The number one thing that started making my vocal mixes stand out was making my reverb busses extremely unique. That, and knowing how to blend them into a song was a game changer. And let me tell you, we're going to get deep into the blending with these ten tips Give me a smoothie Where's my Oscar? Tip number one, use busses, not inserts. If you have several vocal tracks, you'll want to make sure that they're living in the same place, in the same room, sending all your vocal tracks to one track to be processed by one reverb is the way to go. You'll see on this bus I have my reverb plugin here. The Arturia Rev PLATE-140, a terrific plate reverb that emulates the iconic EMT 140. I'll be getting more into this plugin a little bit later in the video. It's an incredible reverb. To get started, I'll send the signal from each vocal track to it. If you have several different reverbs on multiple tracks, it's going to be way harder to control and it's going to bog down your computer. Blending in your reverb with the fader is way easier to control and easier to automate, which I'll get into a little bit later. Now that you've got your reverb on one track and you're sending all your vocals to it, it's time for tip two EQ that verb Eqing before going into your reverb is a great way to reduce muddiness in the low end and any sharpness that might be bouncing around really fast in the high end, cutting out the low and high end before going through the reverb, is actually known as the Abbey Road trick. Cut up to 600 hertz with your high pass filter and between six and ten K with your low-pass Notch out a tiny amount around 2 to 4 K if you want, that'll help reduce any harshness that might be bouncing around up there. Check out the difference. Here are the vocals going through the reverb with no EQ And with the EQ on. Yeah, it's way cleaner and a lot less harsh. You can also use EQ after the reverb plugin, but I find that using the EQ before helps keep the natural tone of the reverb instead of shaping it afterwards. Tip three is all about keeping your vocals upfront, but still keeping the size and tail of your reverb. Use Sidechain compression by using sidechain compression, you'll be able to trigger a compressor to reduce the gain on your reverb, but only when the vocals are playing. You can do this by sidechaining your main vocal to a compressor that lives after your reverb plugin. Now you'll notice the compressor is only working when the vocals are playing. You might be thinking Isabel, but the vocals are already coming through that channel. You're right. But it's going through the reverb first by sending a dry signal to the compressor, you'll duck the reverb only when the singing happens and keep those sweet reflections after the phrase is complete. Here's the vocal without the compressor, so the reverb is pretty much washing throughout. And here it is with the compressor and now the vocal is a lot clearer. And afterwards you get that nice wash from the reverb. Tip four has to be one of my favorites That’s because the options and possibilities are endless endless Effects before reverb. Any effect is going to shape the dry sound coming in and hit the reverb a bit differently for a unique flavor. For example, let's take a distortion plugin and add it before the reverb. I'm going to add the LANDR FX voice plugin. Boom, total distortion. Let's blend it in and see how it's affecting the reverb. Wow I'm going solo the aux reverb track. Have a closer listen And just like that, you're taking a normal verb and adding your own unique spin on it to make your vocals stand out. Tip five Use different reverbs for different sections of your song. Separate your vocal tracks based on the sections of the song, and then send each of those to a different reverb on the chorus reverb. I'm going to make it a little less wide and I'm going to decrease the decay time a little bit, a little drier. It's a little bit more upfront. And then on the verse vocal, I'm going to send it to bus two. And on that reverb bus I've got a much wider reverb and the decay time is quite a bit longer. So it's going to be really washed out, really spacey for a totally different vibe compared to the chorus. Let's have a listen to the difference between the chorus and the verse vocal reverb. You can really hear the difference between the chorus and the verse. Tip six Automate your reverbs That was an automation line if you really like a single reverb for your entire song and want to keep the same characteristics throughout, then automate your reverb fader. For your choruses bring it down and for your verses, boost it up. Alternatively, you can also automate the amount of vocal being sent to the reverb. In the case of this Arturia Rev-Plate 140 reverb plugin. I can actually automate the plate models that could be interesting for different sections or even different phrases. Check what parameters exist on your reverb plugin and consider automating them. By the way, if you're digging the Arturia Rev-Plate 140 plug in and the LANDR FX plugins, check them out here. Tip seven is all about throws Vocal reverb throws!! Vocal throws are all about highlighting a specific phrase or even a syllable and accentuating it with a burst of verb. This works really well when you have an empty space after a phrase and want the vocal to continue to fill up that space. The best way to do this is to select the phrase you want to highlight, duplicate it to a second track and throw reverb on that. That is set to 100% now blend it in with the fader. Or you can even automate the reverb to get even more selective. Awesome. Here's before the throw And here it is with the throw really fills out that space. Tip eight Pan your reverbs This is another way to create extremely wide and unique spaces for your vocals. Set up two mono busses and pan one hard left and one hard right. Send your vocals to both busses equally. Now you can put two completely different reverbs on each channel. On my left channel, I've got a room reverb with a pretty long decay, and on my right channel I've got a darker reverb with a medium decay. Now let's try blending them both in That’s HUUUUUGEEEEE On the topic of space. We have tons of room for more subscribers I noticed that many of our viewers aren't actually subscribed. Hit that bell, that thumbs up and show us some love in the comments. It'll help get this video to more people. Road to 121k Tip nine use pre-delay Pre-delay is how long it takes the reverb plugin to start processing the signal to get a natural sounding reverb, setting the pre-delay is crucial. Humans like you and I, are accustomed to hearing a certain amount of delay before hearing the reverb, many professional audio engineers set their reverb according to the tempo of the song that they're working on. On your reverb plugin you'll notice that it's often set by milliseconds. You can use an online BPM to milliseconds calculator to figure out the correct amount of milliseconds that you should set your pre-delay to. Depending on what you're going for. When you're setting your pre-delay think 0 to 10 milliseconds would be a small space. 10 to 20 milliseconds would be a medium space and anything above 20 milliseconds would be a large space. Finally, Tip ten Know what sound you want! I gave a ton of info in this video, but at the end of the day make sure you know what sound you're going for. Depending on the kind of music you're making, it's good to experiment, but don't overanalyze it. Think of what kind of sound you want in terms of brightness or darkness, dense or diffuse. Remember the reverb should be audible, but not distracting. Don't be afraid to go back to the drawing board if it sounds bad when you can actually hear it. I think I covered them all. Did I miss one? Let me know down in the comments. Let me know if this video helped you and what you'd like to learn next. See you. Yeah, that's a wrap.
