Tempo-synced delay
Concept · First taught in PK3 Echo (Pluck)
An echo against a stone wall, except the wall is timed to the song.
▸What it is
Delay records the signal and plays it back after a set time, optionally feeding part of the delayed signal back into itself for repeats. When the delay time is synced to the song tempo — eighth note, dotted eighth, sixteenth — the repeats fall on musical subdivisions and lock to the groove. Mix sets how loud the repeats are; feedback decides how many you get before they fade. Ping-pong delay alternates repeats between left and right channels, widening the stereo image. Used carefully, delay adds rhythm and depth without making the source sound effected; pushed harder, the repeats become part of the riff itself.
▸Questions
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Eighth note vs dotted eighth — which sounds better?
Dotted-eighth delays sit between the beat and create the classic U2/The Edge bounce. Straight eighth or sixteenth feels more locked-in and rhythmic. Both are common — pick by feel.
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How is delay different from reverb?
Delay produces discrete repeats you can hear individually. Reverb is a dense cloud of reflections that blur into a single tail.
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My delay feedback is making everything muddy — what is wrong?
High feedback piles repeats on top of each other. Lower the feedback, lower the mix, or add a low-pass filter inside the delay so the repeats darken as they decay.
▸In the curriculum
First taught
PK3 · Echo — Add slap or ping-pong delay locked to the bed. Part of the Pluck track.
Reused in
The same concept comes back in 1 lesson later in the curriculum, in a new context.
▸Related concepts
Concepts that share a lesson with tempo-synced delay:
Hear what tempo-synced delay does to a sound. The PatchPond studio runs in your browser — load a lesson patch and move the knob this concept controls.
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