# Effects & Signal Routing

**Track:** Audio-Visual & Generative Music — Advanced Creative Coding — proposed (50)
**Framework / surface:** Tone.js
**Level:** Medium
**Prerequisites:** Synthesis Fundamentals

**In one line:** Reverb/delay/distortion, buses, sidechaining.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Effects live in the signal graph between source and output. Delay reflects a signal back after a set interval; reverb convolves it with an impulse response to place it in a modeled space; distortion reshapes its waveform to add harmonics. Routing matters as much as the effects themselves — buses let several voices share one reverb, and sidechaining uses one signal's amplitude to duck another, the pumping that lets a kick carve room for itself in a dense mix. The Web Audio API exposes this as a connectable node graph, which Tone.js wraps. The aesthetic ranges from intimate, dry presence to vast, blurred, cathedral-scale depth.