reverb and drums

dobro

dobro

Well-known member
It seems I remember Shailat saying something about not putting much reverb on drums. You can kick me up the ass if my memory's faulty, but my question is about drums and reverb. I'm putting less reverb on the drums than anything else in the mix - that goes for percussion like shakers as well. Is that common practice?
 
Right or wrong, I do use reverb on drums if I feel it calls for it. I don't apply it to kick drums as they tend to get lost if I do. Sometimes I just put it on the overheads, sometimes just a bit on the snare and toms. On things like shakers, I'll pan a bit to one side and bring back the reverb or delay panned the other way.
 
Yeah, but it seems to me that what you're saying is that you use less reverb on percussion overall than you do on the rest of the mix. Is that right?
 
Reverb by it's nature does a few things to a track. It blurs the stereo image, evens out dynamics and smooths the decay. That is usually counter productive on faster percussion parts. That's why you usually only hear a lot of drum reverb on slower songs where they need to fill the space between beats. If you want some cool stereo effects then reverb will hurt that also.

I like doing shakers and other hand percussion with an omni to capture some room sound. A lot of times if you have just one track with an obvious room ambience on it it will trick you into thinking the entire band is in that same room and it gives the song a more realistic feel.
 
Yo Dobro:

I use little reverb on drums, unless I want a special effect for a particular song.

But, I do like to EQ the highs a tad so the cymbals ring crispy.

Green Hornet :D :cool:
 
I try to stick with various "room sounding" effects for percussion most on the time. If I use longer reverbs, I usually either use a frequency cut-off point for the reverb in the box or drastically cut the reverb return with a high-frequency shelf EQ. But really, it GREATLY has to do with the song tempo, style, and feeling. It also depends on the amount of bleed there is and whether or not I'm using gate(s) on the drums.
 
Yeah, that was usefull, all. Thanks for the responses.

Tex - I understood everything you said, so it must be what I need to hear now. I'm gonna do that shaker/omni thing soon (I love shaker). Some posts merit re-reads, and yours is one for me.

Green H, Hangdawg - thanks, nothing to worry about there.

RE - I avoid the presets in my software reverb, so I don't have this or that type of reverb (eg 'room' reverb), so I'm not sure how to apply your advice (hey, it's okay, I don't expect you to translate for me :D). But I'm interested in what you said about the upper end shelving. So far, all I've done is cut lower end reverb to keep it from sounding too dark, and cut a bit of upper end reverb, which makes it sound smoother. Comments?
 
When I say "room verbs", that translates to very short delays. Actually, multiple, frequency dependent, short delays... Like a room.

As for EQing the high-end of a reverb, the point here is to make it so that the high-end of the drums (particularly hi-hats most of the time, though sometimes snare too) are unaffected by the reverb or as little as possible.
 
Listen to your favorite records. Depending on the style, you MIGHT hear more reverb on percussion (like claves and congas) than anything else on the track! Most percussionists I record LOVE to hear reverb on their tracks.
 
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