Getting the Verb (pro opinion would be great!)

Posted on Jul 16, 2010 05:12 pm
Quincysan
http://www.unitedmusicians.info
Contributor Since: Nov 11, 2007

After watching a documentary on Neil Young's production studio, I've been really excited by the idea of getting real reverb.

A few of my friends are into something called "Urban Exploration", which is basically breaking into an abandoned commercial facility and checking stuff out. Nothing is taken and nothing is changed, the point is simply to spend a day outside doing something a little different. I've gone with these guys a few times and we've been through an abandoned church, hospital and elementary school. Throughout our walking around I hear long reverb tails and immediately consider it's relevance in a mix. So my thought is this:

I already mix dry before I even consider reverb. When I do apply reverb, I typically create three aux inputs (tanks). I like a plate verb on vocals, room or hall verb for all the instruments/drums to get a cohesive "room sound", and sometimes I'll put in a tank just for the snare tracks if the song needs an emotional kick in the keister. So at a maximum, that's 3 reverb tanks. I'm fairly confident I've heard real spaces that would make for much cooler reverbs than my CSR plugs...especially in the ambient sound/unpredictability factor. The church was partially dilapidated and this allowed for pidgeons occupy the space. Hearing those birds in the same room with the band could make for a beautiful piece of art, I think. Since There are only 3 tanks that I NEED in a mix, what if I were to solo all my tracks down by reverb tank grouping, and print them to a mono audio track. All vocals in their fully mixed version printed to a mono lossless WAV file, same for the instruments, and then again for the snare tracks. The result would be three high quality mono wav files to be used for tantalizing an acoustic space.

I'd like to buy a small-ish PA and a CD player to generate audio. I'd also like a stereo field recording interface of quality construction. I think I want to put two stereo matched LDCs generally facing the corners of the walls furthest from my audio source

. I imagine I will be able to create or reduce space by moving the audio source closer to or further from the far wall. Further away would give way to whatever ambient sounds may be happening in the room...birds, dripping water, atmospheric noises. All that could be worked out ahead of time, recording a little bit and then listening to the result on headphones before tweaking positioning and gain levels. Since these places are abandoned, there are no annoying electronic sounds/flourescents to screw up my acoustic space.

In a world where BS producers are eating up real estate on every street corner in KC (most hemoragging financially), a guy's got to differenciate. Maybe I could make real reverb recordings my schtick? I know a few bands that would really get into crusing around KC checking out old abandoned spaces with appropriate atmospheric sounds, like the birds in the church for instance might be nice on a piano piece.

I'd love feedback on what your guys think of this. Rob, if you check this out you probably know just the mics and just the interface for the job...I'd love to hear your tips. Any tips on the PA? Mono is fine, but I think it needs to get pretty loud. Some of these areas are huge! Think big catholic church, that's about the biggest space I'd want to capture.

And yes...I am aware of the elephant in the room over there. I don't know how I'm going to power this endeavor. That's probably the most important piece of advice I could gain at this point...I have a power converter that fits my car's cig lighter, haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

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