A canyon.
You stand at its edge, lean forward, and shout.
The sound leaves you, racing into stone and shadow. It comes back—changed. Softer. Later. A reflection of yourself stretched across time. This is delay.

But in music, delay is not just echo. It is dialogue. A conversation between the sound and its ghost. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it shouts back in rhythmic precision. Sometimes it trails endlessly until it dissolves into nothing. Every repeat carries a choice, and every choice reshapes the song.

Chris and Jody invite you into this canyon of echoes. Together they rappel into its depths, lanterns in hand, exploring the many chambers delay has carved into the history of recorded sound.

They begin with types. Analog delays, warm and decaying like fading footsteps. Tape delays, wobbling and imperfect, rich with the nostalgia of reels spinning. Digital delays, pristine and exact, each repeat a mirror with no cracks. Ping-pong delays, bouncing like voices across canyon walls. Slapback delays, short and brash, the swagger of rockabilly ghosts. Each type has a personality, a flavor, a way of coloring the song’s atmosphere.

But types are only the start. The true power lies in time. The choice of milliseconds changes everything. A short slapback can make a vocal punch forward, bold and present. A dotted-eighth delay can weave rhythm into guitar lines, turning simple notes into hypnotic patterns. A long, decaying delay can stretch a single phrase into a landscape, where sound becomes mood and mood becomes memory.

Delay is not passive. It is a sculptor. It shapes space within the mix. Too much, and the canyon drowns in noise. Too little, and the track feels dry, stripped of dimension. The art is in balance—choosing when to let the echoes step forward, and when to pull them back behind the curtain.

Chris and Jody also explore the practical: the way a producer sets up sends and returns, the way feedback and filters can tame or exaggerate repeats, the way delays interact with reverb to create depth—or chaos. They talk about pushing delays into delays, creating fractals of echoes that spin outward like ripples on water. These are tricks that can turn ordinary sounds into something cinematic.

Yet, beyond the knobs and settings, delay is a feeling. It can make a song intimate, as if the singer is sitting across from you, words bouncing gently off the walls. It can make a song vast, stretching out into infinite space, every repeat a reminder that music doesn’t end when the note stops—it lingers, it breathes, it returns.

So, come canyoneering with Chris and Jody. Step into the slot canyons of sound. Learn not only what delays are and how they work, but how to use them as paintbrushes, storytellers, mirrors. Because in the end, delay is more than an effect. It is time bent into music. And the echoes you send into the canyon might just come back as something greater than you imagined.

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Gear we used:
Jody’s Mic & Voice Chain: Telefunken C12 – Groove Tubes Vipre – Apollo – UA Neve 1073 – UA LA2A – UA Studer A800
Jody’s Channel Strip: iZotope RX Spectral DeNoise – iZotope RX Mouth DeClick – UA Neve 1073 – UA LA2A – UA 1176E

Chris’ Mic & Voice Chain: Slate ML1 – Apollo – UA – Slate VMR (FG12, FG73, API Eq, SSL 4kE) – iZotope RX Voice – DeNoise
Chris’ Channel Strip: Eventide Precision Time Align – iZotope RX Spectral DeNoise – iZotope RX Mouth DeClick – UA Neve 1073 – UA LA2A – UA 1176E

Master: Oek Sound Soothe 2 – iZotope Ozone Imager – iZotope Ozone Maximize.

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If you want to collaborate, sponsor a podcast, donate, or want us to review your product – contact us at: collaborate@insidetherecordingstudio.com