Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and producer Nymphlord told us about her plug-in love.
Nymphlord: The music tech tool that I absolutely can’t live without is Crystallizer, a granular delay plug-in from SoundToys. I think it might actually be the first plug-in I ever purchased, because when I first started learning to produce I set a rule for myself that said I could only buy a plug-in once I learned how to recreate the sound it would make using only Logic stock plug-ins. If that process was too complex, labor intensive, or lackluster, then I would buy the plug-in, hopefully learning a bit of sound science along the way. Crystallizer met that bar easily. I love how expansive and endless it feels even though it’s just one little box on the screen. (Not to mention the sentimental, it being the first big plug-in purchase I ever made!)
I’ve used Crystallizer on almost all of my tracks, whether it’s in its simplest form as an echo or a doubler, or in more creative ways, like making a beautiful bed that, with reverb layered on top, creates this imperceptible glow under any instrument. I love how easily it can be pushed from beauty to terror through something as simple as turning up the repeat knob, you end up with a warm drone or a screeching feedback swell. On ‘Star’, my most recent single, I used Crystallizer to make a bunch of weird pitch shifted vocal delays. I love it. This sounds like an ad. But it's not an ad, haha.
Nymphlord's "Star" is out now via Lauren Records.
Photo Credit: Tessa Tinglof
