Soft Rains and the Smell of the Ground | Textural Reverb

Soft Rains and the Smell of the Ground is a big washy textural reverb pedal that can sound pretty and lush and also sound brash and chaotic. It features a momentary feedback loop that can sustain reverb trails into a long evolving smeared pad or swell into blasts of feedback and walls of sound. Soft Rains is great for running into distortion pedals to fill out a lot of space in a mix and make the spaces between notes feel full of life and movement. Its the pedal I wanted for a new band where I want to play fewer notes but have them feel like there is much more going on. Plus the name is a reference to a Ray Bradbury poem and that's fun and educational. Lets look at the controls:

Reverb - Sets the level of the reverb signal that gets mixed into your chain

Bass - Cuts or boosts the low end of the mixed wet and dry signals

Treble - Cuts or boost the presence and treble of the mixed wet and dry signals

Decay - Sets the decay time of the reverberations from small room sounds to expansive and dramatic long trails

Texture - This control changes the operation of the reverb engine in multiple ways. Fully clockwise the pre-delay is shortest and the diffusion of the reverb effect is most dense. As you roll this control counter-clockwise the amount of diffusion goes down and the reverb effect becomes more clearly comprised of separate delay lines. The reverb effect also narrows in dynamic range and the effect becomes grainier and can even distort on attack transients. Because this control affects the clock frequency in the reverb engine, the pitch of the existing information in the trails will go up or down depending on which way you move the control.

Expand - Sets the amount of signal that is cycled back through the processor when you press the Expand switch

Bypass (left foot switch) - True bypass switching brings the reverb effect in and out of your signal path.

Expand (right foot switch) - Activates a momentary feedback loop that cycles signal through the processor repeatedly. The Decay and Expand controls are interactive and can be set for a range of effects from controlled infinite decay to instant screaming oscillation. Go wild!