Reverb is an essential tool to master in order to create depth and color around a singer, or as Fab likes to call it, "The Sauce".
In this tutorial, Fab Dupont explains all of the controls used to tweak the reverb tail and then shows you how to dial in the settings to create the perfect sauce around your vocal track.
"Learn how to feel what these knobs do as opposed to thinking about it, so you can be inspired when you go to use the reverb plugin" - Fab
Once you get a feel for the various aspects of a reverb, it will be easier to connect your ears to the final result and achieve the perfect space around your vocal track.
Topics covered include:
Reverb as a "Feature" vs. "Enhancement"
When to use Aux tracks as opposed to the Wet/Dry knob
Tweaking the reverb tail and feeling the time and size parameters
What is absorption
Using presets as starting points
Using compression to control the reverb "bloom"
Keeping reverb out of the way of the track
For more tips on how to shape the space around your vocals, check out:
00:00:08 Good morning children! Today, we're
going to learn to cook with sauce!
Namely, we're gonna use reverb
on vocal tracks
so that they sound yummy.
00:00:16 Here's Pam from The Arrows singing
the verse to 'Prisoner'.
00:00:19 You might notice that
there's a delay on the track.
00:00:23 That's my Haas effect delay,
left over from the Delay video.
00:00:26 Now, it sounds like this.
00:00:35 In the track...
00:00:46 It sounds good, but it sounds dry!
Let's add some reverb.
00:00:51 What are we looking for?
We're looking for the vocal to be
surrounded by some sort of ambience
that feels good and is not in the way,
and enhances the vibe of the vocal.
00:01:01 Let me lower the amount of reverb
and see if this does it.
00:01:04 This is the default setting.
00:01:14 In the track...
00:01:25 With the current setting,
this reverb has a lot of personality.
00:01:28 It's more a feature than an enhancement.
00:01:30 What can we do to change that?
When you work this way, you want to put
the reverb on a separate object,
in Pro Tools, on an Aux object,
and use a bus to send
some of your signal to the reverb.
00:01:42 And you want your reverb
to be 100% wet,
so that what comes out of the reverb
object is only reverb, no direct signal.
00:01:50 If you ask yourself: why am I not putting
the reverb straight on the vocal object,
there are several reasons for that.
Reason number 1.
00:01:58 Most reverb plug-in's blend button
reacts funny to level changes.
00:02:05 It's very difficult to add
a little more reverb
while keeping
your vocal dry level the same.
00:02:11 That's annoying
when you're mixing a record.
00:02:13 It's always easier to have an Aux,
and a bus to it.
00:02:17 If you're using other DAWs
like Cubase, Studio One, or Logic,
the words are a little different,
'Bus', 'Aux',
but the system is the same.
It's like an old console.
00:02:26 You have a main object.
From that main object,
you have a Send to another object,
on which object you have the reverb,
and that's just your reverb.
And you decide to send more or less
of your dry signal
to what's gonna be your wet signal.
00:02:38 Number 2!
I might want to send several stuff
to that same reverb
to create kind of a close effect,
a together effect.
00:02:45 Meaning, I might want to send
the lead vocal, the lead vocal double,
some of the background vocals,
maybe I have two different lead vocals,
one for the verse, one for the chorus,
like in this track,
maybe I want to send a kazoo into
the vocal track, you never know!
It's always easier to do that when
you have one object.
00:03:02 This comes from old-school limitations
where you had one reverb
for the whole studio,
and you sent everybody into it,
and that created a certain sound.
And we like that sound,
it's been around for a minute!
To simplify our lives, what I propose
we do is focus on the tail only aspect
of the reverb process, the sauce.
00:03:19 If you're interested in learning
about early reflections,
then you should watch
the 'Creating Space with Reverbs' video.
00:03:24 If you're interested into
the delay part of it,
then you should watch
the 'Using Delays on Vocal Tracks' video.
00:03:30 So! The problem with this stuff,
it's all the same, plug-in to plug-in,
hardware to hardware,
but it's all called different things,
because nobody got together with nobody
to decide about standards.
00:03:40 So sometimes,
Reverb Time is called Length.
00:03:42 Sometimes, Size is called Density,
or Reflections, you never know.
00:03:47 So let me play you a few settings
and tell you what they do,
and then you'll be able to translate to
whatever reverb plug-ins you're using.
00:03:54 The one that's easy is Time.
This is a short reverb.
00:04:01 This is a long reverb.
00:04:08 Here's a midsize reverb.
00:04:15 Here's a midsize reverb
with a small room.
00:04:28 Same Length, big room.
00:04:40 Notice how it feels a little further
away when it's a bigger room.
00:04:43 It's trying to imitate a bigger room.
00:04:45 There's probably
some delays involved in there.
00:04:47 I'll play it again. Check it out.
Big Size.
00:04:53 Small Size.
00:04:59 This parameter you can use to decide
how much space there is around the vocal.
00:05:04 For example, if the rest of your song
is really dry and very claustrophobic,
you could probably use a smaller size,
and then it'll be easier to blend.
00:05:13 However, if you want to freak people out,
you could have a huge reverb,
big, high ceilings,
and a very claustrophobic track.
00:05:21 That's a funny effect too!
It's a question of taste.
00:05:23 What's important is for you to learn
to feel what these buttons do,
as opposed to think about it, so that
you can be inspired
when you try to use the plug-in.
00:05:32 I'm not gonna bore you with Dispersion,
Phase Difference, or Phase Mod,
those are old tricks
used by the manufacturers,
in this case Sonnox,
to make this sound more realistic,
but we need to learn about Absorption.
00:05:43 Bare rooms are bright.
00:05:44 You've all been in an apartment
you haven't moved in yet,
you just painted it,
it's bright as hell!
Then you start adding curtains
and rugs and furniture,
and the reverb gets shorter,
because it gets broken down,
but also, the quality of the reverb
gets darker and darker
as the objects in the room absorb
the high end first.
00:06:02 That's what this parameter is about.
00:06:04 Some plug-ins have this parameter
as a low-pass filter,
some plug-ins have it
as a color filter,
some plug-ins have called Absorption,
like this one.
00:06:13 If you listen to the same reverb,
with no absorption...
00:06:22 With.
00:06:28 So now you have your size,
then you have your length,
and then you have the tone of it,
the color of it.
00:06:34 You could achieve some of this
by EQ'ing the reverb,
but this is nice because it's dynamic,
frequency dependent,
and is really trying to model
what a real room would do,
with curtains in it, or not.
00:06:45 What's important for you to know is
whatever reverb plug-in you open
will have some sort of a flavor of this,
and then other stuff to confuse you.
00:06:53 But if you can locate
the Time or Length,
the Size, or Shape,
and the Tone of the reverb buttons,
those three buttons will
make you happy forever!
So let's try and massage this reverb
to be complementary to
this vocal, in this track.
00:07:09 How do you think about it? First,
you've got to hear the direct sound
and listen to it in the track.
00:07:25 Ok, I like the tone of
that shorter, brighter reverb,
but I think there's too much of it.
00:07:30 Now of course, you're gonna ask yourself
How do I know there's too much of it?
That's a question of taste. Maybe
you like this, and that's perfectly fine!
This is where what you've been
listening to recently,
what you've been listening to forever,
is gonna influence your choices.
00:07:45 All choices are fine as long as
they allow you to achieve
that final result
that you're looking for.
00:07:51 If I were making
a 1965 Motown style record,
this would be way too little reverb.
00:07:58 If I were making an angry mid 90s
lumberjack shirt kind of vibe record,
this would be way too much reverb,
it should be totally dry,
or a Punk record.
00:08:10 It's really a question of taste here.
00:08:12 What you need to learn is learn
the feeling of the different parameters.
00:08:16 How does it feel
when the reverb is longer?
How does it feel
when the reverb is brighter?
How does it feel when there's more
or less of that reverb longer or brighter?
That may seem a little overwhelming,
but you get to it pretty quickly.
00:08:28 For example,
this is where we are right now.
00:08:37 And then, this is less of it.
00:08:49 As a reminder, this is dry.
00:09:00 The way I like to think of it is
when I mute the reverb,
I want my center vocal to be the same,
but without its friends,
and then when I turn it back on,
I get the friends back.
00:09:12 As opposed to when I mute the vocal,
everything goes to hell.
00:09:15 So the idea is to add this as sauce.
00:09:18 The main ingredient is the same,
the reverb is the sauce.
00:09:22 Sometimes,
even after spending a lot of time
comparing different kinds of reverbs,
and presets and everything,
you can't get the vocal and the reverb
and the track to speak to each other,
and sit together.
00:09:33 It's often faster to just process
something that's close enough
than to spend more time
twiddling presets.
00:09:39 For example,
if I listen to my track here in solo,
this is my reverb...
00:09:48 So, this reverb has
a built-in equalizer.
00:09:52 Fantastic! But if your reverb doesn't,
you could potentially just add one.
So I'm gonna get an EQ.
00:09:59 And put it behind the reverb.
00:10:01 It never hurts to high pass the bottom
when you don't know
what's in the bottom of your track,
and what's exciting the reverb.
00:10:06 It's a nice way to clean stuff.
00:10:08 Then you can make it
a little darker right here.
00:10:15 As opposed to...
00:10:21 If you listen to it in the track,
and I'm gonna add a little more
to exaggerate the effect...
00:10:26 With the track, it sounds like this.
00:10:29 Reverb un-EQ'ed.
00:10:37 EQ'ed...
00:10:43 Listen to the word 'Behind'.
00:10:45 Listen how the reverb reacts to
the accent in the word 'Behind',
and how it makes
kind of a bloom in the reverb.
00:10:53 You may like that, or you may not.
00:10:55 One way to remove that bloom,
but keep the reverb the same length
and have the same body,
is to just low pass it
like I just did, check it out.
This is without.
00:11:08 And EQ'ed...
00:11:15 It's much more even, because that reverb
responded quite a lot
to that peak on 'Behind'.
00:11:21 By EQ'ing the high end out, you get
a mellower reverb with less peak.
00:11:25 That's one way of doing it.
00:11:27 Another way of doing this would be to
compress or EQ the Send into the reverb.
00:11:32 Now that gets really tricky.
Imagine this.
00:11:35 Since the reverb reacts pretty
dramatically to whatever you send to it,
if you make what you send less dramatic,
or custom-tailored to just what you want,
then you're able to get the reverb
to sound exactly the way you want.
00:11:46 Let's listen to the Send raw,
without reverb,
so we can focus on the sound
of the Send, with the compression,
so we know what the reverb will
listen to later when we grow up.
00:11:58 To do so, remember, it's always healthy
to put your Send in Pre mode,
so you can mute the direct signal
and focus on the return only.
00:12:06 This is the signal...
00:12:14 Alright.
I'm gonna compress the hell out of it.
00:12:17 Say at 10:1.
00:12:20 Super short Attack
so all the peaks are taken.
00:12:24 Pretty slow Release.
00:12:25 Let's raise the Gain,
so we can listen at constant gain.
00:12:32 Without.
00:12:37 It's about right.
Then you can turn the reverb back on.
00:12:40 Now we can hear what the reverb
sounds like with the Send compressed...
00:12:52 As opposed to uncompressed...
00:13:03 So you noticed the difference.
00:13:05 Without the compression, the peaks
make the reverb algorithm blossom
and have that burst in it.
00:13:10 It may work for your track, or
it may not. Very often, it doesn't work.
00:13:13 And you keep switching presets trying to
figure out why it's not working.
00:13:17 It's not working because your signal
into the reverb is very dynamic
and it makes your reverb dynamic,
which is weird since we want sauce.
00:13:24 And I don't eat dynamic sauce!
If you compress
the reverb Send a little bit,
right now we're being a little Attila
on it, but if you recompress it a bit,
you'll get some of that bloom off, and
in the track, it's pretty fantastic.
00:13:35 I'm gonna turn the compressor back on,
and listen to the track
with the reverb Send compressed.
00:13:49 As a reminder, uncompressed...
00:13:59 Compressed...
00:14:08 Combined with the EQ we did earlier...
00:14:18 Flat without reverb...
00:14:28 You noticed that the combination of
the compression and the EQ on the reverb
let us tailor the reverb
in such a manner
that the first tone, the direct tone,
is untouched.
00:14:40 It's just enhanced
by a nice little cotton cloud behind it
that's not in the way of the track.
00:14:47 If we were to listen to
the same exact reverb
without the compression,
and without the extra EQ,
it sounds like this. Without.
00:15:08 With.
00:15:23 Without the processing, it has more
personality, it's more present,
it makes itself heard.
00:15:28 With the extra processing,
the compression on the Send,
and the EQ on the return, you can
actually tuck it into the track more.
00:15:37 Of course it doesn't stop here. We just
compressed the Send to the reverb
and EQ'ed the return.
00:15:42 But say you have a very thick male
vocal in a very thick arrangement,
you're gonna want to send that male
vocal to a reverb to give it space.
00:15:50 Do you want the bottom of the vocal
to excite your reverb?
Maybe not!
So you could EQ the Send to the reverb
and high pass the vocal
so only the high end of the vocal
makes the reverb happy
and the bottom end just ignores it.
That makes sense.
00:16:03 Some reverb have that built-in.
00:16:04 The Oxford reverb has an LF Roll-Off,
which is really a high-pass filter
for the input. So that's built-in.
00:16:10 Maybe your reverb doesn't, but you
could use an EQ on the way to the reverb
to remove whatever frequencies
you don't want the reverb to see.
00:16:16 Same principle as compression.
It's very simple!
You basically custom tailor the signal
that you want your reverb to see.
00:16:23 The reason why I chose the Sonnox reverb
as an example
is because it doesn't have any reverb
types like Room, Hall, or Plate.
00:16:30 It has Tail.
That's all it does.
00:16:33 And you have those parameters.
Length, Size,
Absorption, which is color.
00:16:37 It makes it easy to custom tailor
your reverb to your mix.
00:16:41 Once you master that, and you get
the feel for it inside of you
without twiddling knobs,
you can get deeper into it
and look into early reflections,
and the relationships
between reverbs and delays.
00:16:53 As a reminder,
an easy way to think about it
is your delays and your early
reflections are gonna be your spice,
and your reverb tail is gonna be
your sauce.
00:17:04 You spice it up to give it flavor,
and then you put the sauce
to make it easy to eat.
00:17:09 Et voilà!
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is a award-winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.
Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.
He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.
Fab has received many accolades around the world, including wins at the Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards, US independent music awards. He also has received Latin Grammy nominations and has worked on many Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated albums.
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I really like how you focus on listening to the differences. I have learned a lot from your reverb videos - and have spent quite a few hours now listening to my halls, plates and ambiences and the different effects they create. Hall = height was a highlight!
mistapes
2021 Jan 20
Fab I love your personality man. Wish I had a friend like you! Thanks for making these videos.
rhcpmisha
2019 Feb 24
Great video. On a personal level, though, I'm discouraged that I can't tell the difference between most of these A/B comparisons.
Fabulous Fab
2016 Dec 16
@soundspace2001: I only really use the pre setting to show you guys how it sounds or for special effects. When mixing I'm 90% of the time in post mode.
soundspace2001
2016 Dec 16
Really great video. I just have one big question: do you keep the PRE-button ON all the time - meaning also when mixing? Or do you switch the PRE-button OFF, as soon as you start mixing - or does it make NO difference at all?! I noticed, that you keep it ON all the time and not only for pre-hearing the effects of your editings (I noticed this also in other videos).
reddirt
2016 Jan 16
You are really on top of your subject; terrific vid as always Fab.
Cheers
syphamusic
2016 Jan 05
@FAB, Great video. However do these "principles" also apply when mixing Hip-Hop? I ask because such tracks usually seem awash with reverb.
HANSON MICHAEL
2016 Jan 02
Merci for the video! I did not think that the vocal matched the track. Thus it was hard to hear a perfect blend. Maybe some of the instrs verbs on the vocal next time and a session instead of 2 track ref. for the "summing" to be all over and more coherent
CCHorton
2015 Mar 23
Informative and fun as always. Thanks Fab!
anxious
2015 Jan 21
Hope the cold's gone. A tes souhaites! Thanks for the video, always a lot to learn. Salut.
Ten20SevenAudio
2015 Jan 08
Fantastic video. Concise, with JUST the right amount of detail.
There's a technique I use from time to time; most commonly on drum room mics: I use a short delay, 100% wet on the insert of an stereo aux/sub out. After panning,the room mic's outputs to the same aux/sub, I calculate the delay time to the value of a 32nd - 64th note according to the songs tempo. They'll sound huge: a way to naturally make a smaller room sound larger w/o excessively tacky 'verbs. Anyone ever try anything similar w/ reverb? I still tend use a touch of 'verb w/ it. To my ears it adds another spatial dimension
vgabriel
2015 Jan 08
Thanx!
Fabulous Fab
2015 Jan 06
@vgabriel: the idea is to tame the transient peaks so they don;t over excite the reverb engine and it stays more discrete. So pre makes sense. If you want a denser reverb then post makes sense. It'll bring the decay up and make it sound unnatural and present.
Fabulous Fab
2015 Jan 06
@hbguitar: Good question. The reverb trio idea works. This works. It all works. In an effort to ease viewers in without overwhelming them with information, we chose to break things down into pieces. You can use the reverb trio only. You can come up with a reverb quartet system for yourself too. You can use the trio and add a bit of the concepts in this video to sweeten the vocal or the kazoo, whichever is your lead instrument. For myself I use the trio and I use these principles to tune them to my liking. If I still feel the track needs something I'll add discrete spaces to the lacking tracks.
g
2015 Jan 03
@DenisD
This video is currently in post production! Soon available on pureMix.
DenisD
2015 Jan 03
Where is "Using DELAY on vocals" video? I can't find it.
Saul Santilli
2015 Jan 01
Fab , you are the French Jesus of Reverb
dagovitsj
2014 Dec 30
Thank you, very useful! And I really like that you incurage us to think musically about mixing - learn to get a feel for different kinds of reverb (insead of fiddling knobs), what they do to the music etc ;)
hbguitar
2014 Dec 29
Hi Fab. Thanks for the video - great as ever. It may be an a obvious question, but how does this fit in with the office/plate/hall set-up? Would you have an additional vox verb or would you get the office (for example) to work for the vox. Cheers
vgabriel
2014 Dec 29
Hi Fab...
REALLY useful tutorial,thank you...
One question please...we always prefer the compressor pre ( put before the reverb in the inserts ? ) or we can also try it post?...which one is the most common?....thanx!!!
Vasilis
ravian
2014 Dec 28
Man Fab, your the best at explaining Audio..
never stop..making video's :)
Greets Ravian.
sirwnstn
2014 Dec 28
I love the cooking analogy. It helps explain so much. Now I don't feel so intimidated when dealing with reverb. Thank you.
jeromewauk
2014 Dec 27
FINALLY , someone who has explained the use of reverb that has not left me more confused than ever. Fab , thank you , thank you , thank you!!!!!
