some reverb tricks I came up with

[hey_mavis]

has anyone else tried any of these? (or have any of your own?)

1 is to pitch the reverb, like an octave or the 5th, it sounds really odd on a solo instrument, a kind of ghost harmony, dont use it much, but its interesting.

another is to use one instrument for a reverb send and another for the instrument in the track, for example have one snr sound on the track and send a different snr to the reverb unit (playing the same pattern as the orginal snr) so the reverb is not OF the snr that is on the track. Of course u can do this for any instrument. (im not sure what this accomplishes except to be perverse, but there u have it

of course we all know about compressing a signal before it gets to the reverb send, and eqing reverb.

any other tricks you crazy mo fos been up to?

[username]

I've occasionaly used a second vocal take (one that was done incase we decided to double that part when mixing, or wanted a second choice of takes) for the delays.. sometimes gives an interesting sound..

[lotus1]

Pitch it slightly flat.....Phaser pre send....Short,RT60...use only the return(works especially well for "pad" parts)....Short RT60 into a repeating delay...Autopan a send into 2 different verbs,let in morph within the song....use a short delay instead....etc.Mario.

[wesarvin]

Originally Posted by hey_mavis

another is to use one instrument for a reverb send and another for the instrument in the track, for example have one snr sound on the track and send a different snr to the reverb unit (playing the same pattern as the orginal snr) so the reverb is not OF the snr that is on the track. Of course u can do this for any instrument. (im not sure what this accomplishes except to be perverse, but there u have it

I read once in an interview that Andy Wallace uses this trick. He uses the original drums, and then samples to trigger the verb. I guess it helps to keep the recording really clean yet ambient.

[andychamp]

Hardware and/or processing power permitting, I like to have a dedicated EQ and a de-esser on the send (for vocals, obviously) and an EQ on the return.
Particularly the de-esser can do wonders for the size and brightness of halls you can get away with.
I'd rather have the send be post-compression, to keep the relationship of the dynamics between dry and reverb'd signal intact.

[Makinithappen]

I like to print the verb for every mix I do, separate it on every eighth note, and then vari-fi with the audiosuite menu set to all regions individually followed by a MondoMod on "Whereisit?".... maybe some Enigma for good measure.

Seriously though... the pitch thing sounds interesting. I've done that with delays occasionally but I don't think I've ever tried it with a verb. I always have an EQ on the verb but not much beyond that.

Sending just your verb send to a panned delay send can be weird for a "far away" stereo effect but most of the time, effects like that are just a bit too weird and distracting from the music. Thats the problem with verb fx imho...

[leebridges]

Originally Posted by Makinithappen

I like to print the verb for every mix I do, separate it on every eighth note, and then vari-fi with the audiosuite menu set to all regions individually followed by a MondoMod on "Whereisit?".... maybe some Enigma for good measure.

i know you were joking, but now i wanna try that on a single instrument's reverb. haha.

[Makinithappen]

Originally Posted by leebridges

i know you were joking, but now i wanna try that on a single instrument's reverb. haha.

Ha.... I'll give it a shot tomorrow and post the results.

[imaginaryday]

reverb on vocals: i print a 100% wet track > hp eq and cut around 500 > compress > harmonize

[bass man]

Bump for interesting thread .

[mig27]

I like to use several (sometimes quite different) reverbs in parallel.
Makes it easier to get lush reverb tails, and less ringing.

[hey_mavis]

in another post somewhere a guy said that the Space Designer indoor verb 'air baloon' was nice for a short verb to add depth, I tried it, and it is.

so...u know...try it

[Washington]

in another post somewhere a guy said that the Space Designer indoor verb 'air baloon' was nice for a short verb to add depth, I tried it, and it is.

Very true, it sorts of stereo-ize everything, but quite differently than the 480 dely cluster or the M7 Percussion Air preset.

In all fairness, the original mention of it was Lagerfeldt's (of course).

[theblue1]

I've used a lot of these techniques from time to time (particularly driving reverb with an alt take or with a secondary doubled vocal or instrument line) but I think the ones I want to try are the radically repitched (harmonized) send and the chop-it-up-and-thrash-it technque. I did something like that once with a set of falsetto backup tracks that I didn't like -- but I chopped the source up into 1/8th note segments and then just randomly hand-jumbled them on the timeline, feeding that into some somewhat wet verb. Turned out great... sounded like the Bulgarian Women's Chorus put through a food processor set on chop.

[hey_mavis]

Originally Posted by theblue1

. Turned out great... sounded like the Bulgarian Women's Chorus put through a food processor set on chop.

note to self 'the Bulgarian Women's Chorus put through a food processor set on chop' sounds GREAT!

[JES]

Bringing this thread back to life. I'm curious for interesting ambiances and such, what kinds of tricks people are using. I'm especially interested in techniques for introducing some modulation and randomness into otherwise static convolution verbs. For instance, blending in some chorus before or after a big hall sound. I've been experimenting with Izotope Spectron but I feel like there must be people here who have given it a lot more thought than me. Right now, I usually just use SoundToys Echoboy with Altiverb to add some interest for long tails but I want to branch out.

[Razorfish]

From time to time I've been putting the UAD Dimension D on the aux track, post verb. Quite nice.

[pashatom]

ok well I've got a trick which is quite different.

Instead of the usual reverbs and delays, place Absynth as an effect on the voice or whatever. There are various effects in [COLOR="rgb(0, 100, 0)"]Absynth[/COLOR], one of the best is the "resonator". If this is the effect, you can actually tune the resonator to a frequency which harmonizes with your song, and have a fantastic resonating "aura" instead of reverb. It sounds quite different and you can tune it according to your song.

If anyone is interested I can send a clip to illustrate.

In addition to this, Absynth has other effects and presents, but it's best to get in there and experiment. I assure you, if you're looking for something unusual and interesting, Absynth opens up a whole world of possibilities. No wonder it won yet another award. Oh well, there goes my little secret.

[KRStudio]

This one is for a cool spo*** effect. Copy the vocal track (or instrument) and flip it so it plays backwards. Send this to your verb, dial it in and print the verb. Flip the verb backwards and mute the copied/flipped vocal.
Now the reverb is playing into and before the vocal.

Jeff

[Paul_G]

2 nights ago I ran a VI pick bass into a Thermionic Culture Vulture ME LV into an Orban spring reverb and played with the function switch on the C.V. while sweeping the Orban eq. It added a cool wah wah, retro percussive sound to the springy bass.

I am interested in the cut, paste and pitch, digital possibilities though so I'll start experimenting.
Cool Thread,

Paul G

[Dr. Mordo]

PSP Piano Verb!

I like to run reverb/delay thru modulation like a Phaser or Flanger. Or maybe even Tremolo.

[JES]

This is awesome; thanks everyone. Please keep the suggestions coming. And pashatom, I would love to hear your Absynth trick. I picked up Komplete 5 this summer but haven't had time to get that deep into Absynth (I've been working a lot with Battery, B4 and Massive).

[Teletude]

In dissecting some Lexicon algorithms, I discovered they were using some delay and phase tricks to spread the reverb beyond the normal stereo field. I've used some DUY and Waves plugs on the back end of a reverb to achieve the same effect. It's great for vocals or other instruments that are generally run down the middle. Let's you use a nice big reverb but leaves a big hole for it in the stereo field.

Of course compressing the feed, band passing the output, and stacking short and long reverbs are oldie but goodies. I know some guys that will also put a touch on the 2 mix. Not sure how common that is.

Specific for drums: to get sampled drums to sound more live, I'll often "create" a room mic by multing all the drums to a channel with a convolution reverb running a nice room IR at 100%. I'll then compress the crap out of it and fold it under the drum mix to create the effect of a room mic. Blend to taste.

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

Hum...so many intersting things to try. great thread. Im not so creative when it cames to spaces...

I usually gate the snare on dense rock mixes. Sometimes its really hard to gate it properly... too many hard cymbals mixed with soft snare hits...So, sometimes I do not gate the snare....so i have to sample a clean hit out of that snare track, or i get it from a sound library, use it to sample replace on a duplicated track and that is what will be driving the reverb, not the original track. I know, i know, old trick

Also multiband band before reverb lets you go get away with much more.

A simple one, a sans amp post or pre reverb, nice to get some roughness out of a reverb

An easy one> Copy the vocal track. Insert an eq and a delay compensator plugin, or anything that gives you a nice control over the track delay. play with both eq and delay times...it can sound much better that a delay or verb as your are not processing it but just time delaying it. The eq is optional but its always nice to hp and Lp a bit. Then you can do the same trick with another duplicated track but with a slightly diferent eq, or time delay. pan a bit, or extreme, and you can also try that pitch tricks

Sometimes this can be interesting. I used it last night on a snare track a la massive attack....I set a small reverb, 0.4 to 0.7 , depending on song tempo. then i set another reverb with a predelay of the exact same amount of the first reverb decay but with a longer decay itself. so you first get a kind of a clean paaa followed by a longish tail sound. something like paa...haaaa you can get a lot of different rythm combinations...

[Ciozzi]

If the dry track needs compression I'll compress the reverb along with it, it makes the reverb tail glue much better

[Sk106]

Sometimes, when a reverb or delay is well balanced but still sounds too busy when the phrasing of the vocals/instrument is faster and doesn't give room for .. especially delays, I tend to sidechain the delay or reverb from the dry send track. That keeps the effect down a bit when things are already busy, and tends to come out more at the end of each phraze.

On drums, when I wish to create "longer notes", or broader sound of the drums (usually within slower tempos when a Whack is just too dry) I put a 80-110 ms delay on the snare and toms only - sounds almost like a slapback, or room mics. Sometimes I put it to sync with the 16th-notes of the tempo, one regen only. I use the EQ in the delay channel to take out much bottom and some top end of the delay, and I put an expander on the delay channel, post-delay, so that softer ghost notes and "in between" notes are considerably lower in volume; practically speaking "can't be heard" in the mix. A gate would do the same, but have a clear theshold, whereas an expander has no distinct threshold. The louder strokes however gets delay. Finally, send the delay (only) to a bright short reverb, and you got a quite useful sound.

I remember the Queen album "A kind of magic", where the last phraze in the opening track (One vision) is "Fried chicken". But the long long delay tail of the word "chicken" echoes "vision .. vision .. vision ..."

[mdoelger]

Originally Posted by andychamp

Hardware and/or processing power permitting, I like to have a dedicated EQ and a de-esser on the send (for vocals, obviously) and an EQ on the return.
Particularly the de-esser can do wonders for the size and brightness of halls you can get away with.
I'd rather have the send be post-compression, to keep the relationship of the dynamics between dry and reverb'd signal intact.

Yes, I call this the normal way to do it, however, if the talent has a bid dynamic range in her singing, often the pre compression method works really well. When she sings quietly, intimately her vioce is being brought forward. But when she sings more intensly her voice will be pushed back. I find this to be a nice little effect.

Often I use this with busses, where I compress the vocal bus and have the reverb being triggered from the original vocal track. The more bus compression, the more obvious the effect then...

Cheers!

[Flymax]

I like to put up a phaser and a flanger and send the verb to them and then send it back from the flanger and phaser to the verb for a little feedback..
Adds a cool vibey wash.