AVOID THESE 5 REVERB MISTAKES! | Make Pop Music

what's up it's austin from make pop music and austin hall audio and today we're going to go over five mistakes that you should avoid with your reverbs [Music] what's up make pop music it's austin and we are back with another video and for the video today i wanted to focus on five mistakes that i see a lot of people make with their reverbs these are mistakes that i've made in the past and they're just common kind of themes that i'm hearing when people send me stuff for feedback or when i'm kind of listening to things that are just popping around the group so i figured why not go over these five things that can instantly improve your reverb and when you improve your reverb you'll start to improve a ton of other aspects of your song so i don't want to chat too much before we actually hop in but if you like this video make sure you like comment and subscribe and if you want to check out more of our stuff head over to our website makepopmusic.com but without further ado let's actually hop in the daw and see what these five mistakes are and how you can easily avoid them all right so the first thing i want to talk about that i see happening a lot is people not knowing whether to use a reverb as a send or as an insert on a track so there's really two main ways that you can use a reverb in your song the first way is just simply adding a reverb to your chain so we're in my jaw here i'll go ahead and show you an example of what i mean so like i had a clap track right here right that dry with no reverb no eq no nothing it sounded like this so in an instance like this where i have a sound and i know that i want to add a lot of reverb to that sound to kind of give it its own space give it its own vibe but i know that i'm not going to be putting that same exact reverb on a bunch of other things like it's not going to go on the kick it's not going on the snare it's literally just happening on this clap and i don't need a ton of really specific control on it i just need like a general reverb i'm just going to use that as an insert i'm not going to take the time to send up an effects track or a send track or anything like that so like for this i just dragged on fabfilter pro r and that gave me the vibe that i needed and then i was able to just eq the sample with the reverb after the fact and get the sound that i wanted so sort of something like this especially like on scents guitars i rarely use the reverbs on ascend because to me it's just easier to throw them on the actual element because i'll kind of use that as part of the sound design process rather than like a mixing element so if you're using reverb for like sound design and creativity feel free to just throw it right on the track there's really no need to use ascend and then if you want to use like a send like for example every song my main vocals are going to a couple different reverb sins so this is a song bet you left it out by emia and i have her vocal right here up to my city acting lost and lonely clinging to me so if i turn off all of the sins including the reverbs uh this is what we basically have with our dry signal all up to my city acting lost and lonely clinging to and then i have a couple sins that we're not going to talk about in this video like i've got some delays and a widener so we kind of have this all together all up to my city acting lost and lonely but i knew that i wanted just a little bit of reverb so for this song i didn't want something that was going to kind of drown in a mix but i did want something that was going to help this vocal sit because you'll hear when it's dry it just sounds a little bit awkward and a little bit forced took my hand and held me so it needs a little bit of something so what i like to do is i'll basically create these send tracks that if you're in cubase it's really easy you can just add a track and then you're going to add an effects track and then you can just choose your routing so this isn't my kind of template that i use for every song i'll have a long reverb and a short reverb which we'll kind of talk about in just a bit but generally what you're going to want to do for ascend is you'll just have an effects track if i mute nothing it's literally just the parallel going from the dry vocal took my hand and held me while you had some so the point of using ascend is so i can pop a reverb on it and then we've got it right here and you're going to want it at 100 wet so if i put the reverb directly on the track as an insert uh you're probably not going to have this 100 wet but since we're blending this into taste took my hand and held me while you had somebody and there's our main reverb and then we'll kind of talk about post-processing a little bit later that's a whole nother tip but i'll just kind of show you what a difference it sounds like if we have it on a send versus as an insert so here's with the send took my hand and held me while you had somebody and then if we were to just use that as an insert right here same exact preset but we just put this at like you know i don't know let's try like 15 wet 17 percent wet took my hand and held me while you had somebody it's not loud enough but then as we start driving it up it just doesn't really sit right back in raleigh you just really don't have the ability to fine tune and finesse it so we'll talk about post-processing in just a minute but for now all you really really need to know is if you want to have abilities to kind of tweak that reverb using it on ascend is going to be really really beneficial because you can kind of automate the sin level throughout the song you can automate the actual volume of that send track returning back in and if you want to pre and post process that's also something that's on the table where if you're using it as an insert you really only get the tools that come with whatever reverb you're using for that track so know whether you're using it as an insert or send that is definitely mistake number one that i see a ton let's go ahead and talk about mistake number two that i see and that is just using the wrong type of reverb and so i'm not even necessarily talking about the wrong reverb plugin i guess that could be a factor but there are a bunch of different styles of reverb so like let's go back up to i don't know just that clap or whatever it's something that has a reverb on it um so we have like pro r here pro r is kind of unique because it's not really modeled off of different types of reverb so this is just going to be a kind of digital reverb where you kind of have control over the time over the stereo space etc so with that you're not going to get as lost as if you use something like verb sweet or valhalla vintage verb where different reverbs and different algorithms have a totally different sound so a lot of the time i'll see people use like a room reverb on something that they should have used like a plate or a chamber and so we'll just kind of talk about what those are and kind of what they do so you can see right here verb suite basically has modeled a bunch of old analog reverb units and so typically that's divided up into different styles so we'll just go over a couple basic ones you have like your room reverbs which are generally in my opinion best for like short sounds if you need them to sound like a drum room basically if you want them to sound like they were tracked in a room that's anywhere between like 15 feet by 15 feet and 30 feet by 30 feet a room reverb is going to be really really good for that i like to use it as a short reverb so i can kind of add a little bit of stereo width and stereo space but if i'm trying to really get a vocal to sit in with like a nice tail room reverb is not going to be where i go typically for something like that i'll go for a plate which is just kind of this dense generally like medium to long decay reverb and then if i want something that's just super luscious and kind of really churchy and atmospheric i'll use something like a big hall where i can kind of drive that reverb time way up or you can even get into some of these ambient spaces and chambers so you really do need to know what the vibe of the reverb you're going for is and before you go start tweaking your times and tweaking your processing and all of that stuff know if you're going in to do a plate reverb a room reverb a chamber reverb something with a hall a digital reverb that's not really modeled off of a certain room let me just give you a quick little uh kind of scope into how different this can make something sound all right so for example here's this clap again we're going to go back there it is dry let's go ahead and start trying different reverbs on it so let's start with just something really really simple let's start with like a room so we can even go to like a large room and you'll hear how even a large room is not going to be that long and that luscious you can hear it's kind of got that spanky kind of like echoey reverb it's not super smooth and it's not super dense so there's a long room let's shorten that up just so you can kind of hear this is kind of how i would use something like this i'd maybe turn it down a little bit add some width darken it up just to give me a little bit of slapback but let's go ahead and say that we need that to kind of have a nice little bit of tail and ambience let's go to like a like a fat plate so you can see that this starts at like almost a second and then we'll drive all the way up to like two and a half i like like a one and a half to two and a half second plate a lot of the time you can hear how that's a lot longer and a lot more um dense and kind of round where the room definitely has its like extra little reflections and then you can go into all these different reverb units you're basically just going to want to know the difference of like halls chambers plates and rooms outside of that you can really just experiment but let's go to a hole so you can hear just how different this is this is going to give you like that church vibe that kind of big choir hole vibe so you can hear it's a lot darker it's a lot smoother so this is really really great for like choir vocals background vocals if you need just like a really really luscious vocal reverb a hall is the way to go so just knowing the difference between those different types of reverbs and what they do is going to be key for getting the sound that you're wanting another thing that i see happening a lot is people not setting their times right on their reverbs and sometimes it's too short and the you know whatever's being reverberated kind of sounds like it's in like this boxy room where it needs to be a little bit more open and lush and sometimes they have the decay time way too long and it just kind of washes everything out and just gets really muddy and kind of gross sounding so let's go ahead and take another listen to this uh main reverb that we have here and i'll kind of show you how different this can change the vibe so right now the main kind of long reverb on this is one and a half seconds and it's a plate so it's pretty dense it's pretty bright and it's going to give us that space we need but watch as we start to shorten it and as we start to lengthen it took my hand and held me while you had somebody let me go ahead and turn off the delays as well and help me while you had somebody so you can see it's long it's lush but it's not drowning out everything and it's not sitting crazy in the mix uh let me show you actually in the mix so you can kind of hear it now let's shorten that up to like under a second and you'll kind of hear how awkward it starts to sound took my hand and held me while you had somebody back in raleigh and i know now there's none of that nice luscious sustain that i kind of liked having that tail with where when it was like 1.5 so you know having it under a second for this not really doing what i need i could bring in a short reverb to do something like that but if we drive this up to like two seconds it's probably going to start to wash out and get a little bit gross back in raleigh and i know now so that decay i feel like is way too long the phrases are all running into each other and i'm not really getting any separation in that vocal so you can see right here that's how i like to determine uh how long my decay is going to be sometimes people will have these calculations and they'll pull out a calculator for like i'm at 120 bpm for this song i need to make sure that my reverb is going to last a whole measure so they'll kind of calculate one measure at 120 bpm and come up with the milliseconds or the seconds i don't really care that much i just want it to fit nice in the mix to my ears and i want it to kind of fit the vibe that i'm going for and then other than that a couple more times that you might want to look at are something like a pre-delay which is basically uh the delay from when that dry vocal goes to when that reverb kicks in how much time is in between there so if i have zero pre-delay it might start to kind of wash out that vocal because there's no discernable difference between when that vocal kicks in and when that reverb starts so let me show you that it just comes in immediately i want a little bit of separation but if i drive it way way up it almost has like a very very audible delay to it took my hand and held me while you had somebody back in raleigh and i know now so that's just not going to work either so generally i'll put it like 20 to 30 milliseconds and that's almost always enough to get it out of the way of those initial transients of the words but still set it in to where it feels really really nice and uh tight with the with the actual vocal also super crucial on something like a synth or a drum where you're going to want the note or the transient to really poke out but you still want that tail from that reverb just kind of play around with the attack and of the pre-delay and you might get a little bit of that separation you're looking for without having to go through and side chain a bunch of stuff and do all of these fancy schmancy different uh you know post-processings once you already have the reverb on just nail that decay time and nail that pre-delay time and normally you're it's going to sit totally fine all right problem number four that i see a lot and this is going to tie back to using it as a send instead of an insert is people not post processing or pre-processing their reverb so generally a reverb straight out of the box sometimes they'll have some eq adjustments like the slate reverb has the high middle and the low pro r has a ton of eq options because it basically has like a pro-q style eq in it valhalla vintage verb is kind of similar to the slate where you've kind of got a high roll-off and a low roll-off but i think where you can really start to get reverbs and delays honestly to start sitting in is if you pre-process them on this end or post-process them so with this song uh i like the vocal mix i didn't feel like it had any issues that i needed to tweak going into the actual reverb but after the reverb i did something that's called the abbey road technique which is where you basically roll off some lows and roll off some highs and it just kind of helps the reverb sit better in the entire mix so here it is with that took my hand and held me while you had somebody and then here it is without it just sounds a little bit dense and a little bit loose took my hand and held me while you had somebody back in raleigh and i know now i just don't really want those low mids because as i start to lengthen out it just gets a little bit muddy so normally i'll always eq after a reverb and then sometimes like i have this short reverb over here i'll pre-process it so if i really really like what my dry vocal sounds like say like anne's vocal in this it's super bright it's super punchy but maybe it's hitting the reverb weird where the reverb kind of has this weird kind of sharp sibilant tail or it just has like this harshness that once it kind of gets echoed out doesn't really sound really good sometimes what i'll do is i will throw on like a de-esser and do some pretty sharp de-essing before it hits that reverb on that scene took my hand and held me while you had somebody and that way my main drive vocal can still be kind of sibilant and can still poke out through that whole mix but when i've got this wide short reverb it's not going to be bouncing around that sound everywhere in the kind of stereo spectrum and it's not going to decay that because i don't really want that so sometimes if i have a vocal a vocal that's super aggressive and super sharp and i kind of need that to sit in the mix but it sounds really horrible with the reverb what i'll do is i'll throw on something like soothe or i'll throw on something like a de-esser and kind of tame that before it hits that reverb and then if i still need a little bit extra that's where i can go in and i can eq after the reverb and then i've also done things like if i want a certain effect i can throw on a doubler before the reverb and it kind of really spreads that vocal out and gets out of the way of that lead i've thrown saturation on before and after reverbs i have thrown delays on before and after reverb so the opportunities are really endless for you to go ahead and make that reverb set in the mix exactly how you want and all you really need to do with that is just set up that send that way you can either put an insert before and that'll affect what's going into that reverb or you can put it after the fact and that will affect what sounds like what it sounds like after the reverb but before it comes back and feeds back into your dry signal on your bus so really if you're having trouble with like a reverb sounding tinny or sounding really boomy this is a really really easy solution like even in this song if i wanted to i could just start scooping out stuff like i could scoop out a ton of this if i wanted it even more smooth i kind of like it having that uh upper mid-range to kind of poke you had through but like hitting that short reverb with the de-esser before and then hitting that long reverb where that kind of filtered out abby road cell eq afterwards really helped both of us sit in the mix rather than having something like this it just feels a little bit unpolished and feels a little bit bright and messy while you had somebody back in raleigh and i know now so definitely make sure you are pre-processing and post-processing your reverb sends if that's something that is needed for the mix and if that's something that stylistically you might be able to add a little bit of extra sauce on and the last little tip i want to talk about is i see a lot of people putting too much emphasis on one reverb in their track i've heard people give the advice online before that you should basically have one reverb per you know element so for all your sense you should have like one reverb for all of your vocals you should have one reverb for all of your drums you should have one room reverb and to be honest i've tried it a couple times and it normally makes for a super boring and one-dimensional mix so i'm not a huge fan of that at all i prefer for every element to have its own reverb based on what's needed so if it needs a little bit of stereo space maybe i hit that with a short reverb if it needs a little bit of just smoothness maybe i hit that with like a medium to long haul or plate reverb if i need something that's going to add a ton of tail and decay like maybe a percussion hit maybe i throw on a seven second you know taj mahal style reverb on that and really just let it rock i don't feel like every element has to have this kind of one big all-encompassing reverb or delay or or anything like that that's going to help it set into a mix and even with you know like the two vocal sins i have here like we've been going over the long reverb and the short reverb and they both have really specific purposes if i got rid of either i don't think the track would sound as good because i need that short reverb to kind of have that slap back wide feel to really put that vocal in the mix and still keep it decently dry sounding but i also need that long reverb to kind of give me a little bit of that tail so when the vocal stops it doesn't sound kind of awkward and kind of left out and leave me a billion other things to start kind of doing here and there so definitely just making sure that you're focusing in on what type of reverb you know what your decay time is going to look like how you're going to process that reverb those are all ways to add a ton of dimension into a mix and a ton of kind of signature characteristics so don't feel like you need to be limited to one reverb or to two reverbs or to just your main sins and definitely don't feel like you need to stick to one reverb plugin so typically on a mix i'll use pro r i'll use verb suite i'll use valhalla vintage sometimes i'll use like super massive it really all just depends i'm not a huge fan of using the same thing for everything because i just don't want a boring mix so that's pretty much it just make sure that you don't kind of pigeonhole yourself with only one or two reverbs in your entire mix feel free to do exactly what you need just make sure that you're kind of tailoring those so it doesn't get messy and out of control that's pretty much it i can give you one extra little bonus tip since you're already here if you've made it this far in the video it's the least i can do and that is say you want to do like a big reverb throw right so we have the main reverb on the vocal we have some delay throws here and there but let's say that we just want one big phrase to be this huge reverb and we don't really want to automate something on the lead vocal because it sounds awkward but we don't want to set up a whole sin just for that reverb throw it's super easy all you have to do is just duplicate that track so all i did was literally duplicated this vocal lead print into this reverb throw track right here and you can see right here that when i take that big reverb off and this eq off it is exactly the same it's literally just killer and i said it must have been killer if i you can literally hear it start to phase out because it's the same exact thing duplicated but what i'll do is if i need a big throw i will kind of similar to how i would process a send i'll just put on a reverb put it at 100 wet and then on this one like i filtered out a ton of lows and a ton of highs and it's really really long it's like four and a half seconds and then i took away a little bit of top end and so now this by itself sounds like this [Music] but i'm not going to get any phase issues because i have that 100 wet as you would on ascend so when i mix that with that lead vocal i get this really really nice reverb throw that literally only happens twice in a song so you can see it wasn't needed to add a send and it would kind of be a pain in the ass to automate that onto the actual track itself so all you do is duplicate it throw on your reverb and then you get full control and that's it i did the same exact thing with the delay throw we've probably talked about it on the channel a lot but i know we talked about using sins and inserts so i figured as a bonus tip at the end i would just show you what to do if you wanted to kind of blend the vibe of the two just copy the track throw on a reverb at 100 and then you can still post process after because this is basically just working as a send that only happens like once or twice but that's going to do it for this video hopefully you guys enjoyed this let me know if you have any questions about this and there you have it those are five common mistakes that i'm seeing come up all the time so just make sure that you're paying attention to what reverb you're using why you're using the reverb do you want to use it as a send versus an insert these are all small decisions that can make a massive difference in your mix a lot of the time i hear people just get reverb super wrong it's either way drowned out or things are way too dry or the space is just really awkward so if you can really find a way to hone in on your reverbs and make sure that they are mixed properly and set properly at a time and just processed properly i think that your mixes will kind of open up in a three-dimensional space and i think it'll be easier to kind of discern what's going on and gel everything together as one cohesive track but if you have any tips that you like using for reverb please comment them down below so we can all see other than that that's going to do it for this video if you liked it please like comment and subscribe it helps us out a ton if you want to share it with people that also helps us out and then if you want to check out any of our other stuff head over to makepopmusic.com where you can check out all of our courses samples presets all that good stuff over there but that's going to do it for this week we will see you guys next week with another tutorial much love everyone peace [Music] you

Channel: Make Pop Music

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Id: Ol33fvTnlCk

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021