reverb

Question 1

what does close miking do for reverb

Answer 1

this recording technique aims to minimise natural reverb in order to have control of the amount in the final mix

Question 2

what is RT60

Answer 2

the body is the amount of time taken for the amplitude of reflections to reduce by 60dB

Question 3

what are early reflections

Answer 3

those that reflect back to the pick-up (ear or microphone) within 30ms of the source and tend to be nearly exact copies of the source signal

Question 4

what is the decay tail

Answer 4

amount of time after the body taken for the sound to return to silence

Question 5

what is natural room reverb

Answer 5

musicians perform in a ‘live room’ with an appropriate reverb character

Question 6

what is chamber reverb

Answer 6

acoustic reverb that’s a separate signal but the RT60 or characteristics can’t be changed

Question 7

what is spring reverb

Answer 7

mechanical reverb that doesn’t sound like a real room

Question 8

what is plate reverb

Answer 8

mechanical reverb that sounds more realistic but takes up a lot of space and is expensive

Question 9

what is digital reverb

Answer 9

digital reverb on a DAW that creates reverb that can be altered but doesn’t sound natural

Question 10

what is convolution reverb

Answer 10

digital reverb that emulates a specific space

Question 11

name an example of digital reverb

Answer 11

chromaverb

Question 12

what are the three creative reverbs

Answer 12

gated reverb, non linear and reverse reverb

Question 13

what is gated reverb

Answer 13

applies a long reverb to a drum/vocal, followed by a gate giving a dense, powerful 80s sound- synonymous with Phil Colins

Question 14

what is non linear reverb

Answer 14

digital reverb presets that didn’t obey the laws of physics (e.g. the tail got louder)

Question 15

what is reverse reverb

Answer 15

plays the reverb tail backwards; plugins do this- in the 60s the tape direction would be reversed

Question 16

process of reverb

Answer 16

surfaces reflect, absorb and diffuse sounds and can be controlled with acoustic treatment/bass traps to control this (e.g. foam panels stuck to walls)

Question 17

words to describe reverb

Answer 17

ambience, depth, colour and space and puts sound in a ‘place’/ recreates the sound of a room

Question 18

what can reverb do

Answer 18

brings a mix together and can give the impression that musicians are playing in a natural acoustic

Question 19

what is a wall of sound

Answer 19

60s production technique characterised by a dense, layered sound and. big reverb applied to the whole mix; sometimes the reverb was so big that the instruments had little clarity