Life Without Reverb?

..and other FX. Is there? I've been drowning my sounds in FX since I started modular and I guess I went into modular because of FX. I occasionally get a comment asking to please cut down the reverb. Not so long ago I'd just think 'it's my highway so if you don't like it, go elsewhere'. But I never say it out loud. The music we love most is different for every single one of us, and mine always has FX in it. A few days ago I got another one of these comments, but it was right after I finished a session with the Serge Medusa and the VC Res EQ. No FX, all dry. And WOW, the sheer power of raw voltage just wiped me away. This video will have to wait a few more days or weeks.

I realized a few things. First, I never drown my sounds in total reverb when I make tracks. There's always an interaction between far sounds in a big space, and close/near sounds which are almost completely dry. I don''t think I shared enough examples so it would make a bit more sense to you.

But I almost never do completely dry videos. With the Serge example in the back of my mind, I may have never listened closely to my gear. It already started to dawn on me when I realized I can only make Strega sound good if I drown the thing. Then I discovered her beauty and I learned to make better patches with it.

It hasn't been easy to go completely dry and I did not succeed in this video. But I did my best and I learned a lot. I'll definitely try to find a balance in my next videos.

Have a great weekend!
R.

[ChainsawCoffee]

Our music is electronic, and there is more than one signal path for a reverb. You can put a reverb between a VCO and an FM input, or on one of both inputs to a ring modulator. Just because it's an "effect" doesn't restrict it to the end of the signal chain. What is "resonance" but selective feedback? That "resonance" happens inside the bit we call a "filter, " and a filter is basically an effect. Remember, each patch is a new instrument. We patch to create the future.

[jherekco]

Reverb is life. Sound without reverb is unnatural. I’ll never forget the sound of rock falling and ice cracking whilst standing at the Annapurna base camp, a natural amphitheatre of rock and ice, the reverb was immense…

[nickmarkham]

That Odessa is a really pretty thing indeed. ^^ . . . Looks like the sounds you enjoy Dry are both extremely Raw, and Short percussive things, or ever so slightly dissonant, shimmering, and harmonically pretty simple. Things that sound like glass or metal and are already moving on their own. Which is a pretty neat thing to take note of in itself to me.

My modular synthesizer that's being built right now has a whole bunch of Moog 921 inspired B-stock oscillators (8) and their B-stock 1630 frequency shifter. As well as a lot of ring modulators, cross faders, a spring reverb, and clouds. Each of those oscillators produces a lovely, if somewhat low level sine wave, with a PLL based sync circuit that will lock into harmonics and subharmonics. Linear frequency modulation, the moog style filter bank, warps vocoder, and rings. All of these things together can produce those shimmering moving tones. . . I haven't even put the machine together all the way, and it's got some really cool sounding possibilities. It's amazing what you can get just by exploring glassy linear FM, ring modulation, pinged rings/rings as a phaser, frequency shifting, etc. . . Even without the spring reverb, you get into this space where you're building muffled discordant drones for the background, clean liquidy modulated critters for the foreground, and using fades and filters to move them forwards and backwards. Kind of composing with space, without a sense of space (reverb) . . . .

Notice anything about my disjointed heap of modules above? Kinda sounds like the cleaner side of collide 4. :P It's that shimmering, beating, de-tune between simple, less harmonically rich tones. That's what I loved about Odessa in this video, and you can kiiiinda get somewhere similar with banks of basic oscillators, pinged filters, ring modulation, frequency shifting etc. . . Just lots of cool concepts to explore even before the reverb.

[svetlovska]

I’m with you. My journey into Dark Ambient has been five years of listening to progressively larger reverb spaces. And I love it. :)

[justmakenoise-wwyq]

At the beginning of my modular journey I thought FX was cheating, then I discovered Vallhalla on "Hans Zimmer's" desk. If he's "allowed" to do that, then I can do it too as a little noise maker :-) and now I love my "milky way"

[craigsurette]

Electronic music faces the problem that the sounds we create never inhabit their own real world acoustic space like acoustic instruments, until we amplify them with a loudspeaker. No acoustic sound is ever really dry, because the room they are played in, even if its a closet, effects the sound. Electronic "spaces" like reverb and delay devices, allow us to manipulate the usual assumptions of what a space sounds like, and tailor them and take them beyond the limits of what acoustic instruments allow. This is why i see effects as an intrinsic part of sound design, the same way water or thinner is an intrinsic part of making art by applying paint

[GeirOpdal]

First: Please do a video on Odessa. I have been wondering about it for so long. I am an FM man by heart, but additive synthesis is also very interesting. I just have too many modules I "need" before I can buy pure "try-em-out" modules.
As fo too much reverb? Well, sometimes people use way to much. I find my self using a lot less these days. But I still need "space" in my mix. Personally I feel its the end result that counts. Not what you use. When it comes to your use, I like it. Its one of the reasons I enjoy your demos. They tell the "true" story of a modul (especially vcos), since more or less _no_one_ release a track without any effect. For me the best demos is first a very short dry demo, then like yours; how will this sound in a proper mix.

[addictive_noise]

there is a whole galaxy between clouds of reverd and dry sound, and I believe most people prefer something closer to the dry side when watching your videos because they want to focus on the modules/settings you are using instead of expecting a pleasing overall mix

[Bestmannn]

I'm in the camp of people who generally don't like reverb. A little bit(if you can hear it then there's already too much of it) of mixing reverb is ok, wild/excessive reverb for deliberate sound design is also ok. Slather everything in reverb because it's gratifying? Well now you sound like every other synth tuber.

[raafmodular]

Love this video! You explain this so well!It is exactly the reason why I on regular basis try to create music with little to no effects. You do discover different paths and sounds and I started looking at some oscillators in a totally different way. Every time I create a patch there is a moment where I turn down all the effects to hear if it still sounds interesting. You also on the other hand learn the value of effects and where to put them. Varying betwen the dry wet is great (loved the Odessa patch, one day I would love to work with that oscillator). I love the dash of philosophy you always put in your videos. ❤

[isaacc]

I just got my first big boy fx pedals, the Gamechanger Audio Auto series. Reverb, Delay, and Phaser. All of them have CV ins and outs for the parameters. Looking forward to getting lost in the far space lol.

[kenschestok]

never too much reverb!! surprisingly, I think reverb (the hall of fame v1) was the last guitar pedal ever I bought over 15 years ago and realized "how did I ever live without reverb?" . ....on the other hand delay w/1 second infinite hold !!!! was the second guitar pedal I bought back in '91-92.... fast forward many years later the synths/ modular started to creep into my consciousness, but I hear you. it's never bad to push yourself to hear things raw and add to taste..it's kinda like cooking. found out my collide 4 is due to arrive around February 😢

[Oystein_sandtro_music]

Thanks for a great video! Its nice to hear the raw sound of the modules! 👍

[philaesfarewell]

A life without reverb is possible but pointless.

[kilo_llama]

In analogy to the visual arts, I see things like reverb as a blurring, smearing or softening processing. There's a wide spectrum of hard- to soft-edged marks that can be made on a sonic canvas. In my approach to music, I often like less reverb in order to make forms with harsher, textural edges. But there's no wrong way to make sound if you're getting the sounds you want.

[hobboth]

Guitar has a fret with strings which make the sound and the body to resonate and amplify the sound of strings. Synths have oscillators to make the sound and effects to enhance the sound of oscillators. I love reverb to the point when it's only fully wet blurry soundscapes. Maybe I like your channel because you like to do the same XD. But I think that oscillator "purism" is just a small niche in a vast dimensions of electronic music.

[walrtbstudios]

I’m glad you’ve got yourself a Traigh- a superb filter, and with a greyhound on it! However, serious question: how do you get your Desmodus to sound 100% reverb and 0% delay? I’ve never been able to dial that in…

[DrDeemz]

Was wondering if I was ever gonna see the Odessa in any of your videos, that thing is beast, I love it, was always curious to see what you would do with it

[chromeangel]

There are those who think there is such a thing as too much reverb. Those people are wrong.

[DaveBenhamMusic]

I really enjoyed this video. I wonder what you would come up with combining Collide 4x4 with a Benjolin, and no effects.