Mixing Techniques 2: Reverbs

Select a reverb from the Audio Effects folder in the device browser. Effect presets are stored in subfolders under each effect. Each reverb preset emulates a different type of acoustic space, be it a small room, a cathedral or a stadium. When you hear sounds in the real world, your ears can tell your brain where the sound is coming from. One of the things that helps us locate the distance of a sound source is the mixture of direct sound  to reverberated sound. Direct sound refers to the sound coming straight from the source, while reverberated sound bounces around the room against walls and other surfaces before eventually ending up in your ear. In most rooms, this all happens in a fraction of a second, so we are not generally conscious of it happening at all). For instance, if somebody is speaking very close to your ear, you are hearing much more direct sound than reverberated sound. Conversely, if somebody is speaking to you from the end of a long hall, the volume of the direct sound might be almost equal to that of the sound that is bouncing around the hallway on it’s way to your ears. In larger acoustic spaces, like cathedrals or concert halls, the reverberations, or reverb, can be used as an artistic spatial effect – for instance, to give the notes sung by a choir a longer tail that will continue to be heard after the choir has stopped singing.
Choose a nice big church or cathedral reverb and place it on the ePiano track. Play it back to hear the effect, adjusting the dry/wet control on the reverb device to control the balance between direct signal and reverberated signal.

It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to go into detail on all of the controls on the reverb effect, but the Live manual gives plenty of information – choose “Read the Live Manual” from the help menu and search “Reverb”.

See also this great article on reverb at the Sound On Sound website.