Reverb on drums?

L

Lucider

Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2011
Location
San Francisco, CA
Never done it until I was preparing a track to be played that same night - I freaked, feeling like it sounded dry and lacked cohesion, so I started slapping room reverb, fully dampened, on ALL of the drums, from kick to hi-hat. I was A/B 'ing with Spor's Powder Monkey at the time and just couldn't think of another way to get the wash of sound that this mofo cranks out so effortlessly.

It seemed to help, I guess. Is there a right way to do this?

Thanks,
J.P.
 
no way is the right way, if it sounds good it is, lol :D

i occasionally throw some pretty short reverb without any damp on snares and the main hi hat if there is one. find it with really hi fizzly sound that it can easily sound over the top when you got lots of stuff going on.

really depends imo. if theres lots of drum hits, lots of hi hats etc id not throw any reverb on it and if so a really short, hipassed one. and i never put any reverb on kicks, dunno what that is like lol ^^
 
^^ pretty much this ^^

Occassionally I'll whack some subtle verb on a snare layer or hat sequence, but it all depends on what style I'm aiming for
 
You could group all your drums together and have a reverb affect the group as a whole. Perhaps have a reverb plug on a return track..
 
sometimes i put some reverbed element in my snare, it can create interesting athmospheres, but then again, it always depends...
 
I often use a reverb on a return track and send individual drum hits to hit. mostly hi hats and percussive sounds. (I don't dare messing with the kick too much :)) Glues the whole drum kit more together, as if it was a drum kit in a room :D
 
thanks for the tips - when I mentioned to a friend of mine at the party that I put reverb on the kick he just laughed - seriously, some of those spor tracks have a sorta muddy low end in a good way
 
I've found quite a bit of success sending the Drum bus to a reverb channel, but only enough so that you can barely hear the difference when A/Bing. It adds a nice touch of "glue" to the kit as a whole, and provides it a bit of overall depth.
 
It means comparing A or B.. play both tracks at the same time, but listen to one, and then quickly switch to the second, then back to the first, to compare how they sound. Great way to study how your music compares to someone elses (like a reference track you think is well produced).
 
I always put a very very subtle (maybe 5-7% wet) reverb after a very very subtle distortion and before compression on my drum master bus. Sounds good to me :D
 
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