Hello and welcome to this week's tutorial! Today we're going to talk about an interesting technique used by some famous producer, which can be easily replied on our DAW, and that allows us to apply an effect on a track, mantaining all the clarity and the transient of the original sound.
The Wet/Dry/Wet trick it's a variation of the Parallel Processing system (also known as the New York Trick), but the Parallel processing is used mainly for Compression, while this technique is more suited to effect a track with a Delay or similar effects, and it's best suited for a central guitar (such a Lead Guitar), for a Snare Drum or for Vocals.
How does it work?
We have to create TWO mono FX Tracks, (instead of just one, as it happens with Parallel Processing), and to Pan them as much as you want in the stereo field, one left and one right (that's why we need a central instrument).
Now we must load on these two tracks the same effect, for example a Delay and select the amount of effect to be fed on the fx send of out track on a pretty low level: it has to be heard but it must not completely cover our original sound; Equalize the effect track, if needed, to select the frequency range to affect: usually the area that benefits most of Delay is the one that goes from 150hz to 2000hz, if we effect too much the low end, it's gonna become muddy and resonant.
Now comes into play the reason why we created two tracks instead of one: we're going to apply different settings on the two Delays.
This really goes according to the taste, but if they're tempo synced we can for example switch the rhythm of one of them into a polyrhythm (e.g. 5/4), or we can set one delay on quarter notes and one on eight notes, and so on.
Once we have achieved a thick, interesting double layer of delay, it's time to regulate the right amount of effect to feed to our track: remember that our aim is to keep the original dry sound loud and clear and just to apply, underneath, the effect tail, to give it that cutting through, professional, non-soaked effected feel that can be heard on the best productions.
Hope this was useful :)
