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Your first sound

This walks through TREM, which every install can play, then touches the other two modes.

Set up

Put Bent Spool on a track that carries sound, as an insert effect. A sustained note, a pad or a guitar shows it best. Bent Spool takes mono or stereo input and returns stereo. A mono source is copied to both sides.

The pedal face has six knobs and a mode switch. Out of the box the controls sit at: DRIVE 15%, MODE on TREM, SHAPE 30%, CHAOS 20%, WEAR 25%, MIX 50%, SYNC off.

A clean pulse

  1. Set MODE to TREM.
  2. Turn CHAOS and WEAR fully down, and DRIVE fully down. This leaves just the pulse.
  3. Turn MIX fully up. Now you hear only the tremolo.
  4. Play a held note. The centre knob is labeled RATE in TREM. Turn it and the readout in the bottom left of the face shows the speed in Hz, between 0.5 and 12.
  5. Turn SHAPE from left to right. The pulse moves from a rounded sine through triangle and pluck to a hard square.
  6. Turn MIX back down to blend the pulse with the unprocessed signal.

On the back panel, DEPTH sets how deep the dips go and PHASE offsets the right channel's pulse from the left. Use BACK to get there and FRONT to return.

Lock it to the tempo

Flip SYNC on. The centre knob now steps through note lengths instead of Hz, and the readout shows them: 1/1 at the slow end up to 1/64. In TREM one pulse lasts one note length. Bent Spool reads the tempo from your host. With a host transport rolling, the pulse peaks land on the beat.

Add movement

Raise CHAOS a little. In TREM the pulse starts to drift, skip a cycle, or hang for a moment. At the top of the knob it breaks a cycle into several held pulses. See CHAOS.

Raise WEAR and the output picks up tape wobble, saturation and noise. See WEAR.

Try the other modes

Click REPEAT or LOOPS on the mode switch. On iPhone and iPad these are part of the unlock, with a 15 second preview.

  • In REPEAT, play a short note or pluck. The centre knob is now TIME, the spacing between copies. SHAPE chooses the pitch of the copies. See REPEAT.
  • In LOOPS, play something for a few seconds. The centre knob is now LENGTH. SHAPE spreads the voices across pitch, direction and stereo. See LOOPS.

Start from a preset

Tap the arrows at the top of the pedal to step through the factory presets. Tap the name to open the list. See Presets and the factory preset list.