Do acoustic guitar tracks need reverb?

[feaker66]

I have learned in these forums that reverb can really clutter up a tune.

Does an acoustic guitar have enough sustain that it can stand alone?

I recorded this little meaningless ditty in my concrete basement and didn't use any effects.

Does it sound dry to you?

Thanks

Paul

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=10852752

[cardell]

That sounded nice Paul.

If this was mine; I'd only use a tiny bit of ambient reverb...very subtle.

Stuart

[Kolstad]

This sounded nice Paul! Nice two channel comp!

Reverb has many uses. One is to push the part up front (less reverb) or back in a mix (more reverb), another is to make an instrument bigger or fatter. A short reverb could fatten up that guitar tone and make it sound bigger, without washing it out. You can also use reverb to simulate a room, like Stuart suggests. That would make it more live sounding opposed to studio sounding.

I would try a short reverb here, to fatten up the tone of the acoustic.

[mojobone]

I wouldn't say it needs reverb, strictly speaking. It sounds like a great and marketable instrumental piece, as it sits, but a touch of bus compression and the tiniest breath of room reverb or ambience could bring out more detail in the bass and add a bit more depth and sheen to the texture. It sounds very nice, did you use the Twinfinity preamp for this one?

[feaker66]

I guess I never thought of an instrumental? I don't usually go there.

Most often I sing to these and that is where I thought the reverb might interfere.

I think now I will try all of this over in the vocal booth.

Moj I recently have not been using any preamp. I used to go to my LA 610 first, but lately just the AKG 414, makie mixer and then to the puter. I can't hear any benefit from the preamp? I also didn't know you could put reverb on the bass?

These are the ditty's that come as a result of picking up my leaning guitar during tv comercials:)

ps Went in and lowered the bass, added verb and took off some bottom. Also added verb to only the 100% left ear track. Will keep messin.

Thanks guys

Paul

[Kelil]

Whether or not an acoustic guitar is good enough on its own would depend also on the type of acoustic used. For a sustained sound I'd suggest a martin acoustic.

Not sure if the following is relevant and I'm not very good at engineering but for She Blew Me Away and most of my other tracks I always do a guide guitar to the click, then I go in and do it again. I also ( depending on the piece ) double up the acoustic to give it a punchier sound in the chorus or for a particular part of the track that I wish to stand out more than the rest.

[mojobone]

I guess I never thought of an instrumental? I don't usually go there.


Moj I recently have not been using any preamp. I used to go to my LA 610 first, but lately just the AKG 414, makie mixer and then to the puter. I can't hear any benefit from the preamp? I also didn't know you could put reverb on the bass?


Paul

Paul, you're still using a preamp, it's the one in your Mackie board. It's a darn good pre, but not in the 610's league. The value in using a great preamp is in how it builds up in layers; there's a graininess to cheaper preamps that doesn't really show up until you have multiple layers of tracks, stuff recorded through a top notch pre tends to be easier to mix, also. In a mix with only a few tracks of live instruments, the difference is subtle but very real.

I would suggest keeping your best mic plugged into the 610 and using a balanced line level input on your Mackie board, or injecting the 610 directly into your interface; if you've been connecting the 610 to the Mackie's XLR input you're running the signal through both mic pres, a recipe for undesirable distortion, at best. (and probably why you don't hear improvement, if the Mackie preamp's self-noise is masking the slightly more pristine sound of the 610)

I usually don't put reverb on the bass at the channel level, unless I'm going for a 'live band in a large live room' sort of sound; I was talking about adding a breath of ambience and compression at the mix buss, to all tracks as a whole. I find that most effects treatments (especially time-based effects like chorus, flange and reverb, sometimes even delay/echo) simply sap energy and punch from bass guitars, except for compression and EQ. I also kinda thought you might want to turn the bass guitar up a notch, though the bus compressor would tend to naturally bring it a bit more forward.

[feaker66]

Great stuff Moj

You are right. I was running the 414 into the xlr input of the 610. Then out of the 610 into the mackie. Seems like I tried running the output of the 610 directly into the delta 66 (puter) but I had volume control problems. Going to try that route again:)

"breath of ambience and compression at the mix buss" You are going to laugh, but i don't even know what that means. I only set the volumes on the tracks an "let er rip". I do select many notes that have too much aplitude and reduce them by hand. The compressors available that i see don't seem to tame the tracks much.

As you know I am very challanged with this stuff, but enjoy the hell out of it. If I one day come up with a great tune, I will hire you to tweak it into shape.

Thanks for the reply.

Your friend

Paul

[gongchime]

I always felt I didn't want to be a knob tweaker. That should be someone elses job. Boring and hugely time consuming to learn how to do it right and then boring and hugely time consuming again to actually "DO" it right. I'm the same as you. I just want to plug in and let her rip as you say. I'm no mixing guru but I wanted to share with you a possible solution to these decisions. Pod Farm 2 has them already made for you as far as what the effects chain should look like on a 'normal' set up with a few options to choose from such as "boomy acoustic" "fat acoustic" etc... Anyway, you don't need to buy it because I'm going to tell you. It seems to me the absolutely barebones, vanilla acoustic guitar set up is through an American classic power amp with the drive around 15%, a four band EQ minus four decibels at 50 Hz (remember this is for people who are not going to try and discern if thats set absolutely perfectly. Only what they'll probably need. If it's not perfect, it won't affect their tone enough to care for us plug and play folks). Compressor with minus ten threshold and gain at 4dB. Delay time around 200 ms, feedback 25% Low 15, Hi 60 and Mix 20, as well as cavernous reverb with predelay at 60%, decay at 30 percent, tone at 60% and mix at 35%. Use something like that until it doesn't work then tweak the Delay Mix and the cavernous reverb mix back down until it feels right. That will always be in the ballpark unless you use a piezo electric setup which needs a piezo acoustic power amp.

[mojobone]

Great stuff Moj

You are right. I was running the 414 into the xlr input of the 610. Then out of the 610 into the mackie. Seems like I tried running the output of the 610 directly into the delta 66 (puter) but I had volume control problems. Going to try that route again:)

"breath of ambience and compression at the mix buss" You are going to laugh, but i don't even know what that means. I only set the volumes on the tracks an "let er rip". I do select many notes that have too much aplitude and reduce them by hand. The compressors available that i see don't seem to tame the tracks much.

Hmm, your Delta 66 interface likely also has a preamp incorporated with its XLR inputs; what you want is a balanced line-level 1/4 in. phone jack input on either device. Use a stereo TRS (Tip, Ring Sleeve) cable to connect the 610 to the Mackie or the Delta; the Mackie's channel inputs may or may not be balanced, but can still accept a TRS cable with minimal signal loss. If you don't have any line-level inputs, you'll want the level knobs lower on the downstream device than on the 610 which is the opposite of what usually would be described as "proper" gain staging.

"Ambience" is a very short reverb, like what you'd hear if you were talking loudly in a closet.

A mix bus is a type of "send"; typically all your individual mix channels are 'bussed' or sent to be mixed at another gain stage. (as you add more channels of signal, you may need to turn all the channels down equally to avoid overloading or overdriving the next gain stage in the signal chain) The fader for this stage is usually labeled "Master". (on a stereo mixing board, you'll often also have a Left and Right Master fader, the output of these is called a Two-Mix and and it's level is controlled by the Master fader) As each individual channel can have either insert or send effects, so can this Master bus, and effects applied to the master bus affect all channels being mixed. (hint: it's a good place to put your best compressor and EQ, especially if you have only one of each)

If your compressors aren't affecting your tracks, it's probably because either you didn't record enough signal to activate the compressor, or the compressor's threshold setting is too high; compressors aren't meant to act on the whole signal, just the peaks-if your peaks are below the threshold, the compressor does nothing. (well, nothing much-some hardware compressors will change the sound, often for the better, without actually doing anything to the peaks; they have heavy iron transformers that jes' make everything sound cooler and more 'solid')