Effectively applying reverb to perc with eq and using Ableton utility

Hi Everyone,

Spent all day yesterday working on a new track and really pleased with it but I've noticed I spend a lot of time on reverb and gain levels so as not to clip to master on Ableton without simply slamming a limiter on it.

Firstly, how do you apply reverb to clap/snare without also affecting the low end of the sound?

it's clearly not a great idea to verb up all the low end but I'm unsure if I'm doing it right.

With the snare, I placed an eq8 after the sound source to do the initial sound shaping, cutting out the unnecessary low/high frequencies and attempting to boost/reduce certain frequencies..fine...I'm not great at it but I get the idea with that.

After this I place a reverb (insert effect not return channel)- which in Ableton tends to have an input processing (lo/hi cut filter) which I either mess with to reflect the eq settings before it or turn it off. Then I place another eq8 after the reverb and apply a high cut filter in an attempt to restrict the presence of reverb on the remaining low end of the sound...but I'm not sure if this is correct.

I've seen people splitting the sound with the mid/side setting on eq to just verb up the stereo high end side parts of the sound but I can't remember how this was done. So yeah, how do you verb up high end perc sounds effectively?

Also, I spend ages mixing the gain levels on the actual mixer once I've got clips playing together so to avoid clipping but what I've found is that when soloing a track, I believe due to the impact of compression/eq/effects the actual vu meter goes higher than the level I've set at the mixer meaning at some stage there's an unequal addition of gain..so how do I keep the tracks level under control and in the green without having to go through and edit all the changes I've made previously - is this where you use utility to keep everything at one level? Do you place a utility right at the end of the effects/devices chain on the track?

Thanks a lot! Each project seems like a learning process for me. Fun though

Thanks man.

Yes, I want to be able to eq the sound normally without reverb and then ensure that only certain parts of that sound are affected by the reverb so I think your method is just what I need. I don't tend to work much with chains but realise it's the way to go with wet/dry processing. Thanks :)

Love your tunes.

I might be missing the point here, but if I understand you correctly couldn't you just create bus/aux channel, add an eq to that and then the reverb after that?

Yeah, wouldn't a send effect make more sense? Then you can treat the wet signal before and after the reverb, independently of the dry signal.

Yeah buss it and only send verb to that

  On 5/30/2015 at 12:56 PM, psn said:

Yeah, wouldn't a send effect make more sense? Then you can treat the wet signal before and after the reverb, independently of the dry signal.

Yeah, exactly.

Also, most reverbs have built-in abilities to filter out frequencies. But it's definitely easier to control with an EQ or highpass/lowpass filter.

Just make sure to turn the wet/mix knob up to 100%

Yeah, I'm not well versed with Ableton and don't really know what the grouping does there.

Thanks all. I think that's two ways of doing it...as a send effect or as a buss device. Thanks again.

No worries :)

This is working a charm as send effects with eq. Thanks a lot. Ableton Convolution Reverb is insanely good!

Remember to put the eq before the reverb :)

Oh fuck, I was placing the eq after the effect...hmmm, i'll reverse it and see the difference.

Put one in front and one at the back.

Thanks. Yeah I reversed the initial mistake so the eq came before the reverb and it didn't make a massive difference really....I'll eq after the verb too...I guess that tightens it out more?

It actually worked best with an eq before and after...before to roll off the low end and after to refine it further. As the original track sample was eqd anyway via an insert effect it's more about refining the reverb impact on that.