MAKING DUB WITH COMPUTERS CHAPTER
30: USING EQ WITH SPACE ECHO AND REVERB
STUDIO DUBROOM TUTORIAL
WWW, September 16 2014 - It's often said how in Dub, the mixing board turns into an instrument at the hand of the engineer. Like a keyboard player touches the keys, the guitar player the strings. True, true, true. Pressing the mute buttons, using the sliders, and not just on the mixing board. The effect devices are not safe from the hands of the Dub engineer.
During my live performances when I dub a band live, it happens that I have to use the PA of the hall. As I count the drops of sweat on the head of the engineer as I'm telling him how I am going to use his mixing board, I hear him think: "there goes my setting". When I continue to tell him how I want the delay and other effects routed back to the mixing board via a channel input, I see him watch the aux-out buttons while in his head he hears the feedback. Yes, the mixing board becomes an instrument.
Where an engineer usually fine-tunes his mix and explodes whenever someone wants to change anything, a Dub engineer continually changes these settings. No, just by (un)muting channels and not just by knowing where to drop what kind of echo and how to transform the echo feed with EQ like we did in the previous chapters. Here's another general guideline: whatever you can change with EQ, change it!
In this next video, it's not just the simple Dub delay with it's EQ and the reverb. Remember, we've added a Space Echo at Aux 3. That's what we're going to use now and we are going to use the EQ settings of the reverb as well. Before you press play, though, just a little bit more info about the "Space Echo".
There are many soft- and hardware devices similar to the Space Echo. Even free VST effects that are perfect to use, but that's for another place. In a way, you can look at the Space echo as a combination of Delay, Reverb and EQ. Where I use a separate EQ with my Dub delay and layer it with reverb from the mixing board, the Space echo does all that in one device.
Watch as the "decay" (length) buttons and the EQ on the blue devices change. The blue device at top is the Reverb at aux 2, the blue device below the mixing board is the Space Echo. Read the extra information as you watch just how EQ and other things are used:
