Are they traditional classical inversions? If Root is set at middle C, turning the knob CW, would the first Voicing change be E4 G4 C5?
Is it more random? Is it not defined in the manual to encourage exploration?
This is a really interesting pedal. I’ve been trying to dial it in in a mix with other things and it’s proving to be challenging. I know there’s a ton of tonal control and gain staging available, but it seems elusive. I’ve had the experience a few times of toggling it off and on, thinking that it really wasn’t doing anything, but then discovered that it was that secret texture that made it sound full, but at the same time seemed muddy.
I also think that if I can get bars or tubes to trigger, that might give me some more definition, but I’m probably not feeding it a percussive of enough sound.
All that said, I am extraordinarily excited about ghosts and hope that my imagination and ear can find the way
EDIT: I found some sweet spots with all the resonators. Voicing is still elusive. I’m not sure I have a handle on Position yet. I’m getting a strategy for tone in general, balancing the resonators with my acoustic sound and it’s coming along.
Not sure if the voicing knob adheres to classic harmony: I would guess that it does. It seems to simply move the frequency of everything higher (you probably noticed this). Of course, it is easiest to track this movement in the highest note of the chord rather than the root, but I would guess that it’s simply shifting everything higher and rearranging the notes to make this happen (maybe some of the middle tones actually move down to allow the root and upper pitch to consistently rise). I’m not really classically trained, though, so take my theory with a grain of salt.
We didn’t spell out every single voicing step in the manual because we wanted the voicing control to be something you explore by ear. That said, it’s not random.
The Voicing knob behaves like an inversion sweep. As you turn it clockwise, the lowest note(s) in the stack get raised by an octave, one at a time, and the transitions are smoothed. So conceptually, yes it is classical inversion. The mental model of “root position → first inversion” is correct, but applied to 6-voice stacks (often with doubled notes and tiny detunes).
If you’d rather define your own harmony, drive Ghosts with MIDI and send your own chord shapes / reharmonize on the fly.
What the chord shapes are:
Below are the six-note voicings we use for each chord type. The numbers are semitone offsets from the root (0 = root, 12 = +1 octave). Small values like 0.01 / 11.99 are intentional detunes / near-unisons.
OCT: 0.00, 0.02, 0.01, 11.99, 12.00, 12.01
5: 0.00, 0.01, 7.00, 7.01, 14.00, 21.00
sus4: 0.00, 2.00, 5.00, 5.01, 10.00, 12.00
m: 0.00, 3.00, 7.00, 7.01, 12.00, 15.00
m7: 0.00, 3.00, 7.00, 10.00, 12.00, 12.01
m9: 0.00, 3.00, 7.00, 10.00, 12.00, 14.00
m11: 0.00, 3.00, 7.00, 10.00, 14.00, 17.00
69: 0.00, 4.00, 7.00, 9.00, 12.00, 14.00
M9: 0.00, 4.00, 7.00, 11.00, 12.00, 14.00
M7: 0.00, 4.00, 7.00, 11.00, 12.00, 16.00
M: 0.00, 4.00, 4.01, 7.00, 12.00, 12.01
Example: OCT is basically a detuned octave stack spanning ~2 octaves. Turning Voicing CW gradually “lifts” the lowest notes up an octave one by one, so the stack reorders like an inversion.
Why does it work like this?
We wanted the Chord knob to feel like a harmonic arc as you sweep through it: simpler / unison-y → more tense (up to m11) → release (69 / major family). The voicings are intentionally a bit clustered because it made the progression and voice-leading feel smoother.
I’ve been finding the m7 and m9 to be consistently beautiful on a wide range of tunings and chords, but am finding nice sounds on others as well. Thanks for the explanation.
