Production Tips
• Triggering Logic from an AKAI MPC
• Reverse reverb effect
• Breakbeats
• Recording vocals
• Working with acapellas
• Getting started
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Reverse Reverb Effects
Level: Advanced
Posted: 03.03.08
I first heard this effect on a lot of R&B records in the late 1990's, and always puzzled me how this was done. I finally worked it out with some dodgy house diva vocal sample, a crappy old Boss SE-50 effects unit and a Akai S3000. Of course its all much easier nowadays in the virtual world! You kids will never know how hard we had it...... :)
1) So this effect is wicked for introducing the first line of a vocal, or creating a haunting sense of a build up. You can use this effect on pretty much anything not just vocals, stabs etc, although for this demonstration I'm going to start off with a vocal.
Click the '+' below to hear it
2) So what we need to do now is find the first syllable or hit of our vocal/sound. You need to make sure you only a split second of the beginning, you don't want to hear the second phrase of a word for example, it has to be very tight and sharp.
Click the '+' below to hear it
3) Now you may want to take this audio snippet and copy and paste it onto a fresh audio track and keep the first audio track the same as we did in step 1. We don't want to cut up the original vocal in anyway but it is necessary to do this for applying the reverb effect and resampling. So once you have this snippet on a fresh audio track, apply your best reverb plug in at your disposal.
Click the '+' below to hear it
4) Now we want a really long reverb time, between 10-20ms is a good start. Also make sure on your reverb plug in that you don't have any eq or filter settings on the reverb as this will make it sound dull, we want a pure reverb signal for the best results.
Click the '+' below to hear it
5) Next step when your happy with the sound of your reverb is to bounce this out on its own and soloed and called it something like "Reverse Reverb". Once you have done this, re-import it into your sequencer and reverse the file in your audio editor.
Click the '+' below to hear it
6) You might want to apply a compressor to the audio channel with the reverse reverb audio, because it can produce quite a subtle fading in effect and for lots of forms of dance music this subtly will be lost in the mix with the other instruments.
7) Now comes the exciting part, have the original unaffected vocal on one audio channel and our new reverse reverb on another, but so one is above another so we can easily line them up.
8) Now chop the reverse reverb file so we get rid of the spike at the end, basically this is the original audio coming in before the reverb starts, except because it was reversed its now at the end of the audio file.
9) Line up the end of the reverse reverb with the start of the original vocal file. In theory this should now do the job, but I always find that I need to do a bit of volume automation to get the effect of it fading in properly. You can then also have more control on how it comes in and at what speed with your music. The end effect should sound something like this....
Click the '+' below to hear it
Also try this trick on things like horn or string stabs, it gives a really good sense of build up. You may also want to try using a big delay instead of a long reverb, both work equally as well and produce usable results. Have Fun!
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