Reverb

Although one of the most misused effects in making beats and instrumentals, reverb can be without question, a great friend to a beat maker or producer as well!  There's something to be said about having a nice reverb flowing through your mix.  It brings out a nice ambience to your beats, and gives it a nice wider feel at the same time.  However, overdo it, and you may create a muddy mess of echoing on your mix which is not a great sound at all.  There is not much to be said about the reverb plugins in FL Studio, as some people doubt on their ability to bring out a nice sound.  So how do you go about doing that?

Bringing out reverb isn't too difficult, but can be a bit tricky depending on how you have your channels set up within FL Studio.  Best rule of thumb first of all, is to assign each instrument its own channel in the mixer.  This may be elementary, but you'd be surprised at how many people may not separate instruments to different channels.  Doing this helps separate each element in its own channel so that only that particular instrument receives the effects you use.  That said, I am going to provide a few tips on some of the settings within FL Studio that you can use as setting guidelines on different instruments to bring out a great ambient element to them.  Of course, keep in mind that this doesn't apply to every single beat, but may work for you.

Snare Drums:  Snare drums can be the most battered element in a mix when it comes to reverb.  Sometimes, you can easily hear that there is too much reverb on a snare drum, and can sometimes cause a clash of sound frequencies.  If you must use reverb in your snare, I would recommend that it be a subtle, soft type of reverb sound.  In FL Studio, you can set your reverb settings to the following in order to bring out a crisp:   

Low Cut:  400 - 500 Hz...  High Cut:  2.5 - 3.5 kHz...  Predelay:  0 ms...  Room Size:  27 size... Diffusion:  40...  Color:  Flat...  Decay:  0.1 - 0.3 sec...  High Damping:  7.0 kHz... Dry:  100%... Reverb:  15 - 20%

Strings:  Depending on the use of string sounds in your mix, and the type of track you're creating, you may either want to create a softer sound of string ambience to your mix, or a more atmospheric sound of strings in the background of your track.  Strings can vary widely in some reverb settings, so feel free to experiment.  Here are some string settings that may help your strings in the mix:

Low Cut:  1100 - 1300 Hz...  High Cut:  6.0 - 7.0 kHz...  Predelay:  80 - 100ms...  Room Size:  43 size...  Diffusion:  100...  Color:  Warm or Warmer (creates more tail on the reverb)...  Decay:  1.0 - 1.5 sec...  High Damping:  5.0 - 6.0 kHz...  Dry:  100% (turn down to 75% or 50% for more of a background feel)...  Reverb:  40 - 50%

The above settings can be tweaked a bit as well and used for other instruments such as lead synth sounds, or brass instruments that you may have in your mix as well.  For brass or synths, I would elevate the High Cut knob a bit more, as well as the High Damping.  Another tip I can suggest is coupling the reverb with a slight delay or stereo enhancer to add even more wideness to the instrument being used.  All in all, I'd say experimenting is definitely key, and helps your ear to develop more and more in terms of hearing some of the faint tails of reverb that sometimes clash a mix.  A good pair of quality stereo headphones work wonders to hear things that sometimes, even monitor speakers cannot.

Feel free to share this blog with others you feel will benefit from it.  You can Twitter, Facebook, Digg, or bookmark on Del.icio.us if you'd like.  More to come, so be sure to check back on the blog for other tips or suggestions with FL Studio.  Much respect... and if you haven't yet, join SoundsForBeats.com today and copp some free sounds from within, as well as some very low priced high quality sounds you can use on your next beats or instrumentals!


Genycis
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