Hey so I have a few questions about production
- I keep seeing in your videos that reverb is really important and helps make the main lead sound all crazy and full (referring to trance mainly) and basically a dry lead isn’t good, but whenever I put reverb, of any sort, on my synths they just sound god awful, i’ve tried aether, lexicon, and artsacoustic, they all just sound bad on all settings (even the trance ones). So what am i doing wrong?
- I also saw in a spatial mixing video that you say that having a stereo width on a main synth makes no sense, so why reverb and delay so much? You also pan center your main synth which also makes no sense to me because i thought only bass and drums should be panned center but you put a utility on the bass and make it 11…
are you using the reverb as a send and return or you just putting it on the channel as an insert?
The Panning thing is really about just creating space for the most important sounds.
if you just have drums bass and a main riff theres no reason why you wouldn’t have your main riff totally stereo… if like a lot of tracks you have big string pads too you will find that the 2 sounds (riff & Pads) will mask each other.
I generally send the pads out wider and bring the main riff more towards the centre.
this gives you a nice focused powerful main riff but still has the reverb to give it width and space when its heard on its own or filtered down.
There are a bunch of different ways to do everything in production one technique might work well with one combination of sounds and a another technique on other sounds. Its really about having all these tools at your disposal to help shape your mixes.
The creating space tut was only really showing a technique to help you if your mix is sounding over crowded and you want to seperate out the sounds. you might want to do the exact opposite if your mix is already sounding sparse.
[quote]phil johnston (06/10/2011)[hr]are you using the reverb as a send and return or you just putting it on the channel as an insert?
The Panning thing is really about just creating space for the most important sounds.
if you just have drums bass and a main riff theres no reason why you wouldn’t have your main riff totally stereo… if like a lot of tracks you have big string pads too you will find that the 2 sounds (riff & Pads) will mask each other.
I generally send the pads out wider and bring the main riff more towards the centre.
this gives you a nice focused powerful main riff but still has the reverb to give it width and space when its heard on its own or filtered down.
There are a bunch of different ways to do everything in production one technique might work well with one combination of sounds and a another technique on other sounds. Its really about having all these tools at your disposal to help shape your mixes.
The creating space tut was only really showing a technique to help you if your mix is sounding over crowded and you want to seperate out the sounds. you might want to do the exact opposite if your mix is already sounding sparse.[/quote]
I use the reverbs as inserts, should I be using them as sends? I dont see the difference
and ok thanks a lot, that really helped clear things up
Using them as sends means you can send multiple channels to the one reverb it also gives you better control of how much reverb to apply.
[quote]phil johnston (06/10/2011)[hr]Using them as sends means you can send multiple channels to the one reverb it also gives you better control of how much reverb to apply.
[/quote]
i like to personalize the reverbs but I think your way will probably work better, probably make it more in tune with the space, thanks
I am actually finding that having a dry lead layered with a reverbed version of that lead makes it sound MUCH better than any alternative. Do you think this is a good idea?
[quote]Decebal (07/10/2011)[hr]I am actually finding that having a dry lead layered with a reverbed version of that lead makes it sound MUCH better than any alternative. Do you think this is a good idea?[/quote]
That’s more or less the thing you do when using a send with Reverb.
You can listen to what’s being added as reverb to the master by soloing the send reverb.
[quote]daniaan (07/10/2011)[hr][quote]Decebal (07/10/2011)[hr]I am actually finding that having a dry lead layered with a reverbed version of that lead makes it sound MUCH better than any alternative. Do you think this is a good idea?[/quote]
That’s more or less the thing you do when using a send with Reverb.
You can listen to what’s being added as reverb to the master by soloing the send reverb.[/quote]
i know but it seems all reverbs just immediately drown out everything so i found that putting a lot of reverb on a duplicate gives me the best of both worlds
thats exactly what a send and return does… put the effect on a duplicate of the signal… only you can then send many tracks to it.
way way more CPU efficient
[quote]phil johnston (07/10/2011)[hr]thats exactly what a send and return does… put the effect on a duplicate of the signal… only you can then send many tracks to it.
way way more CPU efficient[/quote]
OH ok, so thats why whenever you put a send on it sounds different than when I put it on regularly, thanks 