Echoing into a sound?

[Techmaster]

I'm sure you've all heard the effect... and I pretty much know how to do it.

1 - Take a sound in a track...you usually hear this on vocals.
2 - Reverse the clip in an audio editor.
3 - Apply an echo effect.
4 - Reverse the clip back to normal.
5 - Put it back into the DAW program. (and waste time trying to re-align it in the song)

This gives you a nice, weird, spacey, echoey thing that leads into your vocal phrases, or whatever.

Now...this is the hard way to do this. With everything available nowadays, can anybody tell me if there is an easier way to do this? Is there some kind of plugin available that makes this a much easier task? I'm using Logic 8 in a Mac environment.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I admire the extremely low bar you set for the definition of "hard"; it sure gives George Jetson a run for his money.

But seriously, it's not hard at all to re-align the track if you use one or more simple tricks:

1. Make a copy of the original track/clip and use that copy to apply the reverse echo to. Then when done, you simply need to align the ends of each clip (since the end position of the clip has not changed) and then cut the original.

or

2. When you first start your project, apply a clap board type sound for sync purposes at about -00:02 of pre-roll at the beginning of each track. You can have a blank template project set up this way so you don't have to manually set this up every time you start a new song. Then when you apply the echo to a clip, reverse the whole track and not just the clip (so that the audio marker gets flipped as well). Then when you flip back, the marker will flip back and that is a piece of cake to align with the rest of the track pre-roll markers. This is also a very nice technique to use when you need to transfer your project to someone else who uses a different editor than you; it makes it easy to align the tracks in their own editor.

or

3. Simply note the starting position and length of your clip in the time line before you start. Then when you create the echo, note the new length of the clip (how much time the echo added to the end of the clip.) Then when you flip the track back right again, simply move the starting time of that clip to the left by that amount/ For example, let's say your echo adds 2.1956 seconds to the length of your clip. Then as a final step, simply slide the final clip 2.1956 seconds to the left and you'll be good to go.

or

4. Have the butler do it for you and deliver to you out on the lenai on a silver platter along with your champagne cocktail.

G.

 

[Talldog]

I try to use #4 as much as possible. Butler does a better job than me anyway.

 

[Rokket]

Reaper makes it easy as hell. Simply reverse clip as a new take, add effects as a new take, and then reverse clip as a new take again. All lined up, nothing to move, nothing to take out and put back in the DAW.