Three delay riffs

As U2 plan a summer tour celebrating the joshua tree’s 30-year anniversary we thought we’d look at the effect that defines the genius of the edge…

Yes, to celebrate Dave Evans’ favourite effect this month we’re looking at three riffs that use delay. But not just a generic, textural sound, where the delay’s primary job is simply to fatten the tone – instead, all three of this month’s riffs use timed delays. The idea is that if you know a song’s tempo you can set a delay effect to repeat with a specific timing (measured in milliseconds) altering your rhythms with quantised accuracy. All you need to know is the song tempo and the delay time in milliseconds.

Broadly speaking, you’ll either time the repeats to fall on the other notes you play or in between them (these ideas do overlap, of course). In the first scenario you can effectively harmonise with yourself (such as in Foo Fighters’ Aurora); the second option is a more rhythmic approach - The Edge transforms eighth note riffs into 16th note rhythms by timing notes to fall in between.