What becomes clear through experimentation, or exploration of the many supplied patches, is that Echobode can be both subtle and extreme. MIDI notes can also be used as a modulation source, incidentally, making it possible to ‘play’ the shifter parameter. Below is a tempo-sync’able LFO with a choice of waveforms and the potential to modulate one of four different parameter targets. The top part has all the parameters for the delay and frequency shifter.
#SONIC CHARGE ECHOBODE PATCH#
Instantiated in your DAW, the retro-looking controls are arranged in two main sections, underneath a patch selection area and a useful ‘main menu’ that offers undo/redo, patch randomisation and other commands. That makes it a hell of a lot more useful, and flexible. However, Echobode is not a straight frequency shifter but a delay, with the shifter inside the feedback loop. There are overlaps with ring modulation, which, let’s face it, is not exactly sought-after for general production duties. Pitch shifts up or down, and in the process becomes a rather freakish, metallic, bell-like version of its former self.
Why am I telling you this? Because the Bode Frequency Shifter is the inspiration for the subject of this review, SonicCharge’s Echobode.įrequency shifters differ from pitch-shifters in that they don’t attempt to preserve the harmonic relationships of the source audio. In a list of inventions as long as your favourite patch cable lurk polyphonic, touch-sensitive and modular synths from the ’30s and ’40s and in the ’60s, a ring modulator/frequency shifter/vocoder trio that was licensed to Moog. Harald Bode was perhaps one of the most important audio innovators of the 20th century, but his work is not widely known today.