Too much reverb

Are you familiar with Linda Ronstadt's "Be My Baby"?
It is overflowing with reverb. Like way too much. Her voice needs little "enforcement".
 
So the question is, is it a bad mix?
I'm not sure if it's ok, but here's a link to the song on youtube....
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o1U3xiobHQ
 
 

I would agree that is the sound they were looking to achieve - so it worked for them on that song....

Too much for my ears, couldn't listen to it for too long.
 
Original sounds great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzhbGaCwBzs

I agree there's too much reverb, but there's also hissy noise throughout that makes me wonder what the source of the YouTube audio was. I'd have to listen to Linda's original version.
 
-Susan

charlyg
So the question is, is it a bad mix?

No, the mix is fine, nothing is out of place. It's just the sound and feel she and her producer wanted to get. It's kind of icey, cold and distant, a contradiction of the original. I probably wouldn't do it like that but it's not my record. The listener experience is subjective and sensibilities change, it's the nature of the art. If I were producing Motown now, it would have a lot more bottom but that doesn't mean that the original production wasn't brilliant.

yeah the mix is great, the reverb is used for effect rather than to simulate some real space/positioning
 
it's a spector co-write, originally performed/recorded by the ronettes in 64 and also produced by phil
 
hth ;-)

Yeah, there's a lot of reverb on that song. Too much? I guess that would be subjective. More than I care for.

TomHelvey
If I were producing Motown now, it would have a lot more bottom but that doesn't mean that the original production wasn't brilliant.

Very interesting point. (Of course with James Jamerson, it would be difficult to have too much bass.)

I find that as I'm gaining chops, I am listening much more closely to the tunes I listen to for enjoyment. I now listen  for where things are in a mix,not only side to side but front to back. Coming of age in the sixties, I like the vocals to be out front and understood. Lyrics were much more important to us. They not only had to have a groove, they had to SAY something.
I did like some of the old stereo effects they used to use, like Foghat's rendition of I Just Want To Make Love To You.  My favorite rock intro......gets me ready to boogie.
On another note, I'm on The Gear Page with a TON of guitarists. It's the old PRS forum...One of their favorite expressions is "cutting Through the mix", and some of us have gone hoarse trying to explain, once you CUT THROUGH(they usually mean volume wise), it is no longer a mix. Sonic space escapes most of them.

Lennon used a ton of reverb on his vocals, but still didn't seem as overdone as this.
A children's album? My wife and I like some of those tunes during our "together" time. The old sixties love songs.....
And as far as Yoko, I heard the 2nd side to that Plastic Ono Band album where she is screaming about something or other. That was my first and last exposure to Yoko' singing ability!

Larry provided the answer. Ronstadt's version was a homage to the original Phil Specter production, which utilized Gold Star Studio's famous echo chamber. People came from all over the world to use that effect. It's real acoustical reverberation, no plates or springs.
 
Largely because of that great reverb, laying it on thick was a hallmark of Specter's productions. It set off a trend for excessive reverb that lasted several years, until the eventual inevitable backlash, when everybody started making extremely dry recordings. Like the width of neckties, reverb goes in and out of fashion over time. In 1996 it was very much out of fashion, which made the Ronstadt version all the more notable for its time.
 
Is it a bad mix? No, it's perfect. Should you try to replicate it? Probably not, but you never know; you just might kick off the next reverb resurgence.

I used to think I hated reverb... all reverb. I was into music at a very young age (like I fell in love with Twisted Sister at 6yo) and it being the 80's everything had that cold sterile ping pongy reverb. When I started actually playing guitar at 12 it was with Peavey transistor amps because they generally had the best onboard distortion in the price range I could con my parents into buying. A Peavey Express 112 was the first "real" amp I owned which had the WORST 80's style reverb EVAR! My buddies owned reverb pedal effects... again HORRIBLE! All the pop music we got blasted with up until the early 90's had that terribly thin, tinny sounding reverb gloss to it... well you get the point. I thought that's what reverb was until I started really getting into recording and messing with all the verb plugs/sims.
 
Now I certainly don't LOVE reverb as an "effect" but certainly realize how crucial it is for depth and space. I still want my instruments right up front and in your face but totally dry is completely obnoxious a hacky sounding.
 
I JUST finished testing out and learning how to use EVERY SINGLE EFFECT and component in Guitar Rig 5. Previously due to my sheer reluctance to use reverb at all once I started realizing how much I needed it I was forced to kind of load presets and Wet/Dry those because I had no idea how to dial things in. Not ideal. After going through the reverbs in GR5 I've got a much better idea of the different types of reverbs and what various controls will do. I think doing that in the context of an instrument I am so comfortable with (guitar) with virtual effects units designed for that instrument helped a lot and now I'm pretty sure I could use something like the Sonitus Reverb or Breverb to get whatever type of sound I want from scratch.
 
But what REALLY stood out to me in those GR5 reverbs was the difference between some of the more classic style reverbs like plate and spring stuff and things designed to emulate that horrific 80's verb. The one in specific from that suite is the Iceverb unit. When set to extreme settings it can do some interesting stuff but it seems to completely embody that nasty, super sterile type reverb that I've hated for so long.
 
Essentially I completely fuxxored myself by thinking THAT sound is what reverb was, and to a certain extent delay as well. Now that I'm catching up with all this I realize they're actually the tools I need to use to make things sound nice and full, realistic and live.
 
Stupid 80's. So much cool buried in so much crap. lol

lfm

Beepster
 
Stupid 80's. So much cool buried in so much crap. lol

Yes, those gated snares made me freak out.
When Lenny Kravitz came in the 90's or so, with that dry Beatles Abbey Road kind of sound - it was so liberating.

His first album was certainly brilliant, refreshing and warm. Not sure what the heck started going on after that but Cab Driver and the like sounded great in a lo fi way. Another band I think that really brought things back down to earth from a production perspective without falling into the "grunge" category were the Black Crowes. Perhaps a LITTLE too crisp and over produced but I think they nudged things back in the right direction. Certainly not the full on analog sound of Kravitz but the focus was more on nice full repro of the performances. Not squeezing the life out of them for gawd knows what reason.

Larry Jones
...so for the record, in the post-Beatle years most of what we heard on John Lennon's voice was delay, not reverb. In other words, discreet repeats of the original signal, as opposed to a wash of reflections. It was used a lot on early rock and rockabilly records, usually created by feeding some of the vocal signal into a tape recorder, then taking that recorded sound right off the playback head and adding it back to the mix. Sometimes they called it "slapback," eventually shortened to "slap." Listen to Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent. These were John's early vocal heroes. Or just shout out over the Grand Canyon for a real world example.

But early Lennon was produced by Phil Spector wasn't he - and taking, in my view, too much of his sound into Lennon's recordings.
 
It was some album not long before his death - that he sounded more modern. Don't remember producer he worked with or all by himself.