wire to the ear

A friend of mine Marc Acardipane is working on a new album. He is moving from dance music into full on pop. To make the move he went on a serious shopping spree. Recently during a phone conversation he went on for an hour about a new Reverb unit he bought.

Most people would be fine with the built in software reverb that comes with your DAW. I often use Ableton Live’s built in Reverb. A quick tip for the Ableton Reverb is to click the “Quality” drop down menu and pick “High”. Most of the people I know also spend some cash and grab a Convolution Reverb plug-in like Altiverb. I have my Altiverb loaded with vintage hardware reverb Impulse Responses.

But what if you want the absolute best reverb? Lexicon possibly? Nah! Bricasti! According to my friend Marc he just sat there for hours listening to vocals through the Bricasti Model 7 in total awe. I trust Marc as he owns every software and hardware Reverb there is. The specs are basic but this unit is all about sound quality:

• Revolutionary new reverb algorithm
• True Stereo Reverb Process
• Classic and new Presets; Halls, Plates, Rooms, Chambers, Ambient Spaces
• 12 Parametric Program Parameters
• Custom design toroidal transfomer
• High performace switching supply
• Separate Digital and Analog modules
• Postive feel 2 db stepped analog input level control
• MIDI I/O
• Hand Crafted in the USA

An optional remote control is coming soon. It’s $3700 USD. Are you game?

Here’s a technique I use on almost every song I record. This step gives me a helping hand in making transitions in the arrangement work. It also can add drama at the end of an important verse. I have a few names for this tactic including the Kickverb, Kickboom and the awesome Thunderverb!

Take the kick drum you are using throughout the track and isolate one hit. Make a new audio track and place the single kick drum on it. Don’t forget to render your kick first if you had some effects on it like compression or EQ. Once on its own channel insert a reverb. I usually go for Alitverb convolution reverb or the Korg MDE-X multi-effect which comes with the Korg Legacy collection. Both those reverbs have colors to them. Next, I render a single kick going through a wash of reverb. Do several bounces with different kinds of reverbs. You end up with Kickverb1, Kickverb2 and so forth. If your song calls for it insert a distortion plug-in after the reverb. This gives you a dirty decaying sound. My favorite distortion plug-ins are Izotope’s Trash and Ohm Force’s Ohmicide. Another thing to try is pitching your rendered kickverb down.

I usually create my Kickverbs after the general arrangement is finished. Then, I place them strategically throughout the timeline. Two places they fit include at the beggining of the chorus and in the verse after you say something shocking or important. You can also start and finish the song with them.

Some other things that maybe obvious that you can do is reverse the Kickverb. Place that “Reverse Kickverb” before the chorus comes in to build up tension. Of course you don’t have to stick to the Kickverb at all because real thunder and explosion samples will also work.

photo credit: caddymob

I have a large pool of tips and tricks I pull from when creating arrangements. To me they are like colors in a pallet I choose from. Because I make electronic music it’s important to keep the listeners ear interested at all times by constantly adding variations to the sound. Over time on I will talk about many of things I do. Here’s a simple one.

Let’s say you have a kick and a snare going in your song. Take every 16th snare and instead of having it dry like the others explode it out with reverb. You can either have reverb on a send return and just turn in up every 16th snare. You could also bounce one of your dry snares fully loaded and drag them in your arrangement.

Remember you don’t have to use a stereo reverb either. I like to use Altiverb which is a convolution reverb in mono. Sometimes I pan the mono reverb tail to only the left or right side.

If your “snareverb” isn’t smashing enough add some eq or distortion to the reverb. I usually use Izotope Trash for that because it has an eq, filter and distortion unit all ready in one plug-in.

I hope that gave you some ideas. Do you have some songs where you used the technique? Post a link in the comments!

photo credit: Victory of the People