That "Huge" Sound

  • Thread starter Thread starter DoolittleKid
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Sounds like a global reverb ( on the entire track ) might be the thing to do. Shoegaze bands didn't usually have a lot of money, so older cheapish reverb units like the Alesis microverb, Midiverb II were probably what they were using. Delays on individual guitars and vocals and then run the whole mix through one old 'verb units and play with the room selection. Wet/Dry mix to a little more than 50% wet and you should have vintage digital huge.
 
It sounds similar to the sound you get from running a reverb send through an eq and putting both low and high passes on it. Actually... the huge jumble of noise in the background of both linked songs (which I think is the "atmospheric" sound you're trying to pinpoint :p ) sounds pretty much exactly like that. I'd start with the high pass around 100 hz and the low around 4K - 8K. Give it a shot :D

edit: Note that this is a different suggestion than the post above. Since the idea I'm suggesting is to EQ only the reverb, and not the original tracks, you'll have to setup your reverb as it's own channel (however your DAW does that), and send other tracks to it, to try this approach. Put the reverb mix to 100% wet and turn the send track / bus / whatever it's called in your software up until it starts to drown everything out like in the songs you linked to.
 
Can't really afford any new gear at the moment, so a reverb unit is off the table. I did try the global reverb technique, but everything sounded too tangled together and indistinguishable.

I also tried Hippo's method with a separate reverb track (EQ'd as recommended), and now I am surfing in endless waves of sonic epicness. The separate track really makes the difference. It keeps the original and the reverb separate so you have control over each one, and can make the reverb bleed over as much or little as you want.
 
Great success, high five!

lol... I <3 Borat :p
 
Now I can use this trick to instantly convert any track into a shoegaze song. Time to see what Cher would sound like reinterpreted in the fashion of Slowdive! :guitar:
 
TyphoidHippo said:
It sounds similar to the sound you get from running a reverb send through an eq and putting both low and high passes on it. Actually... the huge jumble of noise in the background of both linked songs (which I think is the "atmospheric" sound you're trying to pinpoint :p ) sounds pretty much exactly like that. I'd start with the high pass around 100 hz and the low around 4K - 8K. Give it a shot :D

edit: Note that this is a different suggestion than the post above. Since the idea I'm suggesting is to EQ only the reverb, and not the original tracks, you'll have to setup your reverb as it's own channel (however your DAW does that), and send other tracks to it, to try this approach. Put the reverb mix to 100% wet and turn the send track / bus / whatever it's called in your software up until it starts to drown everything out like in the songs you linked to.
Click to expand...

Yep - the eq setup you described is also known as a bandpass, and they used to have single purpose hardware eqs in the 60s that did exactly what you are describing to the input before sending it to the chamber or plate..
 
There's a term I hadn't heard in a good while until just recently... I wrote a DSP class recently that had a bandpass filter in it. After a bit of research, I found it pretty interesting how you can get a result with one simple algorithm that two, when combined, produce the exact same result (those two being high and low pass filters). We used to make "bandpass boxes" for car subwoofers waaaaaayyyy back in the day in highschool (too fast too furious, lol). The box basically enforced the same thing - only letting the speaker make noise in a certain frequency range.
 
Voxengo span is a great graphic equalizer and helps me out
 
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