Recording 101/6 - FX'ssssssss

May 24, 2010 by Neps

Let me be firstly say that I hope you guys are enjoying the Recording 101 thread. I love to indulge in writing, so it's quite a lot of fun for me to express ideas regarding recording and mixing.. I also still believe that my compressors are my friends, but that is a story for another thread. This time I thought that I'd take a look at effects and how to use them in a mixing environment.

As everyone knows, the use of effects in music can make or break a song. Some engineers, like Steve Albini (The dude who did 'In Utero') hates using FX. He has made it quite clear in quite a few articles that he tries not to use ANY FX on a recording, and would do so ONLY if the artist really wants it. Others indulge, like Brian Eno. But what brings them together is that they know what each song needs.

There are actually only 3 FX that I regard as FX, and that is:
REVERB
DELAY
TREMELO

Now I can already hear people screaming 'phase, overdrive, distortion!', and yes they are, but in mixing music terms those are more like special FX for me something that you only reach for if you want to. And guitars should have been recorded with the right amount of overdrive in my opinion. (Jip, my drumming side is still my big influence)

So lets have a look as to how most engineers use Reverbs and Delays in their processing chain.

Because of the old analog days, where one was limited to the amount of Aux sends and channels, people use to piggy back reverbs and delays. So for example, all the vocals would have shared the same reverb, drums would have as well. And to this day, its used in most pro mixing situations. It's not that it's because people are to caught up in their own old styles, but rather that it's the most efficient way, and also frees up a lot of DSP.

What I've seen happen, and I also did the same when I just started out, is that when people want to add reverb to a vocal, they will select the plugin, post it on the vox channel and then adjust the wet/dry knob. Now in theory this works, but lets say you want to bypass the verb at some stage, or increase the overall level of the reverb in the bridge of the song, you end up affecting the original vocal track as well. Thus if you push up the verb wet/dry, you'll get more verb but the dry signal that carries the body of the signal gets lost. Now what to do.. Well, let's go to the analog way of doing it.

Start by creating a Aux track in your DAW. (An FX track on some software), Add the plugin to it, set the reverb wet/dry to 100%. Now send your vocal track out to that Aux track via the aux send, or bus send. So what will you hear. Well, you get the dry vox, and a total reverb output from your aux channel. What makes this nice is that, you can now automate the amount of reverb you have during sections of the song. You can also get one reverb for your vocals. To create coesian in your mix, try using the same verb for background vocals, and the same goes fro the snare and toms. (depends what you're aiming for)

Delays go much the same way, and so to Tremelo. I've found that a mix comes together much quicker by creating mutual FX channels than trying to treat each piece of the mix separately. This also, as I said earlier, frees up your CPU, and you end up with a bigger track count as well as better resolution in your mixes. What tends to happen if you have a bogged down CPU is that the PC will start skimming over some detail during playback, and it dulls out a bit. Weird I know, but I've sen it happen. Same DAW, same Hardware, stronger Mac and suddenly my music comes alive again.

One thing about reverb though is its tendency to make especially vocals sound wasshy and sibilant. A good way to have the reverb create room, and not take over is to do one of 2 things. If your Reverb as a lowpass filter, adjust that. I normally run my reverbs on vocals on a high cut at around 4kHz, sometimes even 1kHz. If the reverb doesn't have such a facility never fear. After the reverb in the chain, add a EQ with a low pass filter. This creates an 'open space' effect rather than washing the whole track with a very long tail on a reverb.

Now we get to pre-delay. This is a very misunderstood knob. Its easy to figure out what it does but why need it.. Well, if you find yourself in a large warehouse or cathedral try this. Speak very loudly, or clap your hands. You'll hear a slight delay before the sound starts to tail of. The reason why is pure physics. The sound wave has to travel to a certain spot before it can start reflecting off of surfaces. And this sounds natural to our ears.

And so plugin developers have included in their designs, pre delay to assist one with creating natural sounding reverbs.

There are quite a few tricks that one can do with reverb, like using a gate ate the end, that cuts the tail in quick choruses, and then open the gate in moody verses. The options are endless, and that just because of using the Aux channels on your DAW.

http://www.guitarforum.co.za/recordings/some-cool-mixing-tricks/

This link also has some videos on how to use delays and some other tricks.

And as I mount my faithful steed to ride into the sunrise, always remember, if you're not having fun, you're not trying hard enough!