Recording - April 2013 - 38

Moog 500 Series Ladder Filter

In use
Starting with the obvious, the Ladder is
excellent at glurpy, chirpy and syrupy
tones, accents and sweeps. It is perfect for
sound design and electronic music. In this
setting, due to the stated lack of LFO, CV
and MIDI control, sweeps of this nature
must be performed manually, “played”
and recorded in real time. Speaking of
playing the Ladder, setting the resonance
to full will make it self-oscillate; you can
then add some delay and/or reverb, and
by tweaking the frequency and envelope
knobs you can simulate some nice 1950s
Theremin goodness.
But that strange and tweaky side of the
Ladder’s character would come as no surprise to anyone; the real juicy surprises for
recording musicians come when we start
thinking of it as a hand-tweakable tool for
more conventional tracking. The Ladder
can be a straightforward but great-sounding high- or lowpass filter, a harmonic
exciter, or an analog overdrive... and
thanks to its envelope settings it can also
give the illusion of compression and

expansion, without actually doing either!
Let’s examine some applications you
might not have expected.
Drums: On a drum bus, you get everything
from rubbery, slippery, animated drums to
thick, low, accentuated bass throbbing. On a
kick drum you can accentuate the clicky hit,
thin out the drum for more of a loose open vintage sound, and of course turn an acoustic
drum into a synthy sub-bass hit.
On snare the Ladder is an instant fix for
an anemic drum tone, adding grit and
width. Or it can also give the illusion of a
classic gate effect by tightening up a
snare hit, but without the hard and unnatural cutoff.
Bass: The Ladder loves bass! It can
highlight pick or string attack, or do the
opposite, making the bass more rubbery
and pillowy. It can fill out the low end in
a rich harmonic way that can be subtle or
drastic. It can add a subtle pulsing movement akin to pumping on a compressor.
You can also dig into the Drive section for
everything from simple heightened harmonics to full-on gritty synth bass.

Acoustic guitar: Yes, I did say acoustic
guitar! Here it can add boom to the body
or highlight the strumming. Highpass mode
adds a nice sonic ear candy to the top
while simultaneously removing unwanted
rumble and noise below the cutoff.
Electric guitar: A few months back in our
most recent Mastering issue (November
2012), we highlighted an album that I
mixed by Chicago indy rockers Camera. I
received my review pair of Ladders right at
the end of mixing sessions for the album,
and while we were all excited to use them
to mangle some drums and add freaky
treatments to the mix, it was actually the
subtle use of the Ladder on electric guitars
that saved the day.
A few of the Camera songs feature a
guitar strumming style that is a cross
between Ska and a 1950s surf style; it
was not popping out effectively in the mix.
Simple volume rides and eq often yielded
too little or too much, while compression
killed the vibe altogether. Here the Ladder
did the trick by gently pulsing the frequency forward and accentuating the sound of
the pick on the strings. It was super-subtle,
but just right in the mix. Amazing!
The 2-bus: I didn’t think the Ladders
would have much use on an entire mix
(well, other than in electronica or an overthe-top remix, perhaps), but I tried them on
some gritty Americana, indie rock, and
http://www.cras.edu http://www.cras.edu http://www.audiorecordingschool.com/consumer.html
Recording - April 2013

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