Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

[Andrew Lamprecht]

My friend's house has a good sized room with tall wood ceilings and hardwood floors. It sounds so nice when you are playing in there. I'm not doing any major recording anytime soon but just out of curiosity, would it be a bad idea to record in a room like that, and why? I've always read that you should get as dry a signal as possible. Is that just a control issue? So it is easier to add and take away what you need?

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Getting a dry signal is for applying effects after initial recording. If you like what you hear, record it and you don't need to mess around with post production. There's plenty of bands who record room noise and stuff, and personally I like it more. If it sounds good, put a couple nice mics on it and see what you get. Wouldn't hurt to record with a close mic and another one to get your room sounds tbh


off u see did MRSAge, I m on tapa talk and auto correct is hating on me

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Flip up a few mic's around the room, and one or two closer to the amp....record a few bits and get a feel for the sound.
Always good fun to fool around!

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

No right or wrong here. Follow your heart.

 

[mamm]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

What's the sonic landscape you're trying to "paint"? Does the room sound agrees with it or fight it? A room that sounds great for a slow blues probably won't work for death metal, and vice versa.

Recording only the room is great IF the room sound agrees with the song and doesn't clash with other instruments in the mix. Trouble is, you'll only discover if the room sound works AFTER the performance (while mixing).

So, if you did record only the room sound and it doesn't sit well in the mix, you painted yourself in a corner.

So, do what others already said: record the room sound, but also stick a 57 in front of the speaker. Always. You never know!

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

My den at home (unused bedroom) is large-ish ...about 20" by 30" with a 10" high ceiling (no carpet) & I've noticed with clean stuff especially ...my recordings don't really need reverb, it all sounds pretty deep/sweet/rich anyway ..the dirty stuff gets pretty "wet" sounding as well but often a bit boomy on recordings.

Also, I don't have an extension cord at the moment & there's no extra electric socket near enough my amp for me to use pedals (unless they have batteries, which my delay/verb pedals eat up almost instantly) so I just don't use that stuff much..and it sounds fine.

When I'm doing (or watching) a youtube demo, I prefer it when there's no backing track/bass/multi-tracking/FX etc..because I think it's a more accurate way to present the actual sound of the amp/pedal demo'd in the vid. All that stuff just makes everything sound the same.

 

[El Dunco]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Hell no! There are no rules for recording and if there are any fundamentally it's that your job is to capture sounds. If that room is part of the desirable sound to be captured, capture it!

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

I would close mike the guitar amp on one track and have a room mic record the room ambience on a separate track so you can decide how much of the room you want later during mix. To place the room mic, walk around the room while someone is playing and find the spot where it sounds best, then put the mic where your ears are. (That last suggestion is from John Paul Jones and is how Led Zeppelin used to record their albums.)

 

[NecroPolo]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

That's heavily depending on the actual record you are making. Reverb can be your friend or foe and in some cases, both. Natural reverb can make wonders on drums and sounds that have percussive nature (not a rule, you can do it dry and add your revs later). That's why some studios have stone rooms around.

 

[FretFire]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

I like to record guitars with one mic in my spot of choice up close to the grill cloth, and another (or more!) out in the room. Then you can blend the two to taste in you DAW as needed.

There is no "right" way to record.

 

[zenmindbeginner]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Excess reflections can be problematic... it is the reverberation of bass frequencies that are the problem.

If you have a "live" space you really like: make sure your amp or sound source is in the middle of the room, use blankets and or pillows to break up and absorb the reflections in the corners...

... and do some recording tests to get the right amount of room vs direct sound source. Experiment with mic techniques too.

The short answer is that the room I use to record my amps in has high ceilings and hardwood floors.

I use a close mic and a coincident sort of room microphone (2 feet behind, 2 feet above and one foot to the left) of the close mic.

The amps aren't in the middle of the room but are a foot and a half from the wall to get a little more low end (centered in the room though).

Live spaces are the best to record guitar tracks IMO... of course I don't use ultra high gain and brootal metal tonez where a sort of "dead" space would be more appropriate.

It's all about the ceilings and floors though... the higher the ceilings the better, although anything more than two stories could introduce more problems than it will solve. Hardwood floors all the way... no carpets unless recording drums or bass.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Ask Jimmy Page when he chose a particularly echo-ey mansion's stairwell to apply the unique (and now legendary) natural reverb on Bonzo's drums in "When The Levee Breaks".

No choosing involved.

Famously, the WTLB drum sound was arrived at entirely by happy accident. A roadie, delivering the kit from storage, deposited it in the entrance hallway. Somebody set the kit up for a quick knockabout. Luckily, the qualities of the natural reverb up the stairway were noticed before the kit was relocated in the recording area.

 

[zenmindbeginner]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

No choosing involved.

Famously, the WTLB drum sound was arrived at entirely by happy accident. A roadie, delivering the kit from storage, deposited it in the entrance hallway. Somebody set the kit up for a quick knockabout. Luckily, the qualities of the natural reverb up the stairway were noticed before the kit was relocated in the recording area.

Way cool story!

 

[ginormous]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

I wouldn't say "bad idea", I'd think of it as a challenge. How did the old-school guys get great sounds in rooms that were big and open?


Capt. Obvious tells me,
"balance the reverb with some absorptive elements (pillows/curtains/etc), that would still allow for some 'airiness', but keep the room echo manageable.
Mic choice is essential in this kind of situation."

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

Placement of the instrument or amplifier in the room should also be considered. It's not just the reflective surfaces but the relationship the instrument has w/these surfaces as well as overall room boundaries, regardless of reflectivity.

 

[SlyFoxx]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

It's always (well almost) better to get the right sound right out of the gate. The trick is knowing what that sound is. The fact that it's more than a trick is the hard part.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...what you record is 1000 times more important than how you record it. A crummy recording of a brilliant song is infinitely better than a brilliant recording of a crummy song.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

When working with natural room reverberation, it is inevitable that the sounds of all instruments and voices will feature in the reflected sound. Since there is no way to selectively remove any mistakes, it becomes necessary to use musicians and/or singers who can play their parts correctly for the entire duration of the piece.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

There's nothing wrong with using natural reverb as long as you can record and mix it properly. Consistency and reproducibility are the real advantages of artificial reverb.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

There's nothing wrong with using natural reverb as long as you can record and mix it properly. Consistency and reproducibility are the real advantages of artificial reverb.

And comb filtering and phase anomalies are the real disadvantages. Even if you take utmost care, you should have a good phase alignment plugin at the ready.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Is it bad to record with natural reverb?

As everyone has listed out above, it can be done well and really make a recording shine. That said, I prefer to close mic and add reverb after the fact. Mixing verby kick drum and bass parts are surprisingly difficult. You can always add a little reverb to a dry recording, but there's nothing you can do about too much 'verb afterwards.