Interesting discussion of the reverb. I love reverb as well, but definitely think that it can get overboard very quickly. A little trick that I've been using lately is syncing up my decay time and send amount to have variation while sending the drums to the reverb. It gives a neat pumping sound that turns it into more of an instrument than a static effect. When combining melodic instruments with a delay or reverb freeze (closing the input and setting feedback to unity) you can build up nice harmonic textures. I got that tip from Miller's book, thanks Miller!
I'm all for seeing more reverb and delay patches in Pd. Ableton Live has a ton of effects based on delay and reverb. I'd love to see more usages of pitched reverbs that generate chords and such.
I think a neat effect-strument idea that I'd like to work on is combining fiddle~ with a simple reverb or delay configuration to generate harmonic 'chambers' that are based upon the incoming pitch. Of course, the transition between 'room sizes' would be the challenge. I guess I'd just have two or more such 'rooms' and cross fade one out of the mix before changing its size.
~Kyle
On 12/8/06, padawan12@obiwannabe.co.uk padawan12@obiwannabe.co.uk wrote:
On 12/8/06, padawan12 padawan12@obiwannabe.co.uk wrote:
Personally I'd drop the freeverb. Lot's of people seem to put a reverb on their synths then get to see it's really best without it. Reverb is nearly always global effect in most cases, unless you're Phil Collins and want your drumkit to sound like each drum is in a different room. If the synth is washed in reverb too much I think you lose the focus of the sound, the sound becomes all about the reverb and not about the synth, so you lose control because you cant really hear it anymore as you twiddle the controls.
I agree about dropping the freeverb from the patch, as it's really better to let people choose their own (or no) effects unless it's truly integral to the synth's sound.
And it makes things more portable and usable on lower spec hardware too.
However, I disagree about reverb being a global effect unless you are Phil Collins. I think this depends on the genre.
Yeah totally. I was being a cock about Phil Collins, it's just that late 80's "hey we can afford 10 of those Yamaha REV1 boxes so lets use them on everything" that grates on me. Some tracks use reverb totally disparately to create a good effect, and honestly, there's no reason *not* to have a synth patch or entire track based largely on reverb effects - I just think it's a common mistake when building and composing with synths to begin with adding too many effects on each one, and ending up with over-dense mixes. How much reverb and what kind? That's an old favorite ;) ! I'm of the less is the new more school this week :) Specific purposes are worth remembering, like you say, the difference in where you want the best replay sound , headphones vs a club PA is a proper baffler, and as usual there's a happy compromise to seek that defines your own style.
I make quite a bit of techno/house/electro/minimal, and to me reverb is almost never a global effect. I usually use it (or a synced delay) on one or two sounds in a mix which need to have a sort of floating/wash feel and lay over the top.
I see, you target specific elements you want to have a reverb. I guess I do too, I mean being selective on the global reverb(s) mixes, though the aim is often to "bind" things together that want to be in the same space. I say reverb(s) because actually I think the best result is obtained by using two processes, one to handle the early reflections, the "hardness and tightness" of the reverb and one to handle the "wash", but they have to work together.
But the key to getting nice and tight percussion, and very clean mixes that will sound right in a a big room, is having most of your stuff totally dry with no effects at all, except compression of some sort ...
Yeah agree, that early detroit and NY techno was so powerful because of it, the clubs gave the sound it's life and you could pump it up big because it was dry.
I might have 8 fx tracks, and just one will have reverb, and a second delay. This assumes one is making tracks that may be played on a club system at some point. Headphone/listening music would give one more leeway. But this technique been working for me as my stuff is sounding quite good on those systems -- comparable to other stuff I've been playing out with my own stuff side by side.
Note, I'm not saying put different reverb on each thing - but rather use a single reverb, but only on one or two elements in a mix.
This being the case, you still wouldn't want the reverb built into the synth, as it needs to be applied in terms of the mix as a whole. Just my personal opinion.
Good one. And I suppose it depends on your mixdown style and way of working too. I have grown fond of jack-rack and leaving all those processing decisions right till the last moment. Having said that there's probably room for a few more good reverb objects in Pd, things like [vdn~] and whatnot, maybe some nice convolution. Any thoughts?
best, andy
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