Reverb on the overheads
Something that I love to do when I’m mixing a song that has an acoustic drum kit is to put a long reverb just on the overheads.
This gives the whole kit a gloss and sheen, and a feeling of a subtly elevated specialness, while retaining the definition of each of the individual drum sounds.
It can be really cool in genres where it wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate to have a lot of reverb on the drums, if you know what I mean; for example, I did this the other day on an experimental instrumental guitar album I’m mixing, to great effect.
I personally prefer an algorithmic reverb for this, set to an algorithm that doesn’t sound like a natural hall or room — something that is interpretive as opposed to (hyper-)literal seems to hit a sweet spot for me.
Personal favorites for this at the moment include Spaced Out (reverb side only, no delay) and the Ambience program on my beloved UAD AMS RMX16.
We’re talking reverb times in the 4-second-plus range here; something with a tail that you can hear, sitting back there and creating space and texture. Preferably with a subtle modulation chorusing in the tail.
I generally do this in a send-return, as opposed to plonking the reverb plugin on the overhead channel. As always, use EQ on the reverb return, after the reverb, to fit the sound into your mix in a way that feels ideal to you.
It really is the final frontier — jamie
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