[PD] fmbox patch for d/l, improv

[David Powers]

On 12/8/06, padawan12 <padawan12 at obiwannabe.co.uk> wrote:
> Personally I'd drop the freeverb. Lot's of people seem to put a reverb
> on their synths then get to see it's really best without
> it. Reverb is nearly always global effect in most cases, unless you're
> Phil Collins and want your drumkit to sound like each drum is in
> a different room. If the synth is washed in reverb too much I think
> you lose the focus of the sound, the sound becomes all about the
> reverb and not about the synth, so you lose control because you
> cant really hear it anymore as you twiddle the controls.

I agree about dropping the freeverb from the patch, as it's really
better to let people choose their own (or no) effects unless it's
truly integral to the synth's sound.

However, I disagree about reverb being a global effect unless you are
Phil Collins. I think this depends on the genre.

I make quite a bit of techno/house/electro/minimal, and to me reverb
is almost never a global effect. I usually use it (or a synced delay)
on one or two sounds in a mix which need to have a sort of
floating/wash feel and lay over the top. But the key to getting nice
and tight percussion, and very clean mixes that will sound right in a
a big room, is having most of your stuff totally dry with no effects
at all, except compression of some sort ... I might have 8 fx tracks,
and just one will have reverb, and a second delay. This assumes one is
making tracks that may be played on a club system at some point.
Headphone/listening music would give one more leeway. But this
technique been working for me as my stuff is sounding quite good on
those systems -- comparable to other stuff I've been playing out with
my own stuff side by side.

Note, I'm not saying put different reverb on each thing - but rather
use a single reverb, but only on one or two elements in a mix.

This being the case, you still wouldn't want the reverb built into the
synth, as it needs to be applied in terms of the mix as a whole. Just
my personal opinion.

~David