Now you know the basics, let’s delve into the more complex attributes of reverb control for our tracks
Placing the instruments and voices of a mix into a consistent space does not preclude us from adding additional reverbs to specific parts and tracks. This is particularly true when a reverb is being used as enhancement rather than for simulation purposes.
For example, you may wish to add some spring reverb to a guitar track to help emulate a classic guitar amp sound. That reverb becomes an intrinsic component of the guitar performance, and would be present if performed in a live venue, and so it absolutely makes sense to also include it in the overall room reverb.
It is also not uncommon to apply more than one reverb to a single track when creating trackspecific enhancements and/or special effects. This is especially true of vocals and other lead lines; a good example being having both an up-front gated reverb and a more subtle, spacious reverb on the same part. In this case, however, we may not want to blend the ‘enhancement’ reverb with a shared room ’verb.
Stacking and combining reverbs in these ways is just fine, but always think carefully about the signal routing, and work out how to create such routings within your DAW (some make it easier than others). If you’re happy to have the reverbs operating in series, then inserting them on the same track is normally sufficient, but more often you will want to run the reverbs in parallel. This can become a bit elaborate, requiring separate FX/Auxiliary tracks to host each reverb plugin, and various sends and submixes to route and combine the signals.
Sidechains and ducking
There are various ways to use dynamics processors in conjunction with reverbs. The classic gated reverb effect is probably the most familiar, and is something many reverb plugins can produce internally. This often limits us to a specific reverb algorithm, which can be restrictive in terms of the tone and timbre of reverb. It’s therefore useful to know how to create gated reverb using any reverb processor – we’ll show you how in a moment.
You may wish to add some spring reverb to a guitar track to help emulate a classic guitar amp sound
Another common technique involves combining reverb and a compressor-based ducking effect. The ducker controls the volume of the reverb, reducing it when an instrument/ voice is sounding and bringing back in the spaces between phrases. This works particularly we
