How (and why) to use Slap-back Delay

hey this is Joe Gilder from home studio corner calm want to talk to you today about how and why to use slapback delay so here's just a bare naked vocal for a fairly upbeat kind of bluesy tune so here's what the focal sounds like dry boil how this river used to flow okay so generally when you're starting out or maybe just you've never thought of it before if you want some space on the vocal you just add a reverb so something like this this river used to flow rushing me and you play around with the tail and the the size of the room and all that stuff but you generally are going for some sort of a reverb e-tail sort of sound and that could be fine but I find that when using reverb on a faster song especially it just tends to get lost and so you turn it up and you turn it up and you turn it up and then it's too much if you can't really find that happy medium at least on something like a lead vocal so one of the things I like to reach for instead of reverb I may try it from time to time but generally I reach for this first and that slapback delay now all that means it's just a single slap back from the delay so I'm using an analog delay plug-in with Studio One and here's how I like to set it up first off I like to set it I take the sync off I don't want it to be synchronized to the tempo of the song I generally find around 100 milliseconds is a good time couple of other things I turn feedback off I don't want it to go that Peppa Peppa Peppa I don't want it to do anything like that that's not the kind of delay I'm going for I'm going for a single slapback delay okay next thing I do is if it has a high cut and a low cut feature I'll do that so I'll get rid of some of the muddiness down here and some of the extra harshness up top I want it to be kind of a darker analog sounding delay so if it has those features I'll do that or add an EQ with a high and low-pass filter to do that on on the delay signal itself and so then here is what you get so then you can play around with a delay time maybe want to be a little bit shorter let's try 90 the shorter you do it the more it sounds like one voice let's go to 120 that seems to be a little too long I'm gonna stick around 110 okay and then if we if we take off the low and high cut you can hear the it starts to sit on top of the vocal too much let's do the low cut to get rid of that boo meanness and then the esses and tease I don't need those in the delay nearly as much let's roll off everything above three and a half k and there you go you've got a cool slap back delay it gives you the the appearance quote-unquote of a room sound without having all the extra tail and stuff that gets lost in the mix so your ears pick up on that slap back delay and it gives it some depth without having to worry about the rest of the tail and the muddiness of an of a reverb signal and it sounds cool you hear a lot of independent records that have a lot of very aggressive slap back delay and not much reverb and it's just a cool sound to add to your arsenal it might not be great for every song but there have been a lot of songs where I didn't think it was gonna work and it worked wonderfully so next time you're mixing a vocal try instead of reaching for may be your go-to reverb reach for some sort of an analog delay throw a slap back delay on there see how you like it

Channel: Joe Gilder • Home Studio Corner

Views: 56,284

Rating: 4.9821825 out of 5

Keywords: home studio, slap-back delay

Id: kipea595bdA

Length: 3min 31sec (211 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2013