A little history. Before the invention of reverb tanks you only had a few options. Record in the kind of room that has the reverb reflections you like or use an echo chamber like the ones at Capitol Records designed by Les Paul. The ones at Capitol are 30 feet underground and concrete trapezoids which have been used on records for artists such as Frank Sinatra, Diana Krall and many others.
The concept of creating your own echo chamber is incredibly simple and will give your mixes and recordings a unique sound since no one will have your rooms. Yeah you could dial up a preset in Altiverb, but this make certain that your productions are unique from everyone else's.
Choose a space that has a natural 'reverb' sound. Good candidates for a good echo chamber are concrete basements, tiled bathrooms, stairwells, garages, or any other space you enjoy the sound of.
Note: If you want a longer decay then choose a harder surface for your echo chamber.
Next, you'll need a monitor speaker or guitar amplifier. Route the out from interface or tape machine to your speaker and connect and record enable your microphone. Place your speaker in the room. Play around with where you place your speaker and mic. You can place the amp up and pointing at the wall or further back. You can put your mic in front of the amp or behind it. Play around with location and experiment with what sound you're after.
If you place your mic further back behind your amp you'll get more 'pre-delay' and of course if you're closer up you'll have less.
Play the audio you want to have ambience in your make shift 'echo chamber'. Record the audio you play in that room. If you don't like the sound that you hear, move your mic and speaker; change the angle, use a different speaker, try a different mic, have fun outside the computer and get your hands dirty. This is supposed to be fun enjoy the process!
Layer that new 'wet' audio track with your 'clean/dry' audio track. Use your volume fader to decide how much of the 'room' you want to hear in your mix.
A few last tips...
Let's say the room you have available to you is a bit more dry sounding, but you want more ambience.
1. A few good work arounds to that are to use the spring reverb found in many guitar amps. The spring reverb is a nice natural sound and will definitely give that room some ambience.
2. If your amp doesn't have spring unit in it you could always use a reverb pedal, but if you use a digital sounding reverb it will defeat the purpose of using the echo chamber. So, use your ears and use what you feel is right.
3. If you don't have a room with good reflections, but you want more ambience you could always dial up a convolution reverb plugin on the insert of the instrument you want to affect. Remember that your actual room will give the signal even more ambience so don't go crazy with what room preset you use. After you finish recording the sound in your room you can delete the plugin.
Voila! You have a nice more natural sounding reverb and you got to get a bit of exercise while you made music.
If you don't have a convolution plugin yet look into Avid's Space, Altiverb or for cheaper options Waves IR-1.
I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. Thanks for reading.
