A Reverb Trick That the Pros Use 

When I recorded with Lord's Mind Erasure back in '95 at Omega in Rockville, MD, we got our reverb from their lobby courtesy of two full range concert speakers with two ribbon mics flown half way between floors returned to the console. It was outstanding. Natural and unique. Cheers, RB!

Wow, this is really making reverb and distant echos with natural and simple tactics my man! Really interesting and awesome take on creating ambience!

I'm a sucker for anything with Chris Cornell's isolated vocals!

When I first started out with 16 track Teac/Tascan 1" tape machine (85-16 w orange rails) and my Teac M15 16 channel mixing board, I couldn't afford much in outboard gear, I used a bedroom to get the job done. For recording I used moving blankets, carpeting and some sleeping bags to create a dead room but for mixing I cleaned the room out, put two Yamaha NS20 in the room with two AKG 451 mike and I had a fantastic reverb. I would get asked what the patch was on the Yamaha SPX90 that I was using and I told them Stereo Echo or Reverb Plate 4 and they'd try it and it didn't quite work out for them. The old old days of working by minimums, uncloud by technology and having to really think creatively to figure out the puzzle, education by fire. Fun days indeed! Thank Rick you are quite awesome and also very knowledgeable! Your You Tube channel would have be great for me when I first started to hit the record button and learn the process. My big teachers is & was George Martin, Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott, Alan Parsons and the Beatles. I am grateful to have learned the hard way. I am still very passionate about songwriting, playing, the process and art of recording!

Rick really knows his room sounds! You’ve got to hear the air moving. The sound has to exist in an environment. Close mics only get you so far. Don’t sleep in this folks. He turned my head around about this. He will for you, too! 👍

I remember when I was a kid I use to accompany my dad to a lot of his recording sessions, he use to work a lot with Tom Petty’s and the Heartbreakers producer Noah Shark and I remember in one occasion they did something similar in the parking lot of the studio after working hours (because it got super loud) and it would be an intencional caos with all the Reverb, so what they did with that was just make a parallel mix with the dry guitar track. I like these kind of applications, I think they give the overall song it’s own kind of character and sound. Cool video !

I love Burden in my Hand, and Fell on Black Days. I'm so glad this song was used for this video. Brings tears to my eyes!! "Would you cry for me?"

If you want a stereo version of this you can do it with two mics set in an XY pattern. I used to do that by setting up a speaker in one corner of a room facing into the room, and the XY mics pointed at the opposite corner of the room so the direct sound of the speaker was in the dead(er) spots of the mics (behind the mics), and the mics were getting mostly reflections off the walls. The other thing to add here is that it can help to EQ the send going to the speaker to roll off low and high end aka the Abbey Road technique.

Your dog is cool as heck

Why have I never even thought of that before. That's way cooler and more interesting than using a plugin

Aw it's good to see your pup!

Rick: Showing How Music is both science and math. Love it. Also, perfect track selection.

Love that you keep using those Burden In My Hand tracks. Makes me think you have something special planned with them...

What an INTERESTING video! You make what might seem complex really easy to understand. Thanks again for all you share with us.

The “bleeding guitars” stopped me in my tracks...no pun intended... There is some hidden awesomeness in there I never knew was there until now. My reaction to them is visceral!! Thanks, Rick!

SHEAR GENIUS!!!!!!!! One of my favorite SG tracks!!! Thank you!

i just did this with 2 mics (stereo),, it's awesome.. Thanks Rick

Rick, you are killing it, especially since that poll. I've never noticed such a concerted shift before. Amazing. Or is it just me?

I love the dog's face. Like "where's it going?" "Can I help?"

@Rick Beato, one of your best videos ever! Cool concept and well-executed with an amazing song to use as an example! I love how most of the tracks are labeled 'kick' or 'guitar', but the vocals are properly labeled 'Chris Cornell.' Can't believe it's already been 2 years since we lost him. Keep the Soundgarden videos coming, Rick!

Rick I come home from work grab my guitar and just watch and learn thank you!!!!

Hearing Chris's voice on this song makes me want to cry every time.....

I love this type of content, Rick! If you get the inclination, I wouldn't mind you going over some sound artifact examples so we can keep an ear out for the bad stuff and how to mitigate them when they inevitably pop up. Or, who knows, maybe someone could find a way to use them for a unique tone in a positive way! Love your channel, thanks for sharing the knowledge!

When Rush was recording Moving Pictures at Le Studio in Quebec, they took a couple of guitar amplifiers outside and recorded the sound bouncing/echoing off the mountains in the distance as part of Alex Lifeson's "Limelight" solo. So this natural technique works outside, too, if you've got the right topography. And cool neighbors.

Thanks for using “Burden” for the example tracks, Rick! I used to do a similar trick back in the day with an old Sound Forge reverb plug-in that allowed you to record “impulse files” at any location. It saved the reverb info so you could take, for example, that awesome public or parking garage restroom reverb home with you & use it whenever you wanted afterward. 😎

Fascinating video. I don't record music, so I'm never going to do this. But it's so cool to see how it works, and also be able to connect that to the classic Beatles music. I really learned a lot. Such great content.

Great video! would love to see more recording techniques and things like this!

One of my favourite sg tunes that “I left her in the sand’ line gives me tingles every time

I sooo get this. In the 70's, sometimes I used to clear all the stuff out of my bedroom (wood floors, wood wall panelling, plaster ceiling) as a teen so I could get reverb on my Gibson J-45.

The fact that Rick had Burden in My Hand pulled up on his computer really makes me hope that there’s another video with it soon, love me some Soundgarden

My dad was a minister so I visited a lot of churches when I was a kid. I love the sound of old churches with smaller sanctuaries.

WOW, I didn't know about the Abbey Road echo chamber.

You can "increase" your room's reverb time by playing the dry sound faster (in varispeed), record it, and then slowing the result back down by the same amount. The great Walter Murch mentions using these kinds of tricks with tape back in the early days of sound postproduction for film.

When u played the “reverb room” guitars, it gave me goosebumps!! Epic song, and one of my all-time favorites!! Excellent demonstration!

This is awesome. It would be cool to see how other effects were accomplished in the past too. I love it!

i been doing heaps of reverb IRs myself lately and this was a treat of a video to come across... good stuff Beato

That reminds me of the video you made about the unusual sound in "When The levee breaks". Great video, keep rockin' hard Rick!

I love this in a stereo Blumlein configuration. It really captures the 3d sense of space.

Great episode, Rick! Love these practical kinds of videos. Whenever I find one I always favorite it. I would love to see you do something like this on getting great guitar tracks from live amps with mics. I always enjoy seeing other people's techniques. Also, loved hearing CC.

Sounds so rich and vibrant that acoustic guitar 👌

Hey Rick: I think a series of short videos on 'old-school' recording hacks would be amazing. Stuff just like this video. I'll "echo" the comments of another commenter: "Killer video in under 7 minutes".

Andy Johns would be proud RIP CC

What I have lost in Anthony Bourdain, I have found in Rick Beato

Thanks Rick for this old school practical.

Using physical spaces seems to always be much more interesting than dialing in some setting

Did it with missed rooms for drums I've got from the client - worked like a charm!

Awesome vid! And thanks for using Soundgarden...Matt F'n Cameron! ...and god bless Chris

Just thinking how cool it would be to see a video series of you producing a band!

My first studio work was in a studio that had a huge room for reverb. It was wonderful and the joy in mic and speaker placement made it rewarding to use too. Great video!

I enjoy every vid you post, but the ones with Chris Cornell are deffo my fave! 👌

I wish people would use real reverb more often. Plugins are great, don't get me wrong, but there's something special about real reverb. One of my favorite sounding songs is "Sweet Virginia" by the Rolling Stones. I love the live, in the room type of sound it has, especially on the sax, vocals and drums. When I hear that song, it makes me think that's what music should sound like: real people playing music in a real room together having a great time.

This kind of stuff puts the fun back into recording.

Commenting even before the video gets going; this is gonna be awesome. Love recording content. Thanks Rick!

love this! we've been talking about doing field recordings in big spaces, but starting closer to home would be good practice. thanks for the inspiration!

whoa! what a room sample for convolution reverb this would make... bathrooms and staircases aside Sharp hands-on video, one of your better ones in the last 18 months

super cool. i like the idea of getting a unique reverb sound by doin stuff old school like this. what fun! it really sounds great too. great vid!

Man your content is getting better and better

Brilliant! Rick you never cease to amaze. Thanks for sharing your joy.

That natural reverb sounds so good. Don't feel so weird about recording in my bathroom now! Thanks Rick, great video as always.

These are my favorite videos! The 'how to studio-ize your house' series!

Love that little red Focusrite!

at a hospital that has a cover outside reception for rain..it is corrugated in a weird tier and as you step forward each corrugation adds a "flutter" as you call it it adds a noticeable echo to the reverb from the walls of the hospital buildings..it's amazing you can move froward or backwards by ONE FOOT and the reflections change and oscillate...I noticed it visiting my Dad...it is astonishing you can walk up and down clap your hands and hear the changes in reflections.

This is great!!! Really appreciate your diligence on this channel.

Rick, it's worth watching this video just to see the smile on your face.

Always wanted to do something like that but never took some time to set up the whole thing thinking it might be bad idea. Thanks for proving me wrong Rick!

I visited Abbey Road back in 1978 and went into the echo chamber on the roof. They were doing a late-night mix a few weeks before the visit and were wondering what the rumble was. They had left the door open and blasted the quiet neighbourhood with the latest hit!

Did this in a 100 year old school hallway once, equally great results! Plugin reverbs are easier but this is more fun!

Great, I might try this to give my electronic music some more texture! Thanks Rick!

Wish you could play a full track reverb version, sounded so thick!

Great video. So simple yet very effective.

One of your most killer videos and under 7.00 minutes! That's some achievement. Viva your brain 😉

Wow, thanks Rick - really shows what's possible with old school technique, ⚓️

An additional technique I heard about on Lij's podcast that I haven't tried yet: to make a smaller room sound bigger, send a 2x speed playback to the room speaker, and record the room reverb at double your normal bitrate. Slow the result down by half and this effectively doubles the size of the room... Cumbersome technique, but supposedly very effective.

Rick you have some of the most if no The Most unique ideas on youtube Love It!

Great video! This is such an excellent way to understand reverb. And then Soundgarden for extra love. You truly rock, Rick!

I used to live in a big, 100 year old house with some room mates and we built a recording studio in the basement. The house was enormous, and the basement was too. It was divided in two parts; one part half finished (the studio part) and one part that literally looked like a medieval dungeon, with old stone walls and just a plywood floor. The ceiling was only 7 ft high. We used that as a reverb chamber to great effect. And, if you believe the rumors, a grow room. Miss that house.

Fun stuff as always! If you ever make a follow-up video on this, it would really be interesting to hear the effect of delaying your reverb chamber mic to simulate an even larger space than what you have available.

As always, great content. I watch your channel regularly and have learned a lot. Thanks Ricky for sharing your amazing wisdom with the world and for free.

I would enjoy seeing more videos like this. How to make great tone the old analog ways!

This may be my favorite video you have ever done...save the darkest scale ever! lol Seriously this was awesome.

When i record, i put a large diaphragm condensor out in my living room because its a big open floor plan with tile floors and my drum sound is HUGE.

Brilliant reverb demo. Also: Burden in my hand is one of the all time great rock tracks. Drives like crazy.

Burden in my hand is a great one not an overplayed one good choice🤟👍👍

One of my fav Cornell tunes

Hmmm! I've done this many times, but I would never have had the setup like this. For me, the point of an 'aux' signal like this is to have as little direct sound as possible. That means putting the speaker not near any midline of the room and aiming it where most direct speaker sound is at a 'grazing' angle to the walls. Next is mic placement - to get reverberant sound you have to place the mic beyond Cd (critical distance - where reverberant sound > direct sound... well, the best way to do that is place the mic as far away from the direct sound as possible, so where is that? Easy. Back of a cardioid picks up nothing, so place the mix directly in front of the speaker and pointing in the SAME direction as the speaker. Sounds counter-intuitive I know, but hey, that's mic placement for you! Using this method gets you as close to a truly reverberant sound as possible within the space using only a single mic. Excellent video as usual though Rick, and hopefully it will serve as inspiration for others to try different spaces.

That room sounds huge. Real analog reverb.

Hi Rick. First off - this is a cool cool video. Thank you. And JUST IN CASE you happen to read this comment: You asked what kind of videos people want more of? A few things came to me: 1. Pro Tools signal flow best practices for mixing and printing stems. Track levels dB with faders at unity. Mistakes to avoid. Stuff that is a must. I don't know, etc. 2. Books that you really find helpful/ are exceptional (I'm thinking sound engineering, not music performance, but whatever) 3. Have you ever read "Mixing with your mind" by Michael Stavrou? He really distills decades of experience into minimal words. And then share it freely in hopes of, helping things to happen and to be awesome, I guess. Kinda like you do. 4. And basically any other engineering related stuff. Like the echo chamber. Thanks so much. PS Failure video was super duper rad.

Love these kinds of videos Rick!

Great. When I first got my 4-track cassette I used the bathroom at the top of stairwell to record vocals. I remember my old man always liked the local episcopal church to record live music - said it was acoustically designed for the natural vocal projection of both the pastor and the balcony-choir. Next can you talk about the big metal plates that became the standard of electro-mechanical reverb in studios?

Please keep the suggestions coming, Rick. This is essentially the same as reamping, which I've done with soft synths through a Marshall. Looking forward to trying this as well. Thanks for the great content as always and have a good one.

That outro was neelyesque :) nice video, very cool

Seriously Rick, you've been pumping out some badass videos lately!!!! Everyday is like Christmas haha :) Thanks man!!!!!!

Motown studios (aka Hitsville USA) is a must see if you are in Detroit. They used their attic as a reverb chamber!

Very interesting video. I love the way you explain acoustic concepts in simple and easy to understand terms. I purchased your book. Keep on the good work!

That was very cool! Amazing VERB!!!

Awesome sound. That's an interesting fact about the crown molding

Almost a million subs! Crazy! I remember back when you had around 25k! Great content Rick!

Drainage pipes are awesome too. Just bring a blanket to stuff at the end to reduce the trailing. The further away the blanket the longer the reverb tail.

You have to put all that stuff back in the room before the wife gets home from work! LOL🤣 Great video Rick!

That room really worked out great 👍🏻