solarbird | also extending some commentary elsewhere

The second ‘reverb trick’ they’re talking about in this article isn’t explained very well, I don’t think, because the critical element is kind of tossed out there in a side comment.

That critical element is the compression. If you just follow their steps – take a synth track, add reverb, record the reverb separately, put that in a second track, looped – you don’t get anything that’s hugely different to just adding reverb.

But if you do all those things, then also add a bunch of competitive compression – by which I mean, have your intermittent signal (the notes of the synth, when struck) close to the maximum output volume your compressor allows, which causes the compressor to scale back other simultaneous, continuous sounds – you get that interesting effect where the notes have very little immediate reverb, but between the notes, the reverb effect pops back up. It’s like the note is played without reverb, then after the note is over, the reverb pops up, delayed just a bit.

That effect is what’s adding the second implied beat, the semi-syncopation which livens their sample track up so well.

It’s an interesting application of side-chain effects. I think this is one to use sparingly; it’d be awfully fatiguing after a while.

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