This blog post I can say that is a part b of post that I have written some time ago on how we can use reverb in our projects. Today I want to talk about a specific topic and more specific on how we can use reverb on vocals and the types of reverb you can use. This is most for you ,that you are a beginner in your home studio and anyone who wants to learn for reverb on vocals.
As you may know ,there are two ways you can use an effect ,or plug in. Like an insert ,so it affects the specific instrument you want and the second way and more practical I would say, is like a send effect,where we can use it in multiple tracks.
The same happens with vocals. Let’s say we have a vocal track and some backing vocals in a project. Instead of using a different reverb on each track ,we can apply one reverb in many tracks by creating an Fx channel.
At this point, I would like to tell you that there is no rule ,that we must always use reverb on vocals. There are some types of songs ,where no reverb is needed on vocals.
Let’s take for example a reverb that comes with the DAW I use ,Cubase. As you can see in the picture below , I have a vocal track, a b voc track and a couple of backing vocals tracks. For this reason I am going to use a single reverb for all these tracks. And how do we do this? Simple by creating an Fx channel. In your DAW , maybe it’s called Fx track or Aux track. They are all the same.
In this track we add a reverb that we have or we can use the stock plug ins that come with your DAW ,and this way you can apply the Fx in any instrument you want,by sending this instrument to this Fx track.
We have to be aware of two important things ,that will help us to get better results on vocals. First of all ,you don’t have to overdo it with reverb. In Cubase you can adjust the amount of reverb ,from the bar under the Fx slot. This way you can increase or decrease the amount of reverb. If you are not satisfied with the result you can do other adjustments by setting the mix knob. In some reverbs it’s Dry/Wet. If we set the knob to Dry then the reverb is less and if we set the knob to Wet, then the reverb is more.
There are many types of reverb that we can use like hall, stage, church,stadium,plate. I would suggest to begin using some presets and experiment on these ,so you can learn the difference between them. Also I suggest to start with plate reverb. There are sub categories on each type of reverb like large plate , medium plate, vocal plate etc.
Another way you can adjust the reverb is by increasing or decreasing the fader on your mixer ,but doing this ,will affect all the instruments that are sent on this effect.
Also something very important ,that I will tell you in a detailed upcoming video and blog post,is that we can eq the reverb and cut some of the high frequencies ,so the reverb is going to be more natural and not so digital.
We are going to talk a lot more for other instruments and how we can use the reverb properly.