should reverb go before compression or vice versa?
Swayze
14,705 Posts
Especially in regards to drums... how did the old studio people do it? Or is it just one of those "whatever sounds better" type things? I'm leaning towards reverb then compression.....
Comments
It might not be the "correct" way of inserting effects, but I did this recently on one of my tracks and it made the drums sound huge! When in doubt, always trust your ears.
SG
Really? Basically, compressors are usually 100% wet, in that youd process youre signal and record or use what comes back proccessed, with none of the original signal, while with reverb, you might send a little of each track during mixing to a master reverb, which would be added back in with the unprocessed signal or tracks. Basically, for tracking stuff or recording sounds, i think its better to leave reverb to the mixing stage, while compression is more of the kind of thing you would use to actually build or create the charecter of the sounds. Just my humble opinion, hope thats more clear...
What they did is they recorded the drums the best way they could. Which means "better" if they had a more expensive studio like James Brown had or other major artists, and "worser" if they had no money like small studios in small citys.
What you always have is the room sound of the room you recorded the drums in. If you put compression on it the sound informations of the room will get louder which means that it is clearer to hear how the room sounds (Dark, small, huge, whatever).
I know of small funk productions where they had not enough tracks to record on so they had to put the reverb on the instruments before they were run through compressors and recorded.
The only thing that you have to keep in mind is that the reverb that you put on the drums before they get compressed will get much louder after the compression. So if you put to much reverb on your drums your drums will sound like recorded 100 miles away from your mic. Thats all.
And Dizzy, as experimental as you are, try to record your drums onto an old tapedeck. Record it way to loud 6-12 db over 0 and than listen to it. Thats the best compression you can get for drums. Bassdrum, hihat, snare together will sound more like old school funk, if you separate those sounds it will just sound loud and fat.
And Dizzy......
you've been kicked in the nutz !!!!!
Hawkeye
but the most typical settup is to put the compressor on the channel.. ie the snare.. .and the verb on a send / return ... then you send a percentage of whatever channels you want to the verb.
if you want a really hyper compresed EFFECTED sound what i usually do is settup a return channel and bus the drums to it... then you put a compressor on this slamming to the max, a really boosted eq patern.. and then verb on this... you then ride this buss under the main drums... they call this NYC compression so you may not dig this bein on the west coast and all.
HAHAHAHAHA....
Actually I should have specified that I'm not recording live drum. Sometime I'll chop something up, but I'm not a fan of the "chopped" sound and would rather make it sound 'natural' like a loop or whatever. I tried adding a tiny bit of reverb and that seemed to help. I'll see if I can try the stuff you guys mentioned with my little setup, and if all else fails I'll let my ears do their thing.
And Hawkeye,
Thanks for the kick in the nuts!
I agree, definitely trust your ears FIRST AND FOREMOST, and then seek "outside ears" as they may catch something that you can't. Your perfection may be something that sounds "technically wrong", or could be improved with a few tweaks.
Each producer and engineer had their own techniques, whether it was the studio ("the room"), microphones, mic placement, the tape machine or the board itself. I believe one of Jimmy Page's techniques in capturing that John Bonham sound on the first five LZ albums was to place the mic above the kit instead of it being near. Page noticed that a lot of jazz records had a full sound because of that, while in the pop world producers were putting the mic's closer to the drums. That might be good, but arguably you're not getting the same sound as you would if you heard it on stage or were in the studio. Page also discovered that that was how a lot of soul groups recorded their drums as well, and that was partially due to economics. Most did not have the luxury of micing the drums in a "proper" manner so they did what they had to do.
That, in turn, resulted in hearing "the room", something Rudy Van Gelder was known for. With jazz, you want to hear the band, and the music bounce off each other, figuratively and literally. If you are to look at pictures of that New Jersey studio, it's very awkward (if I can find a picture I'll post it). Yet that created a nice dynamic when the sound bounced off the walls and ceiling, and going into the mics. Some felt the acoustics were good as is, while others would try to compress it.
Yet even back then, rules were meant to be broken. The reason why there's so much Miles Davis and Beatles outtakes in existence because there were studio rules which said "record everything, do not erase over it". If Miles Davis wanted to play and record for five hours, you better have ten hours worth of reels. In time, to save costs it was common practice for producers, engineers, and bands to erase over a flawed take. Unfortunately, that removes a small bit of history that only us music geeks care about. I mention this because I'm writing a book on one of my favorite albums, and discovered that no alternate takes or outtakes existed. If they were was a mistake, they went over it immediately. No backups, no nothing. What exists is what you hear on vinyl and CD. The label was a one-man operation, and yet that album has become the label's best selling album.
Buddy Holly regularly broke rules, so did The Beatles. It seems funny now that 40 years ago, people at EMI were throwing a fit because they felt Paul McCartney's bass in "Paperback Writer" would not be able to be mastered properly on vinyl, making all copies defective. Paul proved them wrong, and from that point on you started to hear more records push the bass, and more specifically the electric bass, more upfront in the mix.
Or listen to the differences between mono and stereo. Mono was mandatory, stereo was secondary, and the early stereo pioneers did some interesting things, whether it was vocals on the left, instrumental on the side, or all of those stereophonic Persuasive Percussion[/b] albums.
My point is that do whatever it takes to make a good song. We all break the rules, and that's great, because there shouldn't be any. There was a time when I would do different things with my drum tracks, one of them being that I wanted it to sound robotic, machine like, as if it sounded programmed. Someone heard it and told me that the song was good, but that it needs to sound like a human played it. It irked me for a brief moment, but he was probably right. Yet I also like the idea of being "in the machine" (metaphorically) and fucking it up, suggesting that there's a human in there, but he's going to have a party with it. In other words, samples can be manipulated, chopped, programmed, whatever to sound as if it was physically played. But I also like messing up that perception, whether it's slowing down an element to where it sounds like I'm putting my finger on physical tape, or the drums in "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt" before the I can fly through the strangest land sample. Or not unlike what Coldcut and the Chemical Brothers have done.
Other producers like to chop drum breaks so that it sounds like a solid loop, and you don't hear a voice or someone about to breathe before the lyric kicks in. I like highlighting what would be considered the error and making that the big part of my song. Most might say "that's wrong and dumb, why keep the voice in there when you can just chop the bass or snare, or cut and paste the section of the beat before that, and just put it there?" It's because I can.
Short version: use variables. Use reverb, then compress. Or compress, then reverb. Or reverb, and don't compress. Or reverse the loop, run that through the echo chamber, reverse that, then make it go underwater. Then put it through something that will make it sound like it's going through a Leslie speaker.
I definitely agree with this. It's the imperfections, the rough edges, that make things funky. And that can be anything from keeping in that pre-singing inhalation (every time I've ever used the Lee Dorsey "GOMLW," I use the second bar of drums so that it has Lee's breathing at the end of the loop) to not stacking your snares precisely.
Also, this thread is a lot of
Put a verb on the compressed channels - that way the verb sounds more controlled.
I also hipass the verb around 200hz and lopass around 8k, this helps the verb sit in the mix.
Digital verbs especially sound too hifi, so you need to tame it down a bit.
OK, if you are not recording live drums than forget the tape thing, even if it works with already played and sampled drums.
I know exactly what your problem is with the missing room when you work with chopped drums. I try to keep the original room but sometimes it doenst work as well.
2 Technics to solve that problem.
1.
If you slow down the BPM but you dont want to slow down the pitch of the sample you'll get gaps between the sound. You can fill those gaps when you copy the 1st sample, than turn that sample around so that it plays backwards. Than fit the new beginning of this backward sample onto the end of its origin. If the gap is not to huge it will cover up the gap and it sounds like the natural reverb from the sample.
2.
If the 1st technic is not working I try to put another loop on top. I cut the snare and bassdrums out and just let the hihat go with the original room. Than those gaps are filled too.
If you didnt get the 1st technic tell me, I ma explain it again in another way.
Peace
Hawkeye
Man... this is nothing...
I used to post at some heavy electronic/IDM/experimental boards years ago and some of the in-depth discussion about signal processing and synthesis theory were truly
I'd actually like to see more talk like this on SoulStrut. I know there are a lot of cats, like you, who are interested in the electronics/math/processing side of music production. It would be cool if we occasionally geeked out in a thread about shit like this...
Back in the day Hendrix was performing on the BBC and the engineers kept stopping him and eventually mentioned that they kept getting feedback out of his guitar amp. To recording engineers back then crazy feedback that was integral to Hendrix's sound wasn't the "proper" thing so they thought there was a problem with Hendrix's setup.
Basically, with recording (and music in general) you want to learn the rules and then forget you know them. It's good to know what the generally accepted way of doing things is but don't be afraid to do things your own way. After all, when you're an artist you can intend to do something one way and accidentally do it another way, but you're the artist so nobody can tell you that you did it wrong; you just tell them you intended it that way from the start and dare them to prove otherwise.
Hey, I resemble that remark! I actually got my BS in Recording so I'm an uber recording nerd.
You can get some pretty fucked up sounds just with compression. Using a fast attack and slow release compressor on a parallel drum buss is a great way to milk all the room sound there is out of a drum take. Look up articles about Tchad Blake, he's the master of it in my book. Dave Friedmann, too. Compressors that break up nicely on the input are fun as well. Shure Level-Loc, Spectrasonics 610, Distressor, 1176, etc.
Have fun!
Mike
of course rules are meant to be broken, but in many cases what people are referring to as rules aren't really rules but are either generally accepted practices learned over the years from people who really take their work seriously, or they are scientifically accepted sound and audio theory...stuff that can be tested i guess.
now that everybody mixes in the box (pro-tools)...they can just chain compressors and reverbs to their hearts content and not really know what they are doing. i work at a really nice recording studio with tons of vintage tube compressors and a neve 8048 console...when working on tape or pro-tools i have to manually patch everything i do and as such i have to understand what i'm doing. and this in turn helps me understand what i'm doing when i work only in pro-tools and don't use any outboard gear.
i'd strongly recommend buying and reading as many audio engineering books as possible...it really helps. yes, your ears should be a final arbiter in every situation but sometimes your ears might deceive you (fletcher munson curve anyone?)
but to answer the question...reverb after compression. but more specifically, compression on the track inserts, reverb on aux tracks. this way you send multiple tracks to the same reverb unit and you get a more cohesive sound and not a big bloody mess. remember what reverb is and how they originally did reverb...read "Temples of Sound" for more on this. but basically back in the day to get reverb engineers would find a really live room in the studio...often a basement or a bathroom our maybe the alley out back...something really reverberant obviously. then they would wire up the console so that they could send a signal to a speaker in this room and then set up a microphone somewhere in the room which would then be sent back to the console and mixed with the rest of the tracks.
at my studio we use EMT-140 plate reverbs and they sould wicked. but my point it to recreate a natural reverb sound in pro-tools or any digital mixing format...you want to go for the same effect...sending these signals to the same reverb to the a natural sounding reverb.
unless you don't want that at all then fuck the rules.
Good advice!!! (Both this, and the paragraphs before it!)