Reverb on drums - Techniques

[dominicw78]

Just wondering how other people use reverb on their drums. Which reverbs do you use and on which drums? Does anyone use more than one reverb on one kit? For instance a plate on the snare and room on hit hats and kick, etc.

Please share

[re.mark]

*Tracks topic - as Im quite interested also*

I personally set up one reverb bus and send all the hi-hats and snare to. With the reverb hipassed at like 500/900hz+ and on around 500ms decay - sounds ok, but it lacks something lol Tend to have a longer reverb setup for the crashes etc at about 3-5seconds long.
- could be doing it totally wrong though :p

[giggedy]

I'd like to know this as well.

[DJD]

bump for someone with mastering experience to give a few tips

[DJMillsy]

Firstly, find a reverb you like the sound of, especially if you are going to use it for some long effects tails.

The amount of reverb you apply to your drums will be influenced by the musical genre you create. The short reverbs on minimal house contrast with say Trance that often has long splashy reverbs often side chained to the kick for movement.

I dont use a great deal of reverb on my drums as my music falls into the more minimal side of things, I keep the same reverb as it helps to gel the drums together and apply slightly more reverb to the drum elements that have the highest frequencies ie hats, shakers etc.

Rolling of the bottom end of the reverb is advisable and if it sounds good take it past the 300hz mark so as to avoid muddying up the mix.

[xsic]

as DJmillsy says, it depends on the style you want to achieve. is it for a "real" drum feeling (acoustic drums) i would choose a room that pleases you and hook it up as a send. don´t put much bassdrum in the room it will get muddy, but a little helps to get the drum-kit sit in the room. if you are working with room-mics, i think you have to choose your reverb carefully as it have to match with your original room.
send the hats , OHs toms and snare to taste.
to fatten things up you can use different rooms, plates, reverbs beside the "main" room. sometimes three different reverbs on the snare do the trick!
also on toms it´s a common technique to use a second reverb, other than the main one.
on electronic drums ithink everything is allowed. just has to sound right to you

for me it helped to dig into drum-mixing techniques of engineers who produce "natural" records. take alook at the www.gearsluts.com forum - there´s much talking (as usual) but many helpful insights in this technique. i think from there you can aplly these techniques (and modify them!) to electronic music.

personally i prefer short, warm sounding rooms, mostly IR-reverbs with up to 1 second tail. keeps the drums tight. i also do a roll-off at about 200Hz, but that depends.

cheers