CREATIVE REVERB TRICKS

Discover the creative uses lurking within your favourite reverb plugins

Using reverb is an artform. To get it right, you need a clear vision of where you want to go, and an awareness of how your mix elements fit together to form a cohesive whole. Sometimes, the smallest touch can mean the difference between night and day… but other times, a generous splash of reverb can provide a creative shot in the arm.

It always has the potential to completely transform a sound into something different, so experimenting with reverb is a great get-outof-jail-free card when you’re stuck for inspiration – there are plenty of tweakable parameters to get new ideas from.

There’s a lot learn about reverb, and a great way to study it is to figure out how others are using it. Pick a song you like and just focus on listening to the different spaces inside it. What kind of reverb is being applied to each element? Does the reverb change or evolve throughout the song? How is the reverb placed in the stereo image? Is it super-wide, or fairly central in the mix? How would the song sound if it was stripped of reverb completely? Once you’ve answered questions like these, take your findings and apply them to your own creations.

This technique can become an endless source of inspiration and ideas, so in the below tutorial, I’ll look at a few creative uses for reverb in the context of a track.