(upbeat music)
- [Instructor] Let me show you something
that I use all the time. This is a great trick.
It's the Abbey Road reverb trick.
And it's called Abbey Road reverb trick,
because this is something that Abbey Road uses
on their reverbs.
It's basically two filters, a high and a low pass filter.
And it really makes a difference in the way the reverb sound
and the way they meld into the track.
So first of all, let's listen to this vocal,
just with some basic reverb on it.
Now, what I'm going to put on is the De-Verb,
which is one of the standard reverbs
that comes to pro tools.
It's actually very good and I use this all the time.
Even though it is a native plugin,
it really does sound good.
So let's just have a listen to the vocal with it in.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Now there's a lot of reverb there.
The vocal is swimming in reverb. Or it seems like in anyway.
Let's listen in the track
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Actually doesn't sound all that bad.
But we can make it sound better.
And here's how,
what we're going to do is we're going to add an EQ
in front of the De-Verb.
Now the whole secret to the Abbey Road reverb trick
is the fact that they use these two filters.
The first is a high pass filter
and I'm going to put 12DB per active,
you can go 18, either one works, but here is a secret.
You roll it off at about 600 cycles.
Now it could be give or take a little bit,
it doesn't have to be exactly 600,
but it'll make a difference in the way it sounds.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to roll off
the high end as well.
And this is a 10K.
So these are the magic frequencies that Abbey Road uses.
Now let's have a listen.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Listen again with a bypassed.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Okay, let's listen to the track now.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
♪ You're just about done and you've had enough ♪
♪ Living alone in your self made hell ♪
- Now you can hear reverb
but it's not nearly as prominent
it just melds into the track
and does the thing that we really want reverb to do.
It glues everything together.
And yet it sounds really good.
It adds that sheen onto the vocal. It sounds really good.
We're going to do one other trick.
And this isn't part of the Abbey Road reverb trick.
This is something that you can do.
I use it all the time.
What we to do is actually add a notch,
right around the vocal frequencies at two K or so.
So, all I'm going to do is I'm going to lower this
by three or four DB.
Now let's have a listen.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
♪ You're just about done and you've had enough ♪
- Now, all of a sudden, the vocal pops out a little bit more
because that reverb is not in the way.
So let's listen to the track.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
♪ You're just about done and you've had enough ♪
♪ Living alone in your ♪
- Listen again, and I'm going to have it bypassed
♪ Even though you don't say much, ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- And now listen, what the Abbey Road reverb trick built in.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
♪ You're just about done and you've had enough ♪
- Now, this sounds really good.
You can add this in on just about any reverb
and you'll find that suddenly you'll have the reverb sound
glue things together a little bit more.
What happens is when we get rid of the low frequencies,
none of those low frequencies that are on the original track
will actually get in the way.
And the same thing with the high end,
once we roll the high end off,
it's going to sound a little bit better
because we're not going to here as much as a reverb.
Now, if we really want this to work a little bit better,
what we can actually do is we can
even lower that high end even more.
So instead of 10K I'm doing seven K let's have a listen.
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Big difference there. Huh?
Let's listen on track
♪ Even though you don't say much ♪
♪ I feel like I can tell ♪
- Now basically there, I never changed the scene
to the reverb.
So the same amount is there,
but we've changed the energy spectrum of the reverb.
Now you can use this not only in reverbs,
but you can use this on delay as well.
And you can use it also on
just about any effect you can think of
to just keep it out of the way of whatever element
that you're adding.
Here's a summary for the Abbey Road reverb trick.
The first thing to do is insert an EQ
before the reverb plugin.
Not after, because it does sound different.
It's a little bit smoother
if you insert it before the reverb plugin.
The second thing is roll off the highs
at 10K and the lows at 600 Hertz.
You can use your high and low pass filters for this,
but you can actually use the EQs as well.
The high EQ and the low EQ.
Now, just because Abbey Road always used 10K
on the high end, doesn't mean you have to stay there.
You can actually lower this
to as low as two K if you want
for things like and percussion.
But whatever it is, just experiment anything 10K
or less usually sounds pretty good.
And finally, if you really want that vocal to stick out,
dip a little at two K and you'll find
that the reverb is going to fit better with the vocal.
Also remember that,
any of this can be used with other effects as well.
So, don't just limit it to your reverb plugin.
It works really well at delays and modulation too.
(upbeat music)