Frozen reverbs offer a way to create ethereal reverb textures which can turn existing instruments in your mix into atmospheres
We start by programming a part for Muted Piano, using Spitfire Audio’s Ólafur Arnalds Composer Toolkit. We add Valhalla’s VintageVerb plugin via an auxiliary bus, using the Dirty Hall algorithm (for a little dusty noise), with a generous decay time of 5.34 seconds. We set up UVI’s Sparkverb as an insert on this second instrument, though you can use any reverb plugin with a Freeze option. We click the Freeze button and press play. This produces a decay-free ‘cloud’ of reverb from the notes of our cluster chord. We return to the cluster chord and transpose it up and octave. We then change parameters within Sparkverb to select something lighter and airier, so that only a cloud of high frequencies prevails. Again, we bounce this as an audio file and put it on a new track. Next, we duplicate the piano and copy the piano region down to this second instance of the instrument. We select notes from the first three chords, dragging them back to the start of the track and deleting notes we don’t like. We end up with a cluster chord. We bounce this frozen reverb part down as an audio file so that we have more ready control over both when it starts and stops and we also then get more control over its volume. Having rendered it as an audio file, we can now boost its volume by 12dB. Add a tiny fade-out to each bounced audio file to remove clicks at the end, and then pan the two frozen reverbs, so that the lower one is across to the left and the higher one mirrored to the right. Move the second, ‘vapour reverb’ file, so it starts midway through the sequence.