If you trace music production audio effects history you will find that most audio effects are combined through the foundation of delay. Chorus, Phaser and Flanger, just to name a few, use delay to achieve its effects. Delays have been used in every audio recording since the early days of audio effects. It can make things sound bigger in a mix. They can also be used on mastering, mostly to fix stereo image problems, but doing it wrong can ruin your precious song, as we all know that too much of everything is not good.

They can be applied on anything, from instruments to vocals, but a lot of online music production lessons will tell you not to use it on bass instruments. A bass guitar can benefit with a subtle amount of delay, and for example, take a mono delay with eighth note delays can pump like a bass guitarist doing a straight eighth riff. To get the most out of 'em use them in a send/Fx channel with an Eq cut at around 250MHz to 500MHz to remove any muddiness and add some bite at around 2KHz to 3KHz, and with this settings you create more space in your mix.

If you're using delay on Vocals cut 2KHz, on the delay, to remove sibilance. Here is an effective music production lesson for vocals I learned from Willie Els, one of the best music Producers /Engineers:

Create an FX channel, insert your favorite delay effect (I still love the legendary Lexicon) and use automation on High Pitched Notes, and to rap it off, use a high pass filter; this effect can even benefit a bad performance and the results are mind blowing.

And always remember that these online free music production lessons are just a guideline, maybe they might not work on the type of material you currently working on, so take whatever you take and leave whatever you don't need.
Happy Delaying!

For more professional music production lessons visit http://musicproduction-and-djing-lessons.blogspot.com/.

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