Reversed reverb with a modern twist

Backwards spatial effects are popular on percussion and drum sounds, and DAWs make it easy for each hit to feature its own spatial processing

Reversed reverb treatments have been popular for a long time and, therefore, it’s easy to dismiss them as clichéd. But as we’ll see through the following steps, there’s no shortage of ways to vary each reverse. Here we’re going to be selective about how many iterations we use and how they fade in. A next step after adding fades of varying lengths would be to introduce further effects treatments. Imagine each of these reversed reverb tails featured its own filter envelope to match its length, or try one-stop effects on each one – glitches, distortion, bespoke EQ treatments or a host of other effects tricks can personalise each one.

Render your backbeat as a new audio file and reverse it. Solo this sound and send it to the reverb auxiliaries of your choice. Then, solo the auxiliary effects so that no dry signal is being heard – only the reverb. Render this as a new audio file.

Drag the ‘reverb only’ audio file onto a new audio track and reverse it. Unsolo the auxiliary channels and mute the reversed backbeat hit you made to trigger the reverb. Place the reversed reverb so that it ‘leads up’ to each hit, stopping exactly as the back beat plays.

The same amount of reversed reverb will make the mix sound predictable. So, mute or delete some of the reversed reverbs. Then, vary their length, so that some are very short and some last longer. Use fade in tools to ensure the shorter ones don’t ‘click’ as they start.