in the form of carefully designed and cleverly
[00:00:06.29] captured room tracks and reverb Chambers.
[00:00:09.14] The next class of Reverbs are those that use
some sort of mechanical system to create a useful
resonance.
[00:00:16.15] Mechanical reverb today comes
in two forms, springs and plates.
[00:00:21.57] Spring Reverbs are made of, well just that,
springs, usually a network of interconnected springs.
[00:00:27.65] A spring vibrates in a fairly simple way.
[00:00:30.61] Give it a shake and the vibration zips back
and forth from end to end along the length of
the spring.
[00:00:37.57] Multi-spring Reverbs make a mechanical
connection between springs to trigger several interactive
[00:00:42.48] resonances among those springs.
[00:00:45.64] Let your audio drive the springs into action,
pick up the subsequent vibration, and you've
[00:00:50.54] now tapped into the mechanical resonance of
the springs as a kind of analogy for acoustic
reverb.
[00:00:57.03] The sustained vibration of the springs proves
useful in audio as a specific flavor of reverberation.
[00:01:02.64] It never sounds exactly like a room, but it
certainly has a unique and interesting quality.
[00:01:10.06] Spring reverb, because it's light and portable
and quite affordable is common in many old organs and
guitar amps.
[00:01:17.46] Partly for the convenience, but also
because of its characteristic sound, spring reverb
[00:01:22.68] remains an essential part of guitar tone.
[00:01:25.61] It's a defining element of surf music and
guitar-based blues, but it is by no means
[00:01:30.86] limited to guitar alone.
Let's hear a quick example.
[00:01:34.77] First, the electric
guitar without spring reverb.
[00:01:38.00] (music playing)
[00:01:48.32] Now let's hear it with some
of the amps spring reverb.
[00:01:53.15] (music playing)
[00:02:03.97] As you'll see later in this course, spring
reverb is a great way to modify the timbre of an
instrument.
[00:02:10.06] While it may not evoke the sense of a
concert hall or a nice sounding room, it does offer
[00:02:14.68] a quality of resonance
that's desirable on many tracks.
[00:02:19.37] Plate Reverbs offer an increase in
sonic complexity over spring Reverbs.
[00:02:24.01] Where springs vibrate in a relatively simple
one-dimensional way from end to end, a plate
[00:02:29.54] reverb, made up of a large plate of metal,
will vibrate in a more two-dimensional way,
[00:02:34.85] down the length and across
the width of the sheet of steel.
[00:02:38.78] An audio signal feeds a driver, which is
connected directly to the plate, causing it to vibrate.
[00:02:44.62] Imagine a two-dimensional room, a room
with length and width, but no height.
[00:02:50.23] As with springs, plate resonance doesn't
actually sound that much like a real room.
[00:02:55.25] Here's a snare head, first dry,
then through a plate reverb.
[00:03:00.47] (music playing)
[00:03:15.53] With experience you'll learn to identify the
strong upper mid frequency decay characteristics
[00:03:20.96] of good plates and how they sound quite
different from springs, rooms, and halls.
[00:03:27.28] Plate Reverbs haven't been
made commercially in decades.
[00:03:29.88] The vintage units are highly sought after,
expensive, and frankly, they're quite heavy.
[00:03:35.23] So it's quite common use convolution reverb
to accurately get the sound of an actual plate
into your mix.
[00:03:41.87] We cover convolution in a movie later in this
chapter, but we use it here to add plate to the snare
head.
[00:03:48.62] Listen carefully for the textured resonant
decay as I gradually add plate to the snare
[00:03:53.71] drum while David plays time on a drum kit,
where we've placed kick, snare, and a pair
[00:03:58.62] of overhead microphones.
(music playing)
[00:04:21.90] The presence of reverb is unmistakable, but
notice also that it doesn't sound anything
[00:04:26.68] like a concert hall or cathedral.
[00:04:29.08] Like springs, plates are desired for the
distinct sonic coloration that we used to modify the
[00:04:34.12] timbre of the instrument's synth.
[00:04:37.21] Springs and plates are mechanical systems
that offer their own unique strongly flavored
[00:04:41.68] sort of resonance, and while their
mechanical technology is hardly cutting edge--digital
[00:04:47.16] is the thing these days--
their sound is still relevant.
[00:04:51.18] They're so important to music recording still
that digital Reverbs of today often have presets
[00:04:56.96] that emulate these
mechanical Reverbs of the past.
[00:05:00.28] You'll see that plates and springs are used
often in the audio examples throughout this course.