Reverb On Drums | Piers Moth Mixing Blog # 3
Reverb On Drums | Piers Moth’s Blog # 3 | This week saw a focus on Reverbs, Delays and a look at other Effects (FX).
Firstly we tried out some different reverbs, and Al went through a history of reverb units, echo chambers, spring and plate reverbs through to modern digital reverbs (convolution reverbs) and delays, including a brief explanation of the mathematics behind them. (In fact, understanding the Maths behind certain digital FX is really helpful in understanding how they work, respond and are recreated digitally and based on natures responses to sound).
We then started to put these into practical uses, and reinforced mapping send effects to have a reverb channel that can be controlled independently, i.e Dry and Wet are controlled by different channels. This also means that the signals can be panned with to add greater width to a sound.
He also explained and demonstrated the practical applications of reverb on drums, and how to create the 80’s fat ‘Phil Collins’ sounding snare drum in conjunction with a long ‘release’ and fast (short attack) noise gate! (Once again, building upon prior knowledge) great pedagogy.
We also learned how reverb could be used to come off the end of one thing, usually a word in the main vocal line….the same process can be applied to delays as a production effect dependent on taste/genre. This led into reverse reverb and how to route this to record it, re-reverse it and bring it in to make a word sound like it’s being ‘sucked in’ and emphasizes the start, similar to a more common effect of a reverse cymbal.
We went onto look at chorus and were taught about the Automatic Double Tracking technique (ADT) to create an authentic double take, discovered and first used by John Lennon. Great for Choruses where the sound need be thicker. (30-40 millisecond delay)
We were also shown how a chorus can be used to help fatten up bass sounds, before moving onto flangers and phasers which we experimented with.
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