Middleman
Professional Amateur
There are three schools of thought on reverb.
1. None - use delays and offset doubles of various tracks
2. Ambient - Use of short predelay and multiple instances. Creates a small room vibe.
3. Luscious - I call this the Bruce Swedien school of thought. Nothing less than 132ms on predelay.
Basic minimum approach is to have a good sounding verb on the snare, vocal and one more for overall room ambiance. If you do this right, it’s enough. The vocal instance should be your best plate sounding (or actual plate) with a short digital delay preceding the reverb. This sets the reverb ping apart from the vocal and imparts a very nice sound. Adjust the wetness to taste. EQ after the verb will help focus the sound.
The drum reverb usually gets preceded by a compressor to take the ping out of what a snare can do to reverb. An alternative is just a good delay. Also you may have to run EQ before or after the verb to get the right tonal response from the verb.
The ambient reverb is where everything else that you want to set back in the mix, ends up going. Use it sparingly to place those instruments that need to go well behind the vocal or act as a backdrop for the tune. Depending on the transient response of what you send to this verb, you might also need a compressor and or EQ around the verb.
There are two EQ challenges in a mix using extensive reverb. The frequency placement of the instruments dry and the frequency response/mix of the reverb returns. The reverb returns can walk all over a well balanced dry mix which is why you need to control the EQ from the reverb. At the very least, match your return EQ as close as possible to the freq ranges of the dry instruments going into the reverb. Tweaking the compression and EQ on the reverbs is what separates the men from the boys.
Hope that gets you started.
1. None - use delays and offset doubles of various tracks
2. Ambient - Use of short predelay and multiple instances. Creates a small room vibe.
3. Luscious - I call this the Bruce Swedien school of thought. Nothing less than 132ms on predelay.
Basic minimum approach is to have a good sounding verb on the snare, vocal and one more for overall room ambiance. If you do this right, it’s enough. The vocal instance should be your best plate sounding (or actual plate) with a short digital delay preceding the reverb. This sets the reverb ping apart from the vocal and imparts a very nice sound. Adjust the wetness to taste. EQ after the verb will help focus the sound.
The drum reverb usually gets preceded by a compressor to take the ping out of what a snare can do to reverb. An alternative is just a good delay. Also you may have to run EQ before or after the verb to get the right tonal response from the verb.
The ambient reverb is where everything else that you want to set back in the mix, ends up going. Use it sparingly to place those instruments that need to go well behind the vocal or act as a backdrop for the tune. Depending on the transient response of what you send to this verb, you might also need a compressor and or EQ around the verb.
There are two EQ challenges in a mix using extensive reverb. The frequency placement of the instruments dry and the frequency response/mix of the reverb returns. The reverb returns can walk all over a well balanced dry mix which is why you need to control the EQ from the reverb. At the very least, match your return EQ as close as possible to the freq ranges of the dry instruments going into the reverb. Tweaking the compression and EQ on the reverbs is what separates the men from the boys.
Hope that gets you started.
