Top 10 Reverb Tips and Tricks
With reverb, you can make or break a space
Imagine listening to a recording and half a minute into a song you notice something wrong. You can’t quite put your finger on it; you just can’t feel the instruments, you feel attacked by the singer’s in-your-face voice and everything is just too…..dry. It’s like listening to music in a vacuum. There’s no space.
Although listening to a reverb-free record is nearly impossible, (unless it was recorded entirely in an anechoic chamber), you can still have a really dry record if you don’t put any reverb on anything.
Reverb can be perceived as a glue that holds everything together, yet retains enough space to maintain a perceived distance between each element. It makes a three dimensional picture of the soundscape you just recorded, causing you to feel that you can hear the room accompanied by the instrument.
Different modes of reverb
There are quite a few different types of reverb. You can call them reverb modes, or room types. Some of the more common types include; Room, Hall, Chamber, Spring, Plate, and Convolution. In our age, we have access to digital reverb simulators which can simulate, quite realistically, all of these programmed room or reverb modes. Let’s take a look.
- Room reverb – These types simulate the sound of having recorded something in a room. Whether the parameters are for a big room or a drum room, they usually simulate smaller spaces than their Hall/Chamber counterparts.
- Hall reverb – Rich, warm and big are the first adjectives that come to mind when thinking about Hall reverb. These types simulate halls, whether they be medium halls, concert halls, or whatever lush parameter name the hall has.
- Plate reverb – Plate reverb is a personal favorite of mine for vocals. Live, I propably use it too much, but I just think it does wonder to the vocals, without taking it too far or drowning it in reverb. Plate reverb is basically sound being sent to a metal plate which vibrates back and forth. These vibrations are picked up and transformed into an audio signal. Plate reverbs are very bright but clean, so they suit vocals especially.
- Spring reverb – I was once asked what reverb was when I was fooling around with my guitar. I cranked up the reverb on my small practice amp and then kicked it. “That boing you heard?” “Yeah?” “That’s reverb”. Although true is some form, that boing wasn’t all reverb, it was spring reverb. The reverb found on guitar amps so most usually used for guitar.
- Chamber reverb – In the old days, studios had so called echo chambers. In these chambers they had speakers that they routed the audio signal that they wanted to put reverb on. The signal, be it guitar, voice or whatever was produced through the speakers into the chamber and picked up by a microphone that was positioned to capture the reverb in said chambers.
- Convolution reverb – This is the type of reverb that allows digital emulation of real three-dimensional spaces. If you’re familiar with the famous reverb plugin Altiverb, then you have heard convolution reverb. In order to capture a room’s reverb characteristics, an “impulse” sound is played in a real space, such as an opera house or a cathedral, then recorded into a computer. The impulse sound allows the computer to simulate that space just from the impulse sound. This is possibly the best kind of digital reverb around
So now you know a little bit about the reverb modes you most commonly work with. Below I have brainstormed a few fun tips you can use whenever you like to spice things up.
- A different take on reverse reverb:
You all know the classic reverse reverb, where the reverse seems to swoosh in before the phrase of the singer or the hit of the drum. A neat trick for something different is to record an infinite reverb on a different track and then reverse it. For example, say you have a slow intermission type middle part and the part before ends on a snare hit. You can record that last snare hit on a different track with a big cathedral like reverb with infinite decay. Then you can reverse the audio part and put it low in the mix, then you have a weird controlled reverbed ambience filling out your slow part. - Gated Reverb on vocals:
Gated-reverb on vocals is something I think is pretty cool. I think this is used on the song On call, by Kings of Leon. His vocal reverb stays on while singing but cuts off abruptly when he stops. You patch your effect processor to a gate and the sound source is side-chained to the gate. That way, the gate opens and lets the reverb out whenever the singer is singing, but cuts off as soon as the sound level dips below the threshold of the gate. - Making things feel bigger and bigger:
Say you have a really spaced out Sigur Ros rock outro(I’m Icelandic, I’ve got to namedrop here) and the drums are going wild in the end. It can be fun experimenting with automating the reverb so the drums, or maybe only the snare, or everything, whatever you choose, gets bigger and bigger. I know for a fact that this can work wonders live to really give that last song a huge impact on the audience. - Pan it:
Use mono reverbs for a mono sound source and pan them to a different location in the mix. It can give an interesting impression. - Put space between source and reverb:
Using a standard room reverb, adjust the pre-delay to give the impression it is a little big bigger without making it linger too long. On vocals for example, it can give space between the singing and the reverb. - Reverb only:
Send your drums to a big reverb and solo-safe the reverb. That way you are only hearing the reverb and not the original sound source. It can make for a cool fade-in intro for a song. Especially if you add reverse reverb for the change into the real drum kit. - Mix it up:
Use different types of reverb on the same source. Mixing a couple of types of reverb can create an interesting effect. - Don’t use any:
Keep some instruments reverb-free. It can add an interesting contrast to the rest of the song. It can put a solo intrument to the forefront in a special way. - Add other effects:
Add other types of effects on the aux channel where you have your reverb. Try distorting it, phasing it or anything else you can think of. - Use REAL reverb:
Try ditching your plugins and use real reverb. Upload your audio clips to Silophone, an old grain silo that has been converted into a do-it-yourself reverb chamber. You upload audio and it is played back in the empty silo, then recorded and sent back to you as a download.
I’ve decided to do an example of tip #7. I’ve taken a small snare sample and put two types of reverbs on it via an aux send. I used the Logic presets “Ambience” in the Platinum Reverb and the “Short Snare Hall” in Space Designer. Although I am using Logic, any DAW with decent reverbs works just as well.
First audio sample has the untreated snare drum.
[audio:original untreated snare.mp3]
Second audio sample has the snare with a tiny bit of ambience reverb. Not a huge difference but not as dead.
[audio:snarewambiencerev.mp3]
Third sample has a snare hall preset. The reverb makes the snare much bigger.
[audio:snarewhall.mp3]
Fourth sample has both the ambience and hall reverb patches together. Notice that the predelay on the ambience preset delays the hall reverb so it enters later than the actual snare hit. Could make for an interesting sound.
[audio:snarewboth.mp3]
Reverb is an instrument of endless debate. Everybody has an opinion of what works best(like in everything else regarding audio). But reverb can often make or break a song, too much fills it with too much space and you can’t hear what it’s all about and too little just kills the emotion of it. So you have to take particular care in your appliance of reverb, and also be open to a lot of experimentation. Since it is such a big topic you are sure to find something interesting in your endeavours.
Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next one to invent the next “reverb studio trick”?
If you stumbled upon this article and like it, please tell the rest of the Stumbleupon community.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 am
Cool article man, keep up the good work!!! (Said as if standing inside a large hall….)
May 13th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Your fourth example with pre-delay on the hall verb really is the descendant of a very popular snare effect from the 70′s. Engineers would take the verb send, route it through a two track tape machine that was recording to tape, and then monitor off the playback head. This produced the desired delay in the signal, which was then sent to the plate verb unit. Varying the playback speed of the tape machine gave you (some) control over the delay time. The result? A “whack”…ahhhhh kind of effect. Of course, no need to use a tape machine now, but if you’re trying to reproduce a 70′s pop ballad production sound, simulating this will do the trick.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Yeah, great reverb ideas! As the last poster mentioned, having control over the amount of delay in the “two-reverb” effect would be very helpful, because effects like that often work best when the rhythm of the reverberant sound
matches the actual rhythm of the tune itself (or a division of it). Same is true (especially) for delay/echo type effects.
Great ideas, thanks…
GJ
May 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Very good article.
We made good experiences with simple sidechained reverbs triggered by the kickdrum. Works almost everytime for techno/minimal productions even on very short and longer reverbs.
also: highcutted kickdrum reverbs make fantastic subbasses, offcourse sidechained.
May 26th, 2009 at 4:11 am
[...] tip was taken from my Top Ten Reverb tips and tricks published on http://www.emusictips.com. Check out the article for more tips, although I will probably post [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 3:04 am
Great idea, but consider that reverbs can clutter your mix and make it muddy. Don’t use it too often or on too many instruments. Use it to create depth in your mix and not as a fancy tool to make things shiny. It’ll fuck up the clarity and transparence of your mixes. And try to share reverbs on an aux buss and set up sends from your tracks. This way you save CPU or DSP power and you preserve some of the clarity. Try delays once in a while. They’ll give you the impression of depth if you use a multitap delay, because they can imitate the early reflections of a natural reverb without the long reverberation tail of an actual reverb.
Regards Alex
June 4th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Found a nice article related to that topic.
Check out http://www.psmedia.com.au/postscript/2009/06/01/too-much-reverb/
June 30th, 2009 at 4:34 am
[...] reverb for instance, I’ve written a fair amount about reverb(link over here) and I’ve read and experimented with loads of digital reverb processors. But sometimes you [...]
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
so geillll, TIP TOP, ABFAHRT ¨!!
SAY I GERMAN,
AND I SAY: THANK YOU VERRY MUCH !
I SEARCH LONG TIME FOR GOOD TUTORIELS, VIDEOS…
AND NOTHING WAS SO TIP TOP, EXACTLY MY QUESTIONS YOU GIVE AN VERRY GOOD OBJECTIV ANSER! NOW I MUST READ MORE …
BYE FROM GERMANY, WE LOOK AT YOU !
December 9th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
this is all so awsome, now anybody have any idea how to sidechain the reverb but without the kick, or anything else substituting the kick. i have been searching for this for a while. i want the sidechain effect for songs that dont’t have the a kick on every beat. or maybe for songs that dont have kicks>
February 21st, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Hey DJ_Endium – I think what I’d do is just create a kick channel and mute it, and sidechain the reverb to that. That way you get the chaining without actually hearing the kick. Is that what you meant?
March 5th, 2010 at 9:04 am
This is great info. Love it. Thank you.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Great! Inspired me to start sidechaining my reverbs!
April 14th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
good morning, awesome post.
May 25th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
You post informative posts. Bookmarked !
June 4th, 2010 at 10:20 am
Your blog is so informative … :[keep up the good work!!!!
June 30th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
thanks for the article – very informative!
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:03 am
Thanks for these tips. Surely they seem very good. Thumbs UP
August 11th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
I opine that it’s accomplishable to go to this website, since simply the following scholars could see the fantastic write-up about this topic. Hence, the thesis writing service will utilize this for thesis project accomplishing.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:16 am
This is directed to all of the articles on the site. They are all incredibly helpful (I’m still reading through them) and thanks for sharing them!
October 8th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Gotta say, this site is exactly what I’ve been looking for for quite some time. Some straight up breakin’ it down of electronic music production. Keep up the good work!
November 12th, 2010 at 6:58 am
great post.Thanks and wish all the best.Will be back soon.
January 8th, 2011 at 1:41 am
Loved the article. Answered many questions and gave me some cool ideas.
I’ve read endlessly about reverbs in books but this info is great cause its practical!
[thumbs up!]
March 28th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
In tip #6 you recommend solo-safing the reverb so you don’t hear the source track. That is not correct. What you actually need to do is make the send to the reveb aux ‘pre’ rather than ‘post’ fader. Then you can turn down the level of the source track and fade it back up when you want to hear it.
Solo safe just means sound will still come from the reverb aux when another track is soloed.
Nice article otherwise!
April 2nd, 2011 at 6:08 am
Nice article and most of it is good practice, cheers for the read.
June 15th, 2011 at 11:16 am
Your site doesn’t show up properly on my apple iphone – you may want to try and repair that
July 17th, 2011 at 7:01 am
I’m starting up a new online website directory and was wondering if I can submit your website? I’m hoping to mature my directory little by little by hand so that it retains good quality. I will make sure and put your blog in the correct category and I’ll additionally use, “Top 10 Reverb Tips and Tricks | EMusicTips” as your anchor text. Please let me know if this is acceptable with you by e-mailing me at: Tannous@yahoo.com. Thanks!
August 15th, 2011 at 9:39 am
I’m interested in making my own music blog and I’m constantly looking through many music blogs throughout the day finding new music first before other people that I know. But how exactly do those blogs find that music first? Can I really start by just posting the music I find on other blogs?.
August 23rd, 2011 at 9:04 am
Frábær grein!
August 27th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Youre so cool! I dont suppose Ive learn something like this before. So nice to seek out any individual with some unique ideas on this subject. realy thank you for beginning this up. this website is something that is needed on the net, somebody with a bit of originality. helpful job for bringing something new to the internet!
September 8th, 2011 at 11:16 am
[...] http://emusictips.com/2009/03/top-10-reverb-tips-and-tricks/#more-377 [...]
September 8th, 2011 at 11:20 am
[...] Excerpt from http://emusictips.com/2009/03/top-10-reverb-tips-and-tricks/#more-377 [...]
October 14th, 2011 at 7:04 am
I was wondering what “doing a gated echo with a plate” to get a rock feel out of the drums ment in practice, now I think I know. Thanks.
November 9th, 2011 at 6:10 am
nice one.