It was really fun at Mixing class today. The course is a fascinating mixture of technical details, anecdotes and penatrating insights into the process of turning your ideas into finished tracks. The bulk of the class was on reverberation, specifically convolution reverberation which models actual rooms and structures which provide specific reflections/echoes based on a recording made in the room.
Certainly reverb is one of the most common effects used in music production and mixing but I was surprised to learn that Rick Rubin ( one of the best producers around) doesn't use reverb on his tracks, on the other hand the Beach Boys Brian Wilson used it to great effect on many tracks. We spent an enjoyable time listening to various tracks to get a feel for the best use of reverb.
Finally in lab we set up 4 specific reverbs; a small room, a reverb for snare, a plate reverb and a large room. By using these on kick drum, snare drum, lead and synthesizer we can get a much better handle on when and how much reverb to use.
Wednesday our instructor will do a full mix of one of our projects. Really looking forward to this.
