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Adding Reverb Depth to Drums Recorded in a Small Space

Apr 16, 2019 | 104,945 Views

The ability to add natural depth to instruments is crucial for producers who are limited by the acoustic space of their home studios. Watch how Grammy-winning mixer Guy Massey (The Beatles, Ed Sheeran) uses Abbey Road Chambers to achieve natural depth on drums.

Because of the limitations of a no-budget record, most acoustic recordings nowadays are done in less-than-ideal spaces. If you're limited by the size of an acoustic space, a plugin like Abbey Road Chambers is going to be indispensable.

People use reverbs and plates to get a sense of space. But even you are going for some mad effects, Chambers can accommodate that. It all depends what the track needs.

Natural Space and Depth (1:01)

If you're purely wanting a very natural sounding space, Chambers works really well, because you can just put it up, choose a room and it's there. You hardly need to fill it with anything - it just sounds good.

Unusual Space and Effects (2:22)

Guy will now apply the stone room on the same drums. He used that room when he worked on The Beatles Anthology. He feels like this room is more suitable for this track, as it allows the drums to go from very tight and dry to something that's a little bit more expensive sounding. Pay close attention to how he uses the S.T.E.E.D setup to add a 40ms pre-delay into the chamber – this helps him get a slap sound on the snare and make the chamber seem bigger.

S.T.E.E.D Explained (3:26)

S.T.E.E.D is a tape delay that has a function that lets you refeed a signal back into the input of the tape machine to create feedback loop - from one single echo, to as many echoes as you like, into a complete feedback loop. Basically, you can just use the reverb on its own, the S.T.E.E.D by itself, or you can use both to get some very interesting, unique results quickly.

Music: "Who Gives Me What I Want" by Ajimal

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