backwards vocal effects

[The Stranger]

Can anyone suggest a practical way to create those backward vocal effects in songs like Evenflow (Pearl Jam) or Possum Kingdom (Toadies)? Sounds like some sort of backwards reverb that comes in before the actual vocal phrase... Thanks.

[spicyitaliano]

This is a rather common topic that s covered in the FX discussion on the DUC.

Now, their are a ton of ways of doing this to achieve different sounds. But the most commmon and standard way of creating that effect is by applying reverb to that track and give it a nice reverb time, say a few seconds. Now, buss that signal to another track to record the "reverb'ed" to it. This is called 'printing the processed tracks', at least that's what I call it. Now take that waveform and perform a simple reverse on it using the DigiRack plugs that are included. There you go, a reverse vocal with a tail fading into eack word.

Pretty cool, huh?

Good Luck!
- Andy

[MadsB]

Spicyitaliano, I will make one correction if I may. If you simply reverse the reverb track as you described in your post, the end result will be that the first phrase of your vocal track will have the last phrase reverb attached to it. Resulting in wrong words fading into each vocal phrase. Here is the traditional way of doing this:

1. Reverse the vocal track first (consolidate, then reverse)
2. Send this track to the reverb of your choice (long and dense is better)
3. Record the reverb to a new track
4. Reverse both reverb and dry vocal tracks (now the reverb is backwards but in the right place)
5. nudge the reveerse reverb to suit your prefered pre-delay
6. done

Anyway, this is my recollection of how this is done from the days of tape.

Regards
Mads Bjerke

[The Stranger]

Thanks!

[spicyitaliano]

Well, tape-boy, welcome to Pro Tools. Anything is fair game!!

[The Stranger]

MadsB,

Perhaps I misunderstood you... but won't reversing the printed reverb of an already reversed track actually make the reverb play back normally?

[MadsB]

Thats correct! It is a bit of a mis-conception that the vocal is "reversed" It is in fact the envelope of the reverb trail that gives this illusion. The reverb comes before the dry vocal and fades in but the words are not backwards.
I confess to not having done this for a looong time so please correct me if I am wrong.

Mads

[spicyitaliano]

Well the way I see it, it is the reverb tail fading into the word reversed. There are a lot of combinations of what you reverb first, print onto what, and going through any processor...there are tons of options. But that it the way I've always done it, and it always sounds cool to me.

[Ed Kish]

This is a rather common topic that s covered in the FX discussion on the DUC.

Now, their are a ton of ways of doing this to achieve different sounds. But the most commmon and standard way of creating that effect is by applying reverb to that track and give it a nice reverb time, say a few seconds. Now, buss that signal to another track to record the "reverb'ed" to it. This is called 'printing the processed tracks', at least that's what I call it. Now take that waveform and perform a simple reverse on it using the DigiRack plugs that are included. There you go, a reverse vocal with a tail fading into eack word.

Pretty cool, huh?

Good Luck!
- Andy

If you do what you say, the reverb of the last word will be before the first word.

example- the reverb from "A B C D E F G" reversed will be "G F E D C B A". You would have to do each word seperately to get a result that made any sense. The way this is really done is the other way that is posted. OR Flip the tape and record the reverb of the vocal track to a new track and flip the tape back over

[spicyitaliano]

Exactly. And that's what I meant. Hey I use it all the time and they always love it. It works for me.