Cubase 14: Ambient Guitar Sound Design

Add a little Shimmer to your guitar for instant ambience.

Use Cubase’s Shimmer and Studio Delay to create atmospheric guitar tones!

In Cubase 14, Steinberg added two new creative effects plug‑ins to the Pro and Artist versions: Shimmer, which is an unconventional reverb effect with some delay built in; and Studio Delay, a quirky stereo delay with, you guessed it, a bit of reverb built in. Both have the potential to transform almost any source in some interesting ways, and in this workshop I’ll focus on one possible application: creating ambient guitar tones.

Target Practice

A quick web search for ‘ambient guitar music’ will throw up diverse musical possibilities, ranging from the pioneering work of Brian Eno to more contemporary albums from Tycho, From Somewhere Quiet and Adam Dodson. Ambient music compositions don’t have to be guitar led, of course, but when guitar is featured, creative effects are often important to the sound — and unconventional use of both reverb and delay are often a big part of those effects. For instance, you might manipulate the harmonic content of the reverb and/or delay, to create a pad‑like sound. Or the reverb or delay might be processed to give it a very analogue or lo‑fi nature, making the tonality very different from the main guitar sound itself.

This sound design process obviously encourages experimentation with effects, and Shimmer and Studio Delay are ideal candidates for this. So, starting with just a simple clean electric guitar tone, courtesy of Cubase’s stock VST Amp Rack plug‑in, just how ambient can we get? Can we transform a guitar into a pad? Can we create delays from our guitar source that bring a new sonic texture to the overall sound? Sure we can! I’ll explain how below, and if you want to hear the results for yourself, you’ll find audio examples on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-1125.

Using just its amp and cab modules, the stock VST Amp Rack plug‑in is all you need to run your DI’ed guitar through before applying Shimmer or Studio Delay.

Visit My Pad

Shimmer isn’t the most versatile creative effects plug‑in that I’ve ever used, but it’s great for adding a ‘shimmering’ pad‑like effect to a guitar sound. It uses a combination of reverb and delay, while pitch‑shift and filtering in the effect’s feedback loop influence the tonality of the ‘shimmer’.

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