Ducked reverb - Pro Tools Tutorial

- [Instructor] Every once in a while you need the reverb to stick out of the mix, but not get in the way. Here's a way to automatically control that reverb, so it only appears in the right places. So, first of all, we're going to listen to the vocal, the vocals being sent to our old friend, the deverb. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ That's a lot of reverb. Let's listen in the track. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ That works in some places and in other places, it doesn't. In other places it sounds too washed out. But, we can actually fix this so the reverb only comes up in the spaces where the vocal stops. And, this is called ducking. Ducking basically means we're going to duck or decrease the reverb as long as the vocal is singing and then, when the vocal stops, the ducking will stop and the reverb will go back to it's original level. And, the way we do that is we're going to add a compressor. We're going to add it after the reverb. So, I'm going to go in and get the native compressor. I'm not going to make any changes yet, but there are two things we have to do in order to make this work. The first thing is we have to select the key input and this is the whole secret. There's what they call a sidechain on a compressor or a gate that allows it to trigger from another source. So, let's pick a buss. I'm just going to pick 21 right here. And then, we have to actually insert it. So, what we'll do is we'll click on this and now, suddenly, we can key it from someplace else in the mix. Now, take our vocal and we'll add buss 21. Watch what happens. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Now you can see what happened there. As long as the vocal was singing, there was a lot of compression happening which docked the reverb sound. And then, when the vocal disappeared, the compression disappeared as well and the reverb came up. Listen again. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Listen to the track now. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Actually, we can control how quickly our reverb comes back to normal and that's from the release time here. And, we could either make it fairly instantaneous on the vocal stops or we can gradually bring it in. So, if we increase our release time. Now, have a listen. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Now, that was actually too long because it took too long for the reverb to come back to it's normal level. So, we'll bring that back a bunch here. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ That worked pretty good. Let's listen in the track. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Again, it sounded better at it's default position which is 80 milliseconds. Now, have a listen. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ That's nice. Now, if we change the position of the compressor in the signal chain to before the reverb, this is what it sounds like. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ It changes it in that the reverb now responds differently and sometimes it's smoother and sometimes it isn't. Usually, you don't want it here because it won't respond the same way and it effects the sound of the reverb where if you put it after the verb, put the compressor after the verb, it doesn't effect the sound of the reverb. All it effects is the volume. So, listen to the track here. ♪ No matter where I am ♪ ♪ I can see your face ♪ Now, we can hardly hear the tail and that's because the sound of the reverb, the sound going into the reverb has been altered. So, that's why we always want to put this in the signal chain after the reverb. In order to set up the dangerous ducked reverb trick, the first thing you need is to insert a compressor after the reverb in the signal chain. The reason it's after the reverb is that if you set it up before the reverb, it's going to change the sound of the reverb because it's going to change the signal that's going into it. The next thing, is select a buss for the key input of the compressor. The sidechain of the compressor can either look at this new key input or it can look at the regular input, but right now, we want it to look at the key input. So, you have to select a buss for that. Now, assign a send on the channel to the key buss. So, in other words, you have to send something from that channel you want effected to the input of the compressor, the sidechain input which is the key input. Finally, make sure you insert the sidechain on the compressor. There's usually an indicator that will say the sidechain is now operating or the compressor is looking at the sidechain input rather than the main input. So, you want to make sure that that's selected. Finally, the amount of ducking comes from the amount of compression that you add. So, in other words, the amount of attenuation of the effect is a result of the amount of compression that's added.