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Bill Sloyer
During our 15th lesson on Thursday 11/16, Larry and I talked about:
-Reverberations - a multitude of differently spaced delays/reflections that have a different time and pitch. These differences make it easier to make something that’s out of tune (like a vocal) sound more in-tune.
-Early reverb was accomplished by using echo chambers – small rooms with irregular shaped walls & floors, lined with concrete or heavy plaster, that had a speaker at one end and a mic at the other. The “wet” sound from the room could then be mixed in with the “dry.”
Famous chambers in Hollywood included Gold Star Recording Studios and Capital Records underground chambers. Skywalker ranch has remote controlled wall panels that change the reverb of the space.
-Plate reverb: Replaced the echo chambers. Has HiFi/clean/pure sound since you aren’t dealing with a large space. Must be amplified. Fiberglass can physically dampen the plate to control reverb. Larry used to suspend his in previous studio. Current one he has sits behind entire amp array! Very large.
-Spring reverb: Low-fi sound, literally goes through a spring. Signal goes through a transformer on either side of a spring. Distinct sound. Dick Dale is a good example. (Miguel also uses for vocals.) AKG BX10 is an example.
-Cooper Time Cube – used a garden hose for reverb! Larry said he had one and it sounded awful.
-Electronic reverb – separate freestanding unit, EMT 250 (Universal Audio) is a good example. Early 80’s sound to it. Was like $20K new.
-Digital reverb – example (that Larry had) is the Lexicon 224. Had a wired remote unit/box to control the full unit that sat in the rack. Then came the 480L, which was used on many 80’s records. Had lots of adjustable parameters.
-Larry also had an AMX RMX digital reverb, which was chip based. Change the chip to change the sound!
-Digital reverb is a form of sampling.
-Delay samples the audio and plays back later.
**After the digital reverb units came computers and plugins**
-Diffusion – how much the reverb and dry sound merge into each other
*Within reverb plugins, Larry doesn’t manipulate diffusion or early reflections very often.
“Tail” refers to decay
“Reverb time” also refers to decay
“Non-linear” – means not a natural sound
-Pre-Delay – time between sound and beginning/start of delay. A bigger pre-delay gives the effect of a longer reverb sound. More pre-delay makes vocals sound cleaner because it doesn’t kick in right away.
-Chorus Effect – made up of multiple pitches = thicker sound. Having multiple violins in a recording session can have this effect. (With violins, there’s always 1 that’s first, and the others follow.)
A NOISE GATE is a switch that mutes audio once the volume drops below a specific level. Good for taking out noise on a track. Was accidentally discovered when a talkback system (that had been set up to only activate with voices) was left on during a recording session. GATED REVERB happened. The delay was short and then got chopped (but attack was normal). Became very popular and was used a lot in the 80’s: Phil Collins (In the Air Tonight), Fine Young Cannibals, Prince, Power Station. And also today: MGMT / Passion Pit / Bruno Mars
*Gated reverb on a snare is popular thing to do.
-DELAY – SAMPLE AUDIO, PLAY BACK LATER
-Tape delay – would cause a pre-delay, which would create reverb. Used to be someone manning a tape machine all day for this reason. Early delay was low-fi, there was a roll-off of the high frequencies, which adds diffusion and blends into the track more. Not necessarily a bad thing. Each subsequent delay would have less fidelity.
-PLUGINS/DELAY - measured by tempo or bars/beats, etc. Using a LPF takes out the HF and makes the effect different and better in some cases. Best to try and see what sounds best in the mix.
“Delay Feedback” is the number of times it repeats.
