November 22, 2011 Learn How To Mix In 3D: Steve Hillier Tips on Mastering Reverb
Master the use of reverb and your lifeless, two-dimensional mix will become a three dimensional panorama, says Steve Hillier.
Things that people do wrong with their music:
1. Write a composition starting with the drums. This is madness. Can you imagine Lennon and McCartney waiting for Ringo to set up his drum kit before writing their next Beatles smash? Obviously not.
2. Compress everything. At least twice. Anyone doing this in their mixes should stop now. Modern DAWs have an internal dynamic range that’s comparable to a pin dropping versus the sound of the big bang. Try using it, rather than squashing your music to the flatness of a pancake being sucked into a black hole . Compressors are like guns…only the sane should ever pick one up.
3. Use reverb badly, or not at all… Unlike compression, everyone likes reverb. How can I say this with such confidence? Because nearly everything you’ve ever heard has been covered with reverb. Everything. Reverberation is what you hear when the sound from an event, such as a gun shot, bounces off a reflective surface, such as a wall, and then into our ears. It’s a fundamental attribute of how we experience sound, and our brains have evolved to use the information contained in reverb to help us survive in our everyday lives. If we’re hearing lots of sounds with long reverb tails on them, that suggests we’re in a large room, such as a church. Lots of short ‘early reflections’, we’re probably in a small room. Everything we hear has some reverberation on it before it ends up in our ears (we’ll ignore scientists who work in anechoic chambers for today).
