Freesound Forums

Hi, guys.

I'd like to know how the reverb of old school drum beats can be achieved. It sounds very natural and rich. Check this sample beat to know what exactly I'm talking about: http://www.mediafire.com/?x9yvjjdwox9.

I'm making beats digitally and I'm not sure whether it is achievable at all. I have tried many techniques and nothing resulted in a sound like that.

Is there no one who can help at least a bit?

Sounds abit like an old spring reverb.

Don't forget,its not just the "REVERB" but also they may have EQ'ed it and of course your listening to the final mastered loop so that has a lot to do with it.

Also the loop is not drenched in reverb so keeping it real short helps to make it sound more natural.

Check out the freeware reverb plugin Ambience but if you have Reaktor then you can't pass up their awesome REV6 reverb .

I've read that some have bought the software ,not for the synths and samplers but only just for this reverb.

Thank you, Adam, for your reply.

adamstrange
Sounds abit like an old spring reverb.

adamstrange
Don't forget,its not just the "REVERB" but also they may have EQ'ed it and of course your listening to the final mastered loop so that has a lot to do with it.

adamstrange
Also the loop is not drenched in reverb so keeping it real short helps to make it sound more natural.

adamstrange
Check out the freeware reverb plugin Ambience...

What I dislike about the Ambience, more precisely, is the metallic sound it produces.

increase the quality knob then it becomes less metallic

- bram

Bram
increase the quality knob then it becomes less metallic

Try freeverb. It's a free vst reverb. Works pretty good if you are looking for something that is free and an alternative to ambience.

Firstly i would recommend that you quit the adderall, chill out, and don't be afraid of imperfection. Secondly that beat is made from a sample that was chopped up and re sequenced/processed. Old school crate diggin (sample selection) might be more important than reverb emulation. I personally just use a pinch of whatever is handy. But when you sample somethin... especially old esoteric vinyl... realize that there was some dude (dudes) at different stages of the original production obsessing over the sound..chain smoking.. applying eq... drinking satanic coffee... running it through tube compression... laboring for days or months to pan everything perfect and stuff... and respect that.. if u want to sound ol school with the hip hop... u gotta sample... use as little reverb as you can stand... and don't limit yourself.. thats ma 2 cents...

I was ready to leave the idea to be able to create/emulate old school hip hop beats. I was trying. The beat is made by me from an old school dirty choppy sample. You know, what I want is to create a dry loop from one-shot samples (bass drums, snares and percussion, basically) and then apply a quality reverb so that it at least reminds of the real old school beats. Sometimes, I come close, sometimes, it's far. Check my beats here at Freesound, if you want.

I've come up with a solution finally. The result is not as strong and pure as the original loops, but it's good anyway.

First, you need to cut a drum, a hihat and a snare piece out of a loop. (If you're constructing a loop from one-shot samples, this is much simpler.) When you have these basic pieces, do the following with them:
1. Add a reverb to the piece. You may go for a bit stronger one here, don't keep it too slight.
2. Resample the piece to 11 kHz.
3. Paste it to a new 44 kHz wave.
4. Shift the pitch 2 octaves down, so the sample plays at the same tempo as the original, but this time sounds like 11 kHz.
5. Use a linear fade in function to the first few milliseconds, thus removing the striking sound.
6. Mix the piece to every respective piece in the original loop with slight variations (pitch, EQ, volume, panning).

It's quite laborious, but the result is quite rewarding. The trick is that the reverb itself is resampled and applied individually to drum loop pieces with variations so it sounds more naturally. Of course, the better the original reverb (step 1) the better the resampled one. I'm not sure why this works, but cutting down the frequency does the trick.

Wow that's pretty bright. Any sample of that technique? I would like to hear that.

Check this: http://www.mediafire.com/?d11g1wyz2tb

And here's another technique. To create a rich sounding reverb for bass drums and snares, do this:
1. Just record a sample of one drum hitting twice in very short time. I mean milliseconds. Sometimes, even three hits are good. This is to make the drum sound rich and powerfully. As a dry sample, it doesn't sound good at all, it's too stacked, but it's okay for now.
2. Make a reverb only from this sample.
3. Play with the pitch (preferably down) and EQ a bit.
4. Apply to respective beats in your loop.

The point is that the reverb is generated from the samples that are in your loop, but their richness and power are doubled or so. But this is done outside your original loop so the drums and snares will sound the same, but will have much richer reverb.