As people who’ve been visiting this site regularly know, I’ve been working on some heavy metal sounds for harp, sometimes using multiple Digitech RP devices running in series and/or parallel. I made a couple of brief recordings that show where the new sounds are going.

Heavy Metal 1 is a multi-pedal patch. The RP355 is running a patch that includes an Octavia distortion model and a low octave double. That sound is processed by an RP255 running nothing but a wide vibrato effect, with the footpedal set to control vibrato speed.

Heavy Metal 2 features a similar patch on the RP355. I’m working the pitch shifter via the expression pedal, moving the doubled tone between two octaves down and an octave down. I don’t hear myself doing anything on the RP255–which makes sense, because I can only work one pedal at a time.

I like the way that tongued rhythms wind up sounding like strumming on muted guitar strings with these patches. I like these big distorted tones. I’ll be providing these patches to my customers soon. Stay tuned for more radical sounds.