Clip: Iron Ether Polytope

I love it when I sit in front of a pedal for the first time and it takes me a while to get to fully understand the controls and its capabilities. (Simplicity is priceless, but where’s the fun in just setting the ‘drive’ and ‘level’ knobs?) The Polytope is one of those pedals.

The basic idea behind it is that, in the world of synthesizers, of adding a second oscillator with the same pitch but slightly detuned to thicken the sound. Iron Ether calls it a quad-voice pitch detuner. It is not a pitch shifter nor a harmonizer: you can’t musically control the pitch of the notes, but how much they’re out of tune. Massive, extremely shimmery, elegant sounds can be achieved with it. The Polytope is for those of you not afraid of sounding digital.

[The last 30 seconds of noise (from 3:53 to 4:22) are dedicated to filmmaker Albert Serra]

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