Patrick Carney – Bojack Horseman
I’ve been saving this song for a while. It’s full of reverb and delay and as I type I am noticing even more how much I enjoy the stereo field Patrick Carney uses.
The opening sounds to this song are amazing, I don’t know what instrument is being used but it is fascinating. The move from crisp and dry in the beginning (in terms of delay) to the snare drum delay is such an interesting transition. I don’t know enough about delay to know what kind this is, but I would guess it’s a slapback and some automated EQ.
The drums sound like they have a very tight delay on them, like it was double tracked very close together, but I’m not terribly committed to that thought, I might be trying too hard to find delay in everything. The drums are relatively crisp, but it sounds like a nice room with a medium decay on the crashes.
The saxophones are in a nice size room or being treated with a noticeable amount of reverb. Based on the end I believe it’s artificial reverb, I think it lasts too long to be completely authentic room tone.
The guitar and bass seems to be ping-ponging in certain parts of the song, but it’s not an actual ping-pong delay since the chords actually change through the hard-left and right bounce. (1:30, 2:25)
Recordings
Something I found from this that I didn’t find in my questions below is that reverb is found in closed spaces while delay occurs in open spaces. I found particularly fast repeating delay outside of my house between a car dealership and my house as opposed to the single slapback that came from standing in the street between two buildings. This makes sense since a major portion of the frequencies can dissipate into the sky or down the street and something like a standing wave is created between the adjacent buildings.
Quiz on Delay and Reverb:
1a. What is delay? What effect does this have on our sense of the sound or space?
Delay seems to be the name for the audio effect, while echo refers to the natural phenomenon. Delay also seems to be a gimmicky effect (like wah-pedal) instead of an attempt at creating a natural space, I believe this is because it is unnatural for identical repetition of sound to occur. Humans can’t make the same sound twice without varying some part of the sound, so a delay pedal’s identical repetition of a sound is not entirely natural sounding. I have to try and find a source for that information, I’ve heard of this before but can’t find the source that I heard it from.
1b. What is reverb? What effect does this have on our sense of sound or space?
Reverb is the effect of many reflections/delays arriving at a listener without them being able to distinguish them. Reverb gives us the impression of being in a large room and/or distant from the sound source.
A) DELAY
2. How is delay made artificially? What are places where delay happens naturally?
Delay takes an input signal, temporarily holds it in a storage medium and then replays it after a short period of time.
3. I like delay as an effect, tape loops are very cool and I can mess with those for hours if I had the pedal I wanted. How do people use delay in a subtle way to improve their mixes?
I have read about people using a subtle slapback or lengthy delays that approach sounding like reverb because reverb makes the sound too washy. There are also approaches like adding slightly overdriven and equalized echo to thicken up certain sounds without making the delay a gimmicky effect.
4. What is slapback?
Very familiar sound, didn’t really know what it was until now though. It’s a very tight single repetition originally done with tape.
5. Is reverb more popular than delay?
No, judging by forums I have been reading, people find reverb can get out of hand too easily and prefer using different kinds of delay to get very short reverb or special tone.
6. What kind of effect can delay have on a saxophone recording?
I don’t know that I would definitely use this, but I think this delay could be useful for filling out emptiness of a sound if you rely on a lot of empty space like I do. The problem with empty space in a live situation is the impression of a song being finished early or the sound of the room (especially at a bar) encroaching on your sound and dismantling the world you are still creating.
7. Live applications of delay?
Loop pedals are really common versions of this, but Brian May from Queen uses even just the 1/8th note delay in his solos to harmonize with himself one 1/8th note in the past.
In general delay can really fill up the spaces between notes and give a constant backing to an otherwise solo instrument.
8. Where can you find natural delay?
Echoes occur in a similar way as reverb does, but the phenomenon of echo is linked with something that takes over 0.1 seconds to reach us after the original signal. Reverb is interpreted when sound is still within this 0.1 second period because the sound is retained in our memory and combined with the reflections. Apparently echoes can naturally be found anywhere there are large reflective surfaces that you are able to keep a distance of about 17 meters, I however found that I was able to get echoes to occur in much smaller places as long as it was not a closed space.
9. Can temperature affect echo?
Yes, sound moves faster through cool air and therefore generates faster delays. Sound travels slower in warm air.
10. Can anything else effect reverb or echo?
If there are more people present in a space (including concert goers), they will absorb a lot of sound and change the dynamic of the space.
B) REVERB
2. How do our ears perceive space? How does digital reverb recreate this?
Our ears perceive depth by detecting a ratio of direct sound/reflected sound. Digital reverb uses mathematical algorithms to generate new sounds based on source material. This is distinct from digital delay which copies a sound exactly and repeats it while decaying. The ‘new sounds’ are like the multiple reflections our ears receive when in a reverberant space.
3. How do you best capture natural reverb?
Condenser mics are good for capturing both the sound source and the reflections simultaneously, but dynamic mics placed at a distance from the sound source is really all it takes. You can aim the microphone at a wall away from the sound source, but ultimately you are just making it a longer distance between the microphone and sound source.
From this, I am curious about recording a sound source from around several corners in order to make it so that the only sound being picked up is reflection.
4. What is considered ‘good’ artificial reverb? Obviously taste is involved and anyone can make do with reverb that is stock in Audacity, but what is the difference?
Ultimately it seems to come down to taste, but I was able to find sort of an answer. The type of musician using it will seek different things from it: concert pianists will look for accurate simulations of real places, engineers will look for something flexible, and guitarists will look for weird things. This helps me to appreciate where to come from when considering the person I am recording and which reverb to use. I personally like the Logic reverb better than Ableton’s. Ableton’s sounds a bit thinner, but maybe I haven’t played with it enough to thicken it up.
5. What is a good rule when it comes to using reverb?
Less is more – it’s easy to saturate your sound with reverb when you’re new to recording because it sounds good, but the listener shouldn’t really be aware of it (unless it’s actually intended to mask or distort the sound).
6. What are the aspects of digital reverb? This will address the components of natural reverb as well.
Predelay: The time between the original sound and the onset of reflections. You can divide the BPM of your track into milliseconds and trigger the reflections in a rhythmic way.
Duration: The amount of time the reverb will last. You don’t want things to be too long or else they will wash out detail and clarity. You can do the math again to keep the length down to one beat or whatever works best.
Size: Size of the room. The larger it is, the more ‘spacey’ it will sound. Small size will result in something close to an echo.
Decay/density: Like a tone control. Sorry to copy and paste but this states it well: “If you hear a metallic oil tank sound you may want to turn the density up, but if you hear the reverb washing out or masking other sounds in the mix, you may want to turn it down.” – storyville
Diffusion: Scatters sound waves. More diffuse = more distance or openness. Less diffuse = “more unified echo” – storyville
Damping: How long frequencies last during the duration of the reverb. I think this literally refers to how a room would affected by hanging some blankets or well placed sound absorption in an otherwise reflective room. Certain frequencies would die out faster even though reverb is still present.
This information is from user: storyville on https://www.gearslutz.com/board/rap-hip-hop-engineering-production/363107-reverb-tips-techniques.html?highlight=storyville+delay
It’s worth reading
7. What is another method of perceiving space?
Not exactly reverb, but wave field synthesis is really interesting. It uses a speaker array to articulate a wave front as it would occur coming from a real sound source. Although each speaker radiates concentric sound spheres, they can be triggered at precise intervals that indicate direction and depth. The wave of the bird for example arrives at the right side (top of picture) of the array first and spreads to the left (bottom) of the array. This is a special method however, not really suited to home audio.
8. What is impulse response? How does it work?
An impulse response is an audio sample of a space. You record a speaker playing a special sine sweep, or starter gun with microphones in your ideal placement of the room. The ‘special’ sine wave includes some blips at the beginning and end of the sweep which will give the DAW information later. The full sine sweep recording goes into the DAW’s impulse plugin and will generate a sine sweep to match this one so that it can analyze the reverb content and apply it to new recordings in a similar way.
9. What is convolution reverb?
This goes hand in hand with the impulse response, it is for simulating real spaces. Convolution is a mathematical process of multiplying and combining samples, I think this takes the different frequencies as sampled by the sine sweep and combines them when a tone activates them. If a C4 is sounded on a piano, the overtone series (C5,G5,C6, E6, G#6? etc…) would be present and articulate each sample that the impulse response has prepared for each of these pitches.
10. Can temperature affect reverb?
Yes, warmer sounds will produce shorter reverb. I would have thought it would be longer since the sound takes longer to travel, but frequencies are able to dissipate faster
Mijomabo 