Reverb

If you listen to a musical instrument played in a space, then you’ll be hearing a combination of the direct instrument sound and the sound bouncing off the walls. This second component is called reverberation and contributes immensely to what the instrument sounds like to us. In computer-based production we can, of course, record instruments in spaces, and by using the correct microphone techniques capture this effect at source. However, often we’re working with samples and synths. In this case we can add a sense of space using artificial reverbs, which either use algorithms and delays to create a room effect, or use a convolution process, creating the effect by using impulse responses captured from real spaces.

All of this sounds simple enough, but use of reverb can be confusing at first, and it’s clear there’s a bit more to this than simply grabbing the latest reverb plugin and hoping for the best. In fact, get it right, and reverb can really help to bring your sounds together, and there’s no doubt using reverb can make mixing a track much easier.

So, how do we use this effect? Firstly, it’s pretty common to add reverb using an auxiliary bus, which basically sends a split of our track audio off to the processor then adds the effect back into the whole