中文
From medieval choral music to Nirvana, and from the bathroom to outer space: the unlikely story of sound bouncing off surfaces
Reverb
Noun: “the persistence of sound after the sound is produced”Bold musical innovation can emerge from the strangest of places. Like the bathroom.
Specifically, the bathroom of a Chicago studio founded by Bill Putnam – the so-called father of modern recording – which would later open its doors to the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Muddy Waters among others. It’s here that the story of reverb, at least within music recording, begins.
In 1947, Putnam created an echo chamber by placing a microphone and loudspeaker in the studio bathroom to record the American harmonica group The Harmonicats. The resulting track, a cover of Peg o’ My Heart, added a unique, wobbly and spectral tone to the instrument. It was the first instance of artificial reverb ever captured on a recording.
The Harmonicats, whose 1947 cover of Peg o’ My Heart featured the first artificial reverb ever recorded
Incredibly, 40 years after Peg o’ My Heart was recorded, mic-ing up a bathroom was still a go-to technique for producers. When recording Pixies’ Where is My Mind? from their 1987 album Surfer Rosa, Steve Albini had a flash of inspiration. “We used a big communal locker wash room that was still there from the building’s previous days as a manufacturing plant,” Albini remembers. “That became a reverb chamber. We set the guitar amps up and Kim Deal did her ghostly ‘hoo-hoo’ backing vocals in there. Her voice has a really lovely sustain to it and I exaggerated that using a long electronic reverb.”
From extending sound to creating something new and memorable
Why is reverb such a significant device? For you and I, reverb is a familiar sound – the chatter in a school canteen, the echo in the tunnel of a football pitch. Reverb defines how a sound sits in the space it exists in; it is the persistence of sound reflecting off surrounding surfaces sometimes long after it’s produced. When applied as a technique in recording music, it can create a sense of space for us to get lost in; a moment to pause, reflect – before becoming engulfed once again.
Reverb might simply prolong and extend a musical moment, or create something altogether unique, as Albini found. Such was the haunting effect of Deal’s vocals, Where Is My Mind? became the accompanying track for one of modern cinema’s most unforgettable final scenes, in David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club. Later, the song was used by NASA to wake up the team working on the Mars rover, Spirit, to mark the success of its software transplant – an effect that literally travelled from a studio bathroom into outer space.
A couple of decades earlier, genres such as dub reggae had reverb embedded into its core sonic foundations. The influence of reverb-heavy dub production stretched far in the ensuing years, helping shape post-punk, hip-hop, trip-hop, ambient and also the mainstream pop aesthetic of the 1980s. And what would the sound of the 1980s be without gated reverb? A production technique that The Police’s producer Hugh Padgham, along with Steve Lillywhite, stumbled upon by accident when working with Phil Collins, which combines strong reverb and a noise gate (a type of audio processor used to control excess noise in an audio signal). The result – a crisp, dynamic drum sound – most notably featured on Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’ – became a blueprint for the production of pop music.
Pixies’ bassist and co-vocalist Kim Deal, right, recorded her vocals for Where Is My Mind with reverb from the studio’s washroom, creating an unforgettable effect
Due to the huge space and acoustic depth of a cathedral, the reverberation time is up to six times longer than a traditional space: a sound is still audible several seconds after it’s produced.
An effect centuries in the making
Long before reverb made its way into modern music recording, its presence in churches and cathedrals was the cornerstone for choral music. Due to the huge space and acoustic depth of a cathedral, the reverberation time is up to six times longer than a traditional space: a sound is still audible several seconds after it’s produced. The Gregorian chant was developed in response to this, utilising the huge reverberation to time work out which notes aligned melodically, leading to layered, modal structures that created the distinct sound of medieval choral music.
The natural sounds of a building are as much a part of the architectural experience as exploring the physical structure itself. The acoustics of the Notre-Dame in Paris were considered to be such a huge part of its cultural heritage that – pre-2019 fire – a group of French acousticians made detailed measurements of its soundscape by setting up a collection of omnidirectional 3D microphones, along with a dummy head. They also recorded a concert there, which resulted in the auralisation of the Notre-Dame, along with a 3D virtual space to explore, allowing listeners – through their stereo system – to fully experience what the concert would have sounded like while wandering through different parts of the church.
So whether you want to feel every reverberation of Phil Collins’ drums, the crunch, rattle and distortion of Nirvana, wander around the Notre-Dame, experience the euphoric surge of gospel, or the slick sounds of contemporary pop; in order to hear and feel those moments, you’ll need a speaker system that can bring every little detail bursting to life.
Cathedrals such as Notre-Dame create their own unique reverb patterns, influencing the development of musical styles such as gospel
Daniel Dylan Wray is a freelance music and culture writer based in Sheffield.
He writes for publications such as The Guardian, VICE, Pitchfork, Uncut, Bandcamp, Huck, The Quietus, Loud & Quiet and several others.