I’m a huge fan of ambient textures and their use in post rock, progressive, & experimental genres. I’ve found that these textures are functional in worship; however, the content of the ambience can’t be the same.

When using a guitar ambience, or any effect during worship, you don’t want the focus to be on you or your crafty sound, but rather the prayer, meditation, or sermon you’re augmenting. The ambience serves as a foundation & often a transition point for worship no matter where it occurs in the service.

In this setting, to not take any glory away from the Holy Spirit — I keep my ambience settings to not much more than reverb & delay in conjunction with a volume pedal. In my settings below, you’ll notice I do use a mod delay as well as a light, slow oscillating, phaser; however, it’s barely noticeable in the video clip below.

Here is a sum of the settings I use to achieve this effect.

• Light Crunch — About 11 o’clock on Drive & Bass, Mid & Treble at 12 o’clock
• Spring Reverb — 100% mix, 80% decay, pre-delay about 150ms
• Analog Chorus — Speed about 0 or 1 (an extremely low setting), 70% deep, about 50% mix
• Analog Delay + Mod about 670ms decay, feed back about 80% (definitely keep high), mod setting (if available) very low 0 or 1, 75% depth, mix 80%
• Reverb (not totally necessary) — 0 pre-delay, decay — 50%, mix — 42%

All the above used in conjunction of a Volume Pedal