What details should be paid attention to

The basic function of reverberation is to create a sense of distance and space. In modern commercial music, it also adds a lot of charm to the music. However, inappropriate reverberation decisions will lower the quality of the work. At the same time, because the reverb effect has greatly changed the original material, we will be extra cautious when using it.

Therefore, pay attention to the following issues in daily mixing processing:

1. Reasonable use of long reverb and short reverb

In general, short reverb is recommended for mixes with more crowded elements, and longer reverb for soothing music. When using the reverb effect plug-in, do not follow the literal meaning of the default value: for example, consider "hall and house" as long reverb and "small room" as short reverb, but choose according to the auditory effect. If you need a shorter reverberation, then the preset value with a shorter ending time in the "hall" effect can also satisfy you. The selection criterion is the characteristics of the tail. The longer tail will cover up the sound and make it lose a certain sense of presence. The shorter tail will make the sound more attractive to the listener's attention.

2. Early reflection

Early reflection (Pre-delay) is one of the important parameters in most reverb effects. Early reflection can make dry sound reach the ear of the listener before the reverb appears, which means that the listener can more easily understand the content of the sound. When mixing vocals, early reflections can clearly preserve the attack of the pronunciation. From this point of view, it has the same effect as the compressor. Setting a slow attack value for compression or setting more early reflections for reverberation will make the message conveyed by human voice easier to understand. Early reflection time is more common between 20 ms and 80 ms. A longer setting will create a feeling of "alternating sound". Occasionally, there are occasions where this effect is needed, but in most cases it is not suitable.

3.3D reverb

To get a more spacious and rich sense of space, you can try overlapping multiple reverb effects. For example, if you use 3 reverb effects in superposition, the spatial sense will be very real. First you can choose a reverb effect preset for a small room, and there will be some small spaces around the dry sound. Next, use a metal plate reverb (plate), the space where the dry sound is located will further reduce the clarity. Finally, add a hall reverb with a very long tail to increase the upper limit of the space. Be careful not to overdo it. How do you know if there is an overdose? Please remember the following: a successful mixed response should enhance the mood you are after; reverberation not only increases the space, but also helps you highlight the theme of music.

4. How much is used?

The amount of reverberation depends entirely on your taste. If reverb is a major feature in your arrangement, then let go and use it extensively. On the contrary, you only need to glue the voices, elements, etc. together, as long as it sounds like a real sense of space. Remember, as long as there is reverb, it will sound very different. Before doing the reverb, solo the track to be processed. Then increase the reverb volume as long as you hear the reverb effect. Then decay a little bit, until you feel like you want to add more, stop! This is probably the correct position.

5. High-pass filtering

Maybe you already know the role of high-pass and low-pass filters, and you already know how to use them to preserve low-frequency rumble or other attractive frequencies. This usage is also suitable for reverberation, such as using a high-pass filter to process the reverberation sound, which can maintain the spaciousness of the space. On the contrary, if you keep all the low frequencies of the reverberation, as the number of mounted reverberation tracks increases, the clarity of the sound will be greatly reduced.

6. Use reverb to increase brightness

When you try to adjust the vocal EQ and find that you can't improve the brightness, try reverb. After finding the most characteristic EQ range, use reverberation to enhance this band. Of course, this method is not limited to dealing with human voices. For example, vocals are often the most expressive in the 3K position, so we first add a reverb effect, mount an EQ effect behind it, and attenuate the frequency bands on both sides of the 3K range, which can increase some air sense and communication. Translucent.

7. Reverberation and impact

When dealing with snare drums, add a gate (Gate) behind the reverb, the effect will be very good. Set the early reflection of the reverberation to about 0.5 seconds (that is, 500ms), and add a threshold to get the effect of abrupt cutoff. Although there will be unnatural factors in doing so, it can create a feeling similar to breaking glass. Appropriate application ratio and natural bonding will increase the momentum of snare drum without superimposing the "body" sound. Phil Collins and David Bowie used this technique extensively to make their music unique. Although it has a long history, it is still used by many leading producers.

8. Group Reverb

In order to test your reverb effect, especially in the case of a large number of reverb effects, you can group them to quickly solo or mute them. This is the A / B test. You can quickly grasp the current amount of reverberation based on the effect you hear, and decide whether you want to continue to increase it. If you assign a fader to control all reverberations, you can accurately grasp the amount of total reverberation, and even use EQ processing on the reverberation according to the first high-pass filter and brightness enhancement.

9.Spring reverb and other "dirty sounds"

Some musical instruments are inherently suitable for reverberation, while others are not. We usually like to show electric guitars very prominently, but regular reverb will soften their impact. Low-fidelity processing such as Spring reverberation is suitable here. Their roughness just adds body and expressiveness to the sound. In addition, it is also very popular to use low-fidelity reverb to process the human voice in order to get some retro feeling.

10. Mono reverb

We usually think of reverb as a stereo effect, but mono reverb is also excellent. If you want to highlight an instrument and let it stand under the "spotlight", mono reverb is a great choice, you don't need to change the entire mix arrangement for this. For example, to make the listener notice the keyboard solo on the right, you can add a mono reverb processor and adjust its pan to the position of the keyboard, so you can get a lot of dynamics.