Reverb, it’s one of the most ubiquitous effects in both mixing and sound design, but could you be getting more from your reverb plugins? Absorb these seven pointers and you soon will be.
1. Springs and things
Every producer needs to know their way around the various different types of reverb and their particular mixing and sound design roles, and central to that is understanding and appreciating the difference between ‘realistic’ and ’unrealistic’ reverb. When you want to make your instrument or vocal sound like it exists in a spacious real-world environment, reach for a chamber, room or hall emulation. On the other hand, when you’re after something more overtly artificial, a spring or plate should be at the top of your list. Don’t let those generalisations box you in, though – if you reckon that spring reverb is working on your violin track, don’t let us tell you otherwise.
On top of that, there are a few plugins on the market that take reverb beyond the established studio norms and out into hyper-real territory, prime examples being Eventide’s Blackhole and Muramasa Audio’s MorphVerb – both well worth checking out.
2. Process the tail
In electronic music, reverb is as viable a signal for effects processing and experimentation as everything else in the mix, so don’t be backward about getting adventurous with plugins on that auxiliary return. We’re not just talking EQ and compression (although those are certainly fair game) – think more along the lines of sequenced filters, rotary speaker emulations, chorus, distortion, and elaborate multi-effects such as Cableguys ShaperBox 2, Output Audio Portal and Unfiltered Audio SpecOps. Anything with which you can go to town on a sustained signal – to wit, a reverb tail – essentially.
3. Reverb after other effects
Coming from the other direction, great things can also happen when you use reverb to process other auxiliary effects. The obvious candidate here is a delay – ideal for atmospheric vocals, guitars, and keys, and general softening of your echoes – but how about reverberating a chorus, phaser, or flanger? The end product will sound very different from sending the source signal through the two effects in parallel.
4. Try one reverb for everything
With so much DSP power on tap in today’s Macs and PCs, it’s become common practise in electronic music production to run three or four reverb busses in a mix, or even dedicated reverb inserts on individual track elements. Although there’s nothing ’wrong’ with doing this per se, if you’ve never tried to mix a track using just one reverb, you really should. The spatial clarity that comes from routing everything into a single auxiliary room or hall can be revelatory. Plus, with your ambient options pared back to the minimum, you’ll learn to be more judicious with the application of reverb in general – always a good thing, what with less so often being more when it comes to mixing.
5. Gated reverb in the 21st Century
The quintessentially ’80s sound of the gated snare reverb may not be the first thing that comes to mind for drum production in this day and age, but it’s still a useful tool when integrated as one component in a broader plan. As long as it’s followed up with a ‘proper’ reverb to smooth over the tail, a touch of gated ’verb can be just the thing for boosting the energy and scale of a snare or handclap prior to further processing. To set it up, simply insert a gate into your room reverb return and trigger it with the snare drum via the sidechain input. Keep the Attack and Release times short, and be careful with the threshold, as the gate needs to open and close cleanly.
6. Pre-Delay – the key to coherence
If you find that your reverb is having a detrimental effect on the clarity and impact of the vocal or instrument being sent through it, make the pre-delay parameter your first port of call. Raising the pre-delay increasingly separates the onset of the reverb from the source signal, giving the latter time to make its presence felt before the reverb kicks in. Always ensure that the timing of your pre-delay suits the track, though – some reverb plugins, most notably FabFilter’s Pro-R, makes this easy by letting you sync the pre-delay time to host tempo.
7. Groove shadows
Here’s a useful trick for imbuing a drum or percussion loop with otherworldly character. Take a loop and shove it through a reverb 100% wet. Record or render the output of the reverb and ditch the loop. Then put your newly captured reverb clip on an audio track with a compressor inserted, and place a completely different drum loop on another track, routed to the compressor’s sidechain input. Now, simply mix the loop and reverb to taste, tweaking the compressor settings to emphasise the rhythm of the loop and gel the two signals together into a cohesive whole. The blending of one drum loop with the reverb from another should result in an interesting rhythmic texture; and for even more strangeness, process the reverb with further effects and/or slice it up and rearrange it.
Have you got a favourite reverb technique to share? Send your signal to the comments…