Reverb and Echo

mvuent

Void Dweller
as far as distinctive and beautiful uses of reverb, i'd nominate 2010s autechre. (initially held off on posting something like this cause i know some of us are sick of autechre fanboism, but eh what the hell.) there are memorable instances earlier on in their music, but in the past decade there was sort of an unmooring from the expectations of, for lack of a better way of putting it, "familiar" reverb physics. according to which it's always firmly attached to a source sound, and follows a predictable tail pattern of decay.


the passage from about 1:20 to 3:30 is a good example of reverb taking on a life of its own: increasingly flaring up and changing color independently of any discernible source. a surreal, impossible experience.


another effect that you can already sort of achieve with basic plugins, but that their 2010s style hones in on further, is getting harsh sounds to cast a sort of "choral shadow" through resonance in the wet signal. for example the first few minutes of the above, becoming more obvious if you jump to a timestamp where the reverb is alone. there's a haunted, ghost in the machine quality to this.

not trying to oversell their originality though; laurie spiegel, for example, was getting the latter effect 20 years earlier.

 
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Woebot

Well-known member
as far as distinctive and beautiful uses of reverb, i'd nominate 2010s autechre. (initially held off on posting something like this cause i know some of us are sick of autechre fanboism, but eh what the hell.) there are memorable instances earlier on in their music, but in the past decade there was sort of an unmooring from the expectations of, for lack of a better way of putting it, "familiar" reverb physics. according to which it's always firmly attached to a source sound, and follows a predictable tail pattern of decay.

enjoyed this thanks.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I think technically a delay is something that introduces a delay into a signal - so just outputting a copy of the input an amount of time behind. So echo is a delay, chorus is a delay, a comb filter is a delay, a (non-physical) reverb probably includes some delays. In fact I think that pretty much every linear effect can be modelled as a delay because *waves hands about convolutions*

Practically, if a music person ever talks about "delay" they mean a basic echo-co-co-co-co type sound - it's synonymous with (but more common than) "echo".
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
It's about context. In the context of audio gear, a delay is an echo effect. In the context of signal processing, a delay is just a thing that delays a signal. That might be used in a delay effect, or a chorus, or a flanger or a reverb or whatever. (I don't know about phasers - allpass filters still confuse me.)
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Anyway.

It's interesting how reverb and delay interact with space in the music in general. I think someone described dub, process-wise, as being about first trimming out almost all of the tune, and then filling the resulting space back in with massive echoes and reverberations. Then there's all that Arthur Russell cosmic disco stuff that has all the big obvious echoey bits, but there are also a lot of effects that just come from the positioning of the sounds in space:

This has been a bit of a lockdown anthem tbh - "I wanna see - all my friends at once! I would do - anything - to get the chance - to go bang!"
 
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william_kent

Well-known member
Anyway.

It's interesting how reverb and delay interact with space in the music in general. I think someone described dub, process-wise, as being about first trimming out almost all of the tune, and then filling the resulting space back in with massive echoes and reverberations. Then there's all that Arthur Russell cosmic disco stuff that has all the big obvious echoey bits, but there are also a lot of effects that just come from the positioning of the sounds in space:

This has been a bit of a lockdown anthem tbh - "I wanna see - all my friends at once! I would do - anything - to get the chance - to go bang!"
Must be something in the air, Soul Jazz are rereleasing their Arthur Russell compilation as a 3 LP limited edition..
 

Leo

Well-known member
"world of echo" is one of those great albums that I've probably listened to three or four times. it sits on my shelf, I look at it from time to time and think "yeah, great album, I should play that" but then rarely do. I know it's great, but never seem to be into it, weird.
 
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