Silence Is Golden

Sometimes sound design is as much about managing silence as the sound design of the noises you do want to add to a mix. Many of the techniques we’re exploring in this article experiment with long reverbs and delays and whilst they might sound beautiful while the parts which trigger them are playing, they’ll need careful management in the gaps between sections, or as a track fades away. The easiest way to manage effects with long tails is to make sure they’re part of your arrangement. Automate auxiliary volumes, so that rather than relying on a reverb’s decay to die away ‘perfectly’ each time, you can take more direct control of moments where intervening produces a better musical result.