Reverb is a great tool to help bring a bit of life and presence into any track or sound. But why not make it sound even more interesting by applying a plug-in such as an EQ or a compressor to the reverb. It can often give your sound a unique spin as well as being quite fun just to play around with the different sounds that you can achieve.
EQ
The first EQ trick helps with applying reverb to vocals. Have you ever bussed a vocal to a reverb track but still felt like it sounds a bit muddy? Well, try adding an EQ before the reverb on your bus track. Sculpt out the low and high end until you have a rainbow curve. Play around with how much you take out and find what sounds great for your vocals. I often find by doing this you can the clarity of the lyrics as well as achieving a deep, well-echoed sound. This tip also helps if you’re a bit like me and can’t get enough reverb!
Creating a Pad Sound
If you’re interested in making ambient or classical music, or even pop music that features a soft piano, you might be interested in creating a pad effect. What this does is essentially elongate the sound and sustain it so it gives this nice ambient drone throughout the track.
You can achieve this by creating a bus track and sending your instrument to it. Then open your reverb plugin making sure it is set to 100% wet. You can then play around with setting the decay to around 8.00s to 15.00s. Then send about 60% of your dry instrument track to this bus, making sure to adjust it if it sounds too much. Play around with these settings until you achieve a sound that you like.
In conclusion, Reverb is one of my favourite plugins to play around with and alter. It offers an incredible amount of versatility and can be used in conjunction with many other plugins to create unique and interesting sounds. This can be used on a wide variety of different music genres and comes in handy when you want to add a bit of sparkle to a track.
