S
sr71rules
Member
Sometimes you want a 'reverby' effect. That's fine for some people, some songs ect. If it sounds good, it is good. That's not what the bulk of this post will be about 
When I'm recording a vocal I usually have the artist pretty close to the mic, as close as they can comfortably, to minimize room tone on the track. This gives me a very direct sound. The vocal is very 'in your face'. This sound is actually somewhat unnatural to hear. When you speak and are spoken to you are always getting the room's tone mixed in. You always hear things with reverb, unless someone is speaking inches from your ear direct on. Generally speaking, I/we record most sources in the studio very direct, Guitar cabs mic'd up just off the grill, toms, kick and snare are often less than 2" from the drum head, ect.
When it comes time to mix the track, these sounds are all very pure and offer a lot of control. It's easy to make a few EQ tweaks and add compression without having to worry about getting weird sounds from the room tone but the end result is very sterile sounding (at least to my ears).
What I do next is build several aux buses with various reverbs and delays on them. I almost never add reverb to just a single track, unless going for a certain effect. Then I slowly turn up the volume on the bus for a given track NOT until I hear reverb, but until it sounds like the track is 'in a space'. Each track in a mix gets this treatment and I think it adds a lot of 'glue' to a song. What I'm actually doing is add the tracks to a room. I've recorded everything very clean, perhaps on different days and in different places, and now I'm putting all the pieces together in a single 'virtual' space. One reverb bus will have 99% of all my tracks in it, everything from bass to vocals. As I said, I usually have several delays and reverbs going on a given mix, a small space, a large space, a plate reverb, short medium and long delays, ect. Once I have added all the tracks to the 'virtual room' I will use the other reverbs and delays to spice of certain parts. Maybe the snare will blast into the plate reverb for that 80s effect and the vocals will get some (soft) delays panned to various places in the mix. If I'm being honest (and why not?) I actually have my time based effects pre-setup and once the 'recording phase' is over I import my standard setup from a template session. I'll make a few tweaks to suit the song, of course, but the template gets me 90% there very quickly. I do this with my DAW of choice, Protools, but I'm sure it's easy to do in other DAWs as well. If you're mixing analog it's even easier since the rack units remember their settings when you power them on and you just need to start adding tracks to them.
I believe the mind can tell all those tracks are carrying some random tones and building up a cohesive natural sounding room tone from each track helps to make things easier to listen to. I would not, however, recommend you feed your mix into a reverb. Logically it would seem like the result would be the same but I can say, for me.. it's not!
So, for me, reverb isn't evil and it's not something that I find muddies my tracks. If I can hear it, I turn it down and I would never hesitate to EQ the reverb return or the bus I'm using to send to the reverb. A lot of people come into the studio and say 'I don't want to use any effects on my tracks' and I'm happy to accommodate them but I do show them my process and allow them to make a well informed decision when it comes to mix time. The usual response is 'Oh! That sounds great!'. I've never had someone ask me to turn them back off. Having a properly treated mix environment helps as well because the audio you hear from your speakers has some of the sound of your mix room in it...
As an aside, (cause this post isn't long winded enough) if I want to record some natural room tone I will setup other mics increasingly distant from the artist. Take a look at the 'Recording' Section in this Wikipedia article about Bowie's vocal on 'Heroes' to get an idea of what I mean. The effect on that track is quite strong but I typically use it more subtly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Heroes"_(song)#Recording. I will then add these tracks into the mix, usually as more of an effect then for 'putting the track into a space'. Though it's not mentioned in the article, I believe the distant mics were setup using gates that were set to open when his vocal got to a certain volume.
When I'm recording a vocal I usually have the artist pretty close to the mic, as close as they can comfortably, to minimize room tone on the track. This gives me a very direct sound. The vocal is very 'in your face'. This sound is actually somewhat unnatural to hear. When you speak and are spoken to you are always getting the room's tone mixed in. You always hear things with reverb, unless someone is speaking inches from your ear direct on. Generally speaking, I/we record most sources in the studio very direct, Guitar cabs mic'd up just off the grill, toms, kick and snare are often less than 2" from the drum head, ect.
When it comes time to mix the track, these sounds are all very pure and offer a lot of control. It's easy to make a few EQ tweaks and add compression without having to worry about getting weird sounds from the room tone but the end result is very sterile sounding (at least to my ears).
What I do next is build several aux buses with various reverbs and delays on them. I almost never add reverb to just a single track, unless going for a certain effect. Then I slowly turn up the volume on the bus for a given track NOT until I hear reverb, but until it sounds like the track is 'in a space'. Each track in a mix gets this treatment and I think it adds a lot of 'glue' to a song. What I'm actually doing is add the tracks to a room. I've recorded everything very clean, perhaps on different days and in different places, and now I'm putting all the pieces together in a single 'virtual' space. One reverb bus will have 99% of all my tracks in it, everything from bass to vocals. As I said, I usually have several delays and reverbs going on a given mix, a small space, a large space, a plate reverb, short medium and long delays, ect. Once I have added all the tracks to the 'virtual room' I will use the other reverbs and delays to spice of certain parts. Maybe the snare will blast into the plate reverb for that 80s effect and the vocals will get some (soft) delays panned to various places in the mix. If I'm being honest (and why not?) I actually have my time based effects pre-setup and once the 'recording phase' is over I import my standard setup from a template session. I'll make a few tweaks to suit the song, of course, but the template gets me 90% there very quickly. I do this with my DAW of choice, Protools, but I'm sure it's easy to do in other DAWs as well. If you're mixing analog it's even easier since the rack units remember their settings when you power them on and you just need to start adding tracks to them.
I believe the mind can tell all those tracks are carrying some random tones and building up a cohesive natural sounding room tone from each track helps to make things easier to listen to. I would not, however, recommend you feed your mix into a reverb. Logically it would seem like the result would be the same but I can say, for me.. it's not!
So, for me, reverb isn't evil and it's not something that I find muddies my tracks. If I can hear it, I turn it down and I would never hesitate to EQ the reverb return or the bus I'm using to send to the reverb. A lot of people come into the studio and say 'I don't want to use any effects on my tracks' and I'm happy to accommodate them but I do show them my process and allow them to make a well informed decision when it comes to mix time. The usual response is 'Oh! That sounds great!'. I've never had someone ask me to turn them back off. Having a properly treated mix environment helps as well because the audio you hear from your speakers has some of the sound of your mix room in it...
As an aside, (cause this post isn't long winded enough) if I want to record some natural room tone I will setup other mics increasingly distant from the artist. Take a look at the 'Recording' Section in this Wikipedia article about Bowie's vocal on 'Heroes' to get an idea of what I mean. The effect on that track is quite strong but I typically use it more subtly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Heroes"_(song)#Recording. I will then add these tracks into the mix, usually as more of an effect then for 'putting the track into a space'. Though it's not mentioned in the article, I believe the distant mics were setup using gates that were set to open when his vocal got to a certain volume.
