One of the bummers about recording in tiny bedrooms is that your tracks lack any defined sense of space.
Fortunately with some tasteful and subtle reverb and delay moves we can bring some slight ambience into our recordings that let them breathe and give them a hint of depth.
Today we take our little one hour mix a step closer to completion thanks to a little reverb glue and slap delay.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Big difference between dry and adding what you did. Goes to show that very shuttle verb and delay go along way. I do have a question and I hate to say it, but the main vocal still needs a bit more compression and there is an offensive frequency that makes me cringe. Do you hear it on your end, or is it just me. Anyone hearing it?
Thanks again Graham for showing us this. It’s all changing the way I mix. Very helpful..!!
Hi John I wonder if your hearing the same as I. When I watched the 10 minutes compression video I thought the vocal compression made the vocal tuning more obvious. Perhaps this is creating the impression of an ‘offensive frequency’ in your ears?
I wish I had the tracks myself to see what’s happening with the vocal. For one, I believe it needs a bit more compression to smooth it out. The other thing that sticks out is the singer (no offense) is sharping and flating in spots. Auto-tune needs to be added. The frequency I’m hearing isn’t from compression being added, I was hearing it before any processing was added. I’m not saying the song is bad, I like song a lot. but it just needs more work than an hour. The music is really good, but the vocal IMO wrecks it. I do understand what Graham is doing and it’s working, but this song needs a ton of work that will exceed an hour.
What you’ve done here Graham is just plain GREAT! You sure know your onions when it come to audio plus you’re a truly excellent tutor to boot. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us mere mortals! PS: That’s a KILLER song & fine mix you’ve put together there! It reminds me of a cross between Jeff Buckley (RIP) & The Sundays = high praise indeed! BTW who’s the artist? Thanks again amigo!
Is there a reason (or difference) why you are using sends as opposed to slapping a small bit of verb on the master fader like your mix bus processing? Sounds great great by the way!
Putting reverb on a send helps make blending the effect easier depending on the plugin. Some plugins have a mix knob where you can blend anywhere from 1% to 100% with 10 to 20 % usually being good for the whole mix. Also, I usually use sends for when I want certain tracks to go to a certain reverb but not others, like the bass or drums (if the drums already have a room sound recorded) . Since everything goes to the master fader or mix bus, if you put a reverb on it, all tracks will be affected. Basically, a bus just gives you a few more options, but a reverb plugin with a mix knob can work like charm also.
The snare needs some high end it’s muddy.
Overall the whole thing needs some high end sparkle and air.
And this song is crying for a less subdued vocal, harmonies and it’s screaming for a string section.
The phrase “radio ready” tells me why Graham doesn’t much like reverb as an effect. The target (radio) audience mostly listens to music in a car, where reverb tends to get blended with all the low frequency resonances that all vehicles have: engine rumbling, wheels etc. A car is a hopeless acoustic environment and it seems to be the main place where people listen to music.
.. and of course the amount of compression that is added to all radio broadcasts – “I’m loudest therefore I am!” – doesn’t help either… but I prefer recordings with a clearly defined and often expressive use of reverb. Search YouTube for The Comsat Angels album “Sleep No More”, that’s an example of what I mean by expressive reverb – which was by the way recorded by setting up microphones with a gate effect in an elevator shaft behind the drummer, not added digitally.
Can you tell us more about recording these drums/gate/reverb/elevator. is there a link to info?
I’m assuming you haven’t been fiddling with the mix in-between each episode (which i think you said you wouldn’t do if i remember correctly), then hearing the on/off (plugins) toward the end of this video was very interesting. The unmixed version sounded raw in an endearing way, a sort of liberated warts&all natural vibe that sounded acceptable with character and unpretentious like it or leave it type thing, and it sounded good, but then hearing the plugins switched-in was like ohhh immediate glued-in gloss and sheen and that magical pro factor, sort of like “radio-ready” type vibe. Very Good Graham. Thankyou.
Thanks Graham…another fantastic insight…just that subtle little reverb opens the whole track…
Best
Keith..
Hey Graham,
Really enjoying the 10 minute series. Have been following you for years and it’s all starting to come together for me.
I discovered a shortcut recently (not sure if it’s just on PT11) which I love and you (all) might find useful if your not already doing it.
If you select all your tracks and press shift+A it bypasses all of the plugins in one go. It’s fantastic for getting that instant AB comparison before/after plugins.
Sorry if everyone already knew this but I came across it recently and think it’s great.
Keep it up,
See you over at Dueling Mixes
Phil
NSW Australia
Sounds like a lot of nit picking when it’s an intentional ten minute mix. This is supposed to be the exercise and nothing more if I am correct. I had a thought after going through some tracks for a client this week. I’d recorded four tracks in Omaha and then moved to Tucson this summer and started working on her tracks a few weeks ago. After I started watching these videos, I’ve gone back and pulled all the plug-ins out and started with the raw tracks in mono. I must say that I learn something with each video and I’m an old dog that’s had the recording bug since my days with the reel to reels back in the 70’s and 80’s. Back then the studios were covered in shag carpeting across every inch it sucked the life out of the room. Apartments aren’t really any better and adding some width and depth to a room using verb and delay is something I love doing. I’m just about ready to watch that next video and learn some new tricks. Thank you Graham for this series of videos and keep up the good work. My request is that you cover elastic audio and quantizing. I’ve had more tracks mangled after trying the quantizing at a minimum amount and it’s seems useless to me. The elastic audio works pretty well, but a more in-depth look would be nice. It does a nice job of tightening up the drums and bass and sometimes vocal phrasing.
Great video Graham. One request I would make on a video like this is if you cold allow us to hear the reverb and delay a lot more raw. What I mean is solo the vocal and start and stop a couple times so we can hear what the tail sounds like preferably verb and delay separtely and then maybe blended so we can hear what it sounds like. Then play it again with the full mix so we can listen for it since we now know what it sounds like. BTW, I’m not say I can’t hear it in the mix but it would give a better picture of what it is doing. IMHO. Thanks again for your work.
Thanks for the suggestion!