Gated reverb

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Gated reverb is an audio processing technique that is usually applied to drums to make them sound powerful and punchy, while keeping overall mix clean and transparent. This effect is made using a combination of strong reverb and a noise gate. Contrary to most other audio effects, such as reverberation or delay that try to emulate something, gated reverb is not necessarily supposed to sound 'natural'. It was a very popular effect in the 1980s

The effect is believed to have been created by Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins and Hugh Padgham while working on the third Peter Gabriel solo album.[1] The effect began sneaking into popular music during the 80s. Producer Mutt Lange was a pioneer at drenching the drums in gated reverb.

Contents 1 Methods of creation 1.1 Classic analogue method 1.2 Modern digital method 2 Usage patterns 3 Notable records 4 References

[edit] Methods of creation

[edit] Classic analogue method

The oldest, most "natural" technique can be done with minimal electronic processing. However it can be generally used in studio recording environment only: it's hard to reproduce such effect when playing live. The steps for processing are as following:

1. At least 2 microphones are set up: close mic(s) (usually dynamic, to pick up the hit itself) and ambience mic(s) (usually condenser, to pick up ambient sound). Usually, there are 2 ambience mics in stereo pair to capture overhead stereo image.
2. The whole drumset and all mics are placed in a very live room (i.e., one with huge amounts of reverberation and particularly early reflections from its walls, ceiling and floor).
3. High-gain compression is applied to ambience mic(s) to capture rich reverb sound.
4. Ambience mic(s) are fed through a noise gate with separate external key input.
5. Close mic(s) are used as an external key for the noise gate.
6. Hold time of noise gate is set to half a second or so (this would be a real duration of hit sound), followed by a fast release time. This causes the gate to allow only the first half second of reverb to pass though after each drum hit, before closing again.
7. Optionally, close mic sound can be mixed in final result in some proportion to make a hit sound more "solid".

This results in a very live sounding drum that is rapidly cut off with none of the overpowering secondary reflections associated with reverb.

[edit] Modern digital method

When using digital reverb unit, it is possible to replicate classic scheme in much simpler steps:

1. Only 1 microphone is set up: close mic. No real room for ambience is needed, all reverberation is done at effects unit processor.
2. Close mic sound is fed to reverberation unit, then to compressor, then to noise gate signal input.
3. Same sound of close mic is fed to noise gate key input.
4. Optionally, just as in above method, original ("dry") sound can be mixed in some proportion to gated ouptut ("wet") sound.

Most modern digital reverb units contain several "Gated reverb" presets, thus removing the need for a separate noise gate, compessor and commutation, effectively making it possible to get gated reverb sound from just single normal close mic or drum trigger. Also note that such setup does not require "live room" with huge reverberation ambience for the drumset and can be reproduced without major difficulties at live gigs.

[edit] Usage patterns

Most common usage of gated reverb is empowering drum sounds, particularly snare drum and bass drum. The technique became so popular and "gated reverb" sound is so recognizable, that most sampler (musical instrument)s include some sort of "gated drums". These sounds are usually referred to as "gated snare" and "gated kick", thus omitting the "reverb" word from original naming.

While General MIDI hasn't specified particular sound characteristics for its drum kits, however, it already included 2 distinct snare sounds, sometimes referred to as acoustic snare (38) and electric snare (40), later usually sounding as "gated snare". Later MIDI standards, such as GS and XG include drum kits that specify gated drum sounds: most usually, that is patch #16 (GS #17, with shifted numbering) named "Power drumkit", "Rock drumkit" or patch #24 (GS #25) named "Electronic drumkit". Thus, for example, for snare drum, distinct sounds may be referred to as power snare or rock snare.

[edit] Notable records

A good example is the Phil Collins single In The Air Tonight at the point when the real drums come in. However pretty much any Phil Collins drum track recorded after "Intruder" from Peter Gabriel's third solo record (aka "Melt") including all of his solo work uses the technique.

Gated reverb was also in vogue through most of the 1980's and can be heard on a lot of recordings from that era.

[edit] References

• White, Paul (June 1996). "Canyons of The Mind: Psycoacoustics of Reverb". Sound On Sound.
• Reverb article on Harmony Central includes information on gated reverb.