Tips on making something sound really "wet"

[nipsy]

okay, keep the box, but find an old fostex spring unit. You'll wet yourself.........


(I couldnt resist...sorry...)

[LeedyGuy]

Your song is really cool.

I gotta tell ya, all the times that I have posted music up here that is the first time I have ever gotten any feedback! Thanks! I didn't write it, but I played drums on it and that synth thing (which is a Roland sh-101) and sort of made the artists vision a reality. It's a ton of fun really, I just wish that it was a little more Beach Boys sounding in the reverb domain.

[RefD]

Pre-delay is the key to reveb a lot of the times.

Your song is really cool.

What is pre-delay? (I know what delay is so I am not a complete retard)

the delay time before onset of reverb (be sure not to mix in any dry signal).

you can use tape or a DDL or whatever.

Most reverb's made after about '85 have predelay built into the programing. I'm personally not gonna waste the coolness of a PCM41 on a reverb send.

indeed, but i was thinking along the lines of springs, plates and chambers.

[Mane1234]

Well first off it obviously needs more cowbell...(couldn't resist given your avitar). Cool tune. Loved the change up at 2:58. I used to always think about verbs in terms of what instruments I was effecting, like here's my drum verb and here's my vocal verb but after reading stuff here on the board about verb and seeing people's uses of them I look at them in terms of how long they last and just what the characteristics of the verbs are. So for most of my mixes I set up three verb busses and label them Short Verb, Medium Verb and Long Verb then start fine tuning them to what the song feels like it needs. I've started using some kind simulated tape delay (since I don't have a real one yet) on almost all lead vocal before it hits the verb. Sometimes I'll double tracks and keep one clean and get the other one really wet.

While I was listening to your song I was wondering how many times you tracked the backing vocals...Maybe double or triple tracking each backup section will give you some more thickness and add a little more depth. I've played around with running the verb return to a compressor and tried to get it pumping to the song before with varying results. I've never looked around online for stuff about how Pet Sounds was produced but I would think there's stuff out there. Given how it was recorded there's only so much they could have done to it but it does sound pretty amazing.

Good luck...Let us keep on hearing it.

[drumsound]

Your song is really cool.

I gotta tell ya, all the times that I have posted music up here that is the first time I have ever gotten any feedback! Thanks! I didn't write it, but I played drums on it and that synth thing (which is a Roland sh-101) and sort of made the artists vision a reality. It's a ton of fun really, I just wish that it was a little more Beach Boys sounding in the reverb domain.

I don't really check out the listen to my stuff forum, sorry man...

I listened to all three songs on the myspace page. I likes 'em all. The OO lala song that you link to has a decent amount of 'verb . You could make it a bit longer, or give it a bit more predelay, or just plain turn it up a bit. I'ts hard to give judgements based on the myface sound.

[u b k]

to build on what others have gotten at, the first time you patch in a 140, or even an old spring with character, you will understand. you can drown things in a real plate and it won't ever sound bad. too much verb, maybe, but never bad.

you can also get zealous with a lot of outboard rack verbs, 480 does its thing nicely but so does an alex so it's not just about $, some verbs just have that thang. most itb reverbs, ime, do not, and need to be used conservatively. something about them doesn't 'sit' the same for me.


gregoire
del
ubk
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[Dakota]

Have to agree on the fostex 3180 spring reverb. They don't go for big money ($100 give or take), and they sound old-school great. Kind of glow-y, makes me smile. Master Room XL-305 or XL-210 are nice too.

Convolution verbs, impulses of old plates and springs are really useful... but don't have the magic non-linear contribution of hardware.

What's the reverb used on the 60's Simon and Garfunkel records? EMT? Sounds awesome.

[themagicmanmdt]

i've only had minor success using a plugin reverb program (from Waves), just because it sounds so amazingly artificial! i mainly use it to give the feeling of 3D imaging, but not quite for actual 'reverb', you know?

a roland space echo was my weapon of choice for a while, it's a dark, haunting spring reverb that's a great 'long tunnel' sound, but not quite what you may be after.

a big room holds the key.

try this: when you're micing something, do your normal setup, then throw either an omni or a LDC/SDC in the room at least 5' away. don't worry that it's not too defined. add your reverb plugin or what have you to that room signal, then blend to taste with the original track.

using the room mic takes away lots of the 'attack' that a close mic has, which, to me, is the fallacy of plugins - the tops of snare hits, the 'ssss' and 't's' of vocals, the pick strum of acoustics - all vital, but they sound un-natural when simply adding a plugin.

i definitely agree with djimbe about how nice it is to have reverb seperate on a fader. it's nice to 'work' it, much like sometimes working a compressor.

speaking of compression, compressing the room mic (or any mic) on a sidechain before your reverb send/plugin will help that room sound nice and smooth.

[Gentleman Jim]

I've had reasonably good luck getting some ersatz Brian Wilson sounds with Logic, but I used the fake spring reverb on Guitar Amp Pro. I found that the crunchiness of a light overdrive combined with the cheesiness of the spring reverb gave me something... well, CrunCheesy!

I see that Sonar 7 has an amp simulator. Does 5? If so, try it out. And don't be afraid to try it on a whole buss; that way it smushes the whole thing together.

I listened to the song, and I also like it. My personal choice for drenching in reverb would be the acoustic guitar, with its sliding squeaks.

Hope it helps.

[Harry]

Try putting a 2nd verb on there...on the aux return from the 1st..

Here's what I do when I want wetter than wet.

On one aux I send it to a tape delay then to a spring reverb. then on the return from that I add a 2nd verb.
I've never had that not be wet enough...but I imagine you could add a 3rd if she's still too dry.

A lot of it depends on the unit or plug in you're using.

[kRza.]

ALTIVERB

That's all I will say. Throw the EMT plate on that shit....sit back and change your drawers.

[ashcat_lt]

I see that Sonar 7 has an amp simulator. Does 5? If so, try it out. And don't be afraid to try it on a whole buss; that way it smushes the whole thing together.

I think Sonar has had an AmpSim since they started calling it Sonar. It doesn't include a reverb, though.

Amplitube does, and I use it the same way you describe.

[littlepokey]

Someone recently showed me a cool trick for dynamic reverb. If you have a room mic or mics tracked on a drumset for instance, then compressing the drum buss but not the room mic, will yield a larger reverb sound on loud passages, and not so much on tender moments. Conversely, compressing the the room mics more than the drum buss will let the reverb bloom more on the quiet passages.

Something else to try if you are working in a daw is to take the room mics (or a printed 100% wet verb from a box) and just slide it to the right to taste.

[aeijtzsche]

I've never looked around online for stuff about how Pet Sounds was produced but I would think there's stuff out there. Given how it was recorded there's only so much they could have done to it but it does sound pretty amazing.

It was nothing terribly special. They were working with a three bus console and the echo/reverb would just be added back to the dry signal and go down the same bus unless you patched it somewhere else. In other words, it would follow that there were only three discrete reverb devices in use for a tracking session, if they went that far. And certainly at Western Studios they had several chambers, EMT, and spring reverbs. And Gold Star had the famous two chambers.

So yeah, it was nothing out-of-the ordinary. I mean, obviously all the 'verb and delay stuff was printed to tape. The vocals were sometimes recorded dry with chamber added at the mix, at CBS/Columbia studios.

I've had a lot of success emulating a Pet Soundsy reverb sound just using simple plug ins. I generally focus mostly on decay length.