REV harnesses the magic of reverse sounds and simplifies the process of creating and modulating them. The instrument and timed-instrument engines make creative sound design a cinch. Let’s take a quick look at how you can play free or lock to tempo in REV to create wildly different results.
When you open REV’s Instrument engine, you can freely play with any of its sounds. They aren’t locked to the master tempo, so the flexibility to create moving melodies and unusual soundscapes are all yours.
Each sound is divided into two layers. You can see both waveforms in the center of the instrument panel. The Global Sample Start filter located under the waveforms allows you to set where the sample begins. So, you can transform a dreamy pad into staccato glitchy madness. You can also map this parameter to your MIDI device to play with it on the fly.
When you switch to REV’s Timed Instrument engine, everything is tempo-synced to your project file. This makes it easy to create rhythmic movement in your synths and get a sidechained sound without a compressor.
The Timed Instrument engine replaces Global Sample Start with a note duration filter. Set the length of a sound at a whole note for slower movement. Or get quicker pulses with a half or quarter note. When you map this control to a knob on your MIDI device, you can create captivating variations just by playing with the note length.
Note length modulations are global, but that doesn’t mean you’re locked into the way each synth layer sounds. The Layer 1 and Layer 2 tabs offer loads of ways to mutate and mold presets. When you consider all the ways you can mix and match modulations on each layer of sound, it’s clear how quickly you can create intricate sound design in REV.
