hey what's going on out there I'm Sean Divine hope you all are
doing well today I have a new tutorial and this one is by request and it's
about how to choose the right reverb specifically for vocals this is
something that I get a lot of questions about on the channel so I just want to
talk about the thought processes and how I select my reverbs a couple of
questions to ask yourself when you're choosing reverbs to make sure that it's
going to fit the production that is around the vocal and as well as just the
vibe of whatever part that you're actually mixing so whether it's a vocal
for the verse it's a hip-hop style vocal or is a some vocal for a chorus or a
hook section you're gonna choose different reverbs for different reasons
in those scenarios so I'm gonna show you a couple of different sessions different
types of vocals just so that we can get better get a better idea of how to
select the reverb so let me go ahead and just play back this verses is a verse by
Moses Stone and I'm gonna just let you hear the reverb I have selected here
which is the seventh heaven and then I'm gonna just kind of give you an idea of
what that's doing for the vocal
all right so you get the idea sorry I probably should have said that
this is a parental advisory track a little bit of explicit lyrics in this
session so be aware but yeah as far as the reverb on this one you can see that
I have a fairly quick space this is a an algorithm in seventh heaven called
medium and near and then I'm EQing the highs so with a hip-hop vocal the
approach is generally it's just I want to give it just a tiny bit of space so
that it can sort of sit in with the music and it's more about vibe versus
creating the actual acoustic space around the vocals so there's a couple of
different ways that you could think about reverb obviously you're creating
that space but you're also adjusting the feel and the vibe of the vocal itself by
putting this reverb on it reverb is so powerful in the sense that you can
change the entire feel of a vocal and how it interacts with the music
depending on the reverb so let me just solo the vocal here so you can hear the
reverb that we've selected a little better
more kind of ambient feel now in the context of the instrumental with the
instrumental it's not something that you're really picking up on so obviously
again it's just creating more of a blend with the music so if we play that back
let me turn it off with the let's just go through now let's just say that you
were trying to select a reverb here and let's just try and pick out like a
different one like maybe a large hall let's just see what that sounds like and
do take note that I'm using a bus so I'm sending this to an aux and I am eqing
the reverb which is very important here as well but let's just let's see what
this sounds like
so I just adjusted the EQ very
slightly and you can hear it totally changed it and made it makes it sound
really washy and it's actually kind of fighting with the vocal itself so the
easiest way to kind of pick the right reverb or the right setting or algorithm
if you will is to kind of just take the the EQ and everything off and turn the
the wetness up quite a bit more than you you generally will for the actual mix
just so that you can really hear what the reverb actually sounds like with
the vocal going through it so let's just solo this
hear as I'm going through them you get a different feel for each of these
different sorts of algorithms here and it may help you to play it in the
context of the music itself but again what I'm listening for is the feel of
the reverb itself we can always adjust the time so if we want to you know
adjust the length of the decay of the reverb we can shorten it we can
adjust that on any of these so again the important part is selecting the right
algorithm and then we can make adjustments we can EQ them but if you
don't have the right one to start with the right setting in terms of the space
itself you are not going to be able to EQ it and everything else you might just
make it so subtle that people can't even hear it but again the point is to find
something that is going to really give the vocal a deeper feel something
that accentuates it in the context of the music itself so let's open up
another session here let's try a song vocal and I'm going to show you that
we're gonna do a little bit bigger space alright so we got a different session
open now different style vocal this is a song vocal with a lot of harmonies in it
and we're actually going to do the reverb or select a reverb and mix the
reverb from scratch on this just to give you a little bit different sort of
perspective than with the hip-hop verse we did in the first of the video so let
me play back the hook and this is with no reverb and I've turned off the delay
or the echo just so that you have a better sense of the space and what we're
gonna do with the reverb here cut off
all right so that's our hook now in
the context of the music
so the music itself in the production it has this very
ominous sort of tone to it and the the vibe I was going for with this hook and
with this track is just that something really deep something with a big sort of
ambient space to it on the vocal so I actually processed the reverb by using
an insert directly on our aux track where all the vocals were being sent so let's
do that a little bit different process then using a bus and a send you can do
whichever one you prefer but just keep in mind that I'm using a stereo aux
track so we're going to be using a stereo reverb and I'm gonna open up the
the Valhalla vintage verb this is just kind of a Swiss Army knife in terms of
general reverb settings it just has a really great tone to it a lot of cool
algorithms here or modes as they call them so let's just let's just go through
and just pick out like maybe a plate for now we're gonna turn the mix down and
I'm gonna just solo it for now again we want to first just sort of get a feel
for what the actual algorithm or mode of the reverb sounds like with the vocal
going through it cutoff
so the first thing I'm doing is I'm just listening to the tail of the reverb so I
turned the decay time down to about two and a half seconds I think
that's gonna work well for this particular vocal and then again we're
just keeping the mix up enough to where we're getting a sense of the vibe of
this mode so let's try a different one let's go to maybe room
when I just selected that chorus space the vibe and the feel of that really
matches what I'm going for with this vocal so let's try that it is a
little bit washy and so I want to go ahead and just EQ it and then we're
gonna unsolo it now with the music because it's very important to adjust
the reverb in the context of the instrumentation because you can get very
very overboard with this if you're not careful and it's going to help to listen
to the instrumentation here
okay so that's sounding about right in terms of just
the ratio of wetness to dryness not too washy but we're still getting the vibe
in the feel let me select a different color which is is just going to change
the kind of character of this particular setting a little bit
so that one's pretty cool alright so as you can hear we've got a nice balance of
our reverb space and we've given it a really cool vibe deep ominous sort of
feel but we're very careful about setting the wet-to-dry ratio or the mix
so let me just show you for example right now we're at 21% with this as an
insert and if I go just to like 30 or 35 you're gonna hear how it gets washed out
very quickly
so maybe that's your personal preference but as a mix engineer I'm hearing that
and I'm going too much reverb it's distracting
I'm listening to the reverb versus the vocal at that point so that's another
thing to be aware of with all these effects and cool things that were able
to use in the mixing process if it starts to distract from the performance
or from the vocal you've gone overboard and again there are times in places
where you can get really extreme with reverb and it's fun and there's certain
places where it's appropriate to do that and make it more washy and bigger and
obvious but again it's just about developing your taste enough and
listening to enough music to know the feel and the vibe you're going for with
the reverb again also you want to just flick through all of your different
algorithms or modes within the reverb and choose the right space first keep
everything pretty wet so you can tell what's going on and get that down then
once you've done that it's a lot easier to go through change the decay time you
know EQ it a little bit and then adjust the the wet/dry mix and then you can
narrow down the reverb that's going to be right for your vocal so anyway so I
hope this helps again just experiment develop your taste a little bit in terms
of what reverbs gonna work best for certain types of vocals and really just
have fun with it and try to narrow down a certain vibe so
if you have any questions about using reverb on your vocals feel free to leave
a comment below if you learned anything in the video please like and subscribe and
we'll talk to you soon