using reverbs
hey there mr t
awh - reverbs - one of the simplest AND most complex topics in mixing!
they sound really exciting but they are so easy to get UTTERLY wrong - and when you get a good one, you just want to use it EVERYWHERE!!!!
unfortunately, of all the effects you can use, it's one of the few where the more bucks you outlay, generally, the better the reverb will be. and bad reverbs show!
and it's a strange thing, but it's not until you hear a good one, you can realise how bad some of the cheaper ones can be.
here's a few thoughts from my simple outlook that i hope will help!
reverbs are all about taking that beautifully uncoloured tracking that you just did (didn't you?) and then recreating the space that you want it to be in. for instance - i'm currently mixing a sort of gothis vocal group ep thingy and so i'm using lots of lush and full reverbs - if i was recording my own music, the reverbs would be very different - lots of short plates and room reverbs (i'm a guitarist).
try and learn a bit about how real rooms and environmnts work. one of the best ways to learn about reverbs (and i know this sounds a bit arty - but hey - i'm a guitarist first and foremost - engineering came out of necessity some years ago!) is to go to as many different sonic environments as you can. and listen.
and then listen some more. make like an idiot and make noises. make low noises - high noises - clicks - whoops - moans (careful with this one - particularly in churches!) - words - notes (i'd pick places where the mental health laws are fairly understanding!)
how do each of the noises change in each environment. what do you noticeabout the way sound reflects (aha! finally - a parameter word!) around the space. how it changes when you are near walls, how other people (who will be DELIGHTED to help - pick strangers!) sound when they stand in the middle of the space and you move towards them and away from them.
once you understand the way spaces work - it gives you a much better way of programming your reverbs - and it will also become a lot less stressful and even fun!
try and pick reverbs that give you as much flexibility as posible, and try to avoid the presets - they're a good starting point,but each song is different.
some of the things you may find:
room size/length: think of the room you want - even do some very rough calcs - how big is the arena? club? bedroom? i always keep a calculator in the studio for reverbs and delays
distance: usually from the source. is it a faraway vocal, or are you next to the person in a really big theatre? if you are using three or four voices (say lead and b vox) think about where they are all 'standing' versus where you are listening from. in vocal groups, where are all the sections stood.
decay: a time factor, usually related to the size of the room, but also your position in it. beware of long reverb tails. washing sources in reverb can reduce definition and clarity dramatically, and reverb tails that cut over the next source can be big culprits. reverb tails (the length of the decay) are the one things that set reverbs apart. are they smooth and natural or do they sound a bit springy and brittle - especially at the lower end of the gain range - good reverbs have very natural smoothsounding tails on them that do not break up with length.
pre-delay: this is the time before the delay starts. it can be related again to the imaginary model of the room. imagine you are next to the singer - there will be a delay between them singing, and the first reverb signal coming back from the walls. this is the predelay - but it also serves a useful purpose as predelay on vocals can massively preserve the integrity and diction of the vocal. no predelay can reduce vocal clarity. pre-delays of around 60ms are a good starting point on vox.
low cut: different frequencies travel round rooms in different ways - go back to your listening studies. in general, bass frequencies will 'fill' your reverb very quickly and may reduce the clarity of any higher frequenciesgoing in. this is why, except for special effects, bass guitars are rarely mixed with reverbs. low cut filters in your reverb allow you to control wide frequency soundsso that bass frequencies do not go cluttering up your reverb. they will just add noise. on that subject - if you are dealing with long reverb tails, it is well worth spending all that time cutting out breaths and the like in your vocal tracks fr'instance, because nothing clutters a mix more than extraneous noises from tracks bouncing around the reverb. higher frequencies in reverbs will generally add shimmer and not mudy the mix too much. but again don't overdo them.
early reflections: these are the first 'echoes' of the sound coming straight back from the walls in a room. imagine it this way. stand in a big room and make a percusive noise. the first thing that noise does is travel from you to the walls around you. the sound from this will reflect off the walls and strat bouncing around the room. some will come straight back to you - these are the first early reflections. the next that will get bck to you are those sounds that bounced off the wall at 45deg and then into another wall, and then THAT sound then comes backto you. these are the second early reflections. some won't get back to you and just keep reflecting and go on to form the general 'mess' of sound in the room - these form the 'reverb' . so reverbs are actually two components - the early reflections and the messy later, reverb.
in some rooms, you get very few early reflections (cathedrals are bad for this) the sound never really makesit back to you directly and gets diffused into the space very quickly - these rooms will have more reverb than early reflection (dependent on where you are in the room - if you are near the wall - you will get some big first reflections). a small club or bedroom will have many more early reflections and less of the reverb bouncing around. in a small environment, the sound does not propagate as much and so the reverb tails will be small, but because of the size, the number of early reflections ill be high.
density: is a function of how near you are to the walls and how big the room is. if the room is small, the early reflections will not only be numerous but closely packed together. the bigger the room, the longer the sound takes to reflect and the density of the reflections will therefore reduce. in a tiled bathroom, there are lots of close packed early reflections, but the genral reverb level is low due to the size. in a cathedral - lower early reflections, low density - high general reverb.
try and choose reverbs that give you visual representations of this. some of the soft reverbs are very good at this. i use TrueVerb by Waves which i find very very intuitive for being ableto convert the room i see inmy head, to the room i can render as a reverb space. Altiverb is also getting rave reviews, though i have less experience.
Many expensive reverbs use actual samples of real reverb spaces and model the source into them. These are excellent and very accurate though usually quite expensive.
i hope this little whirlwind tour helps. sorry if it sounds basic, but it's how i imagine reverb and it doesn't let me don too often.
the most important tip with reverb is often "LESS IS MORE". reverb is the easiest effect to overdo, but the best thing to do is think of your reverb less as an effect than putting your dry source back in the space the piece of music demands.
A nice trick i was taught in the early days (and i still use it as a starting point) was when setting reverb aux levels, bring up the reverb mix until you can just hear it clearly. it's then too loud at that point, and so just tip it back under the level you can hear it clearly and than is usually not a bad indicator of good clear, working reverb (excepting special effects again).
have fun and i hope you don't embarrass yourself too much clicking and spluttering your way through your research!
best regards
paul d
tollboothmusic
Yo he who works in a dungeon:}
