part if you hold it down or yeah if it's a normal tap sorry if you hold it down um it will capture a little micr Loop and uh it can capture even either a short Loop and it'll smooth that out make it more of a pad kind of like uh like this let's [Music] um right or you could do a longer [Music] one in that instance it becomes actually like a a loop and that can go up to 30 seconds okay all right so I'm not not uh doing anything wild here yet not uh wowing you um so let's talk about a the sound design function and that's where it really becomes interesting as you start to um build all these sounds together so let's say um I wanted a cassette here the cassette sound you know that's kind of got this Vibe um just G loss [Music] anybody let's go back to the reverse on this one but let's go all the way [Music] up um that's got a little like uh mood slash count of five vibe to [Music] me and I'll show you why make this one the pitch it's [Music] purple [Music] so we now have a pretty cool sound that maybe we wouldn't I mean what what do we call it's like its own little [Music] effect okay so let's say we want to change the order that this is in so you tap the one and four here these buttons and it'll tell you by the way it blinks ah so 1 2 3 4 then it goes blue um and then we can tell what we want to do so let's just go right to left one two three four pretty colors all right so do that something [Music] like all right let's change it up then let's just do like one two three three four uh reverse [Music] it it's a little bit different right a little bit different um a little more drive there okay so let's talk about the the gesture which is uh a way that it you can record your knob movements um it's very similar in a way to the balance control on some of the chase Bliss pedals in my mind um except you can control the rate that this does this via the tap Tempo and you all of your micro movements will be saved so uh gesture is three and four tap and by that I mean like all right so this is the reverse sweep that all the way there but then go back to the middle pitch let's go to Middle back to up middle and down and let's take the sweetener all the way up and then slowly back down and the cassette can go here all the way to the top all right so what this has done is not only it's not only recorded how I turn the knobs like the directions but the speed so let's hear what this is all right so let's just do a little tap one two two all right all right let's see what this sounds like I can already hear some differences just from The Sounds the [Music] noises okay let's do it faster [Music] all right that's pretty pretty rad okay so we got that um we've talked about the gesture control we've talked about the controlling the or of the effects and we've talked about the capture so how do we put all that together to make a completely new sound right let's uh you know let's just do some different things here all right and this is the best part you just kind of get creative turn that one off all right so all right let's see how we how we create some sounds what's this what is this [Music] hold it down in that regard you can kind of hear the um the beat [Music] right all right so let's change the order [Laughter] [Music] right totally changes the sound [Music] n [Music] [Laughter] n [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] he [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] so uh you know I don't really know if I did anything crazy here anything that uh was mind EXP loading but if you feel like this chroma console is just a multi effect I well you're not wrong but I would urge you to look at it a little bit differently how can you create something new with this um you know and of course like you're like oh I just I just want a I just want a triolo pedal like we like we said before we can do that right we can do that just even with tap Tempo [Laughter] [Music] too so we can do that and that's totally fine you know what in that instance it would I could easily see a place where you could put this at the end of your chain or really anywhere in your chain that uh you would say well I don't want to have like a you know I don't want to have a trim pedal by itself I don't want a vbr pedal um I don't want a reverse pedal I don't want a pitch pedal because all of those you would have like 17 pedals um or really 20 pedals in that instance this could actually take take the place of 20 but you can build so much out of it so that's why to me it's not just a multi effect all right as always thanks for hanging out with me and uh let me know what you think um was I Way Off the Mark was I I spot on you tell me so hit like subscribe comment all that fun stuff and we'll see you on the next one peace