Lesson 2

Instruments and effects

Phonon has no instrument type and no effect type. Every module is handed the same things and asked the same question, and what it is depends entirely on what it does with them.

One job, three answers

Every module on a track is given the same two things: the audio so far, and the notes so far. It can change either, both or neither before passing them on.

That is the whole of it, and it leaves room for three answers:

Write audio. The module reads the notes it was given and makes sound out of them. That is what we call an instrument.
Change audio. The module takes the sound that arrived and alters it. That is an effect.
Touch only the notes. The module leaves the audio exactly as it found it and writes notes for whatever comes below. That is a generator.

Nothing enforces which one a module is, because there is nothing to enforce. A module that both makes a sound and colours what reached it is perfectly ordinary, and several do exactly that.

The categories in the browser are a filing system for you, not a type the engine checks. They are a reliable guide - something under Reverb will behave like a reverb - but they describe a habit rather than a rule.

Which is why order is the wiring

The audio is not copied from module to module. It is changed in place as it goes down the chain, so each module gets whatever the one above it left behind, and there is no other connection to make. You do not patch an instrument into an effect. You put the effect below it.

Neither of these is an error and both will play. Audio is changed in place as it goes down the chain, so a module only ever gets what the one above it left - put an effect above the instrument and you have given it silence to work on. The Gain is the track's fader and stays at the bottom on its own; anything you add goes in above it.

The version on the right is worth sitting with, because it is the mistake this arrangement makes possible and it does not announce itself. Nothing errors. The track plays. The reverb is definitely running - it is simply reverberating the silence it was handed, because the instrument that makes the sound has not run yet. What comes out is a dry bass, and the reverb you added looks like it is not working.

The rule that avoids it is short: an instrument goes above everything meant to colour it.

The Gain at the bottom

Every track you make arrives with a Gain already in it, and it sits at the end of the chain. It is the track's fader: the level and pan you see in the mixer are this module.

You do not have to work around it. Anything you add is placed above it automatically, so the fader stays last however many modules you pile on. That is worth knowing mainly so that its position does not look like an accident you should tidy up.

Reordering, and what it costs

Drag a module up or down within its track and you have rewired it, because in this arrangement the order is the wiring. That is the useful half of one structure doing both jobs: trying a filter before a distortion rather than after is a drag, not a repatch.

The same move between tracks costs nothing at all. Tracks are summed, so their order in the tree is yours to arrange for reading.