Term for 80s drum crescendos effect?

Theory
1

I am at a loss here. I am looking for the term that describes that drum crescendo thing that bands in the 80s did, often during breakdowns. Example that springs to my mind is Def Leppard Pour Some Sugar on Me. But Poison and other 80s bands used the effect a lot.

Trying to describe it: thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhUUMP. It sounds like the attack is drawn out and the crescendo’d into a kick/snare hit. Almost like there is a beat of the drum sound coming out of a gate/nowhere before it hits big on the second beat.

2

Hmmm, sounds like you’re describing reverse reverb/pre-verb, where the reverb comes in before the attack.

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Do you mean gated reverb that Phil Collins came up with (and everyone copied)?

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Here is a video on Gated Reverb that also show some of the technology used back then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxz6jShW-3E

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Yes, I think this is it.

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Kind of the opposite of that. The echo comes from nowhere and builds up to the hit

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I love the Earworm videos on VOX, they are all excellent.

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Paging Dr. @howard, Dr. Howard to the white courtesy phone, please.

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So how do you produce that reverse reverb effect live? You cant make sound before it happens?

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Memorex. And play over it with your drums.

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Sounds like the drums are just reversed to me. I’d do it in the DAW myself, not hard. You can also apply reverse reverb for a more subtle effect.

Here’s a guy doing something similar in pro tools, but all you really need is the reverse; any DAW should be able to trivially do this.

13

Ask Milli Vanilli! :rofl:

There are actually pedals that can do this. Timing might be tough though.

The way I would do this live is triggered drum samples. Those are really common for studio work (miking drums well is an art) and no reason they couldn’t be used live.

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This was literally click, drag, “reverse item as new take” in Reaper, took just seconds:

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easier to just put the reverb on an aux track, with a strong send from the drum. The main drum track can just go to a bus that is not routed to the output, like a ghost track. You will just get the reverb sound then.

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Yep, my Strymon Deco will do something like that.* Not exactly a reverse, though.
You can set it so the delayed note comes out before the initial attack note. You have to be a master of timing or high as a kite to make it work (possibly both) :slightly_smiling_face:

*For those who have not played with one, the Deco emulates two synched tape machines and the way that old school engineers would manually mess with the second tape machine to get flanging (putting your hand on the flange — rim — of the tape reel, hence the term “flanging”) to alter the speed of the second deck, which also allows for phasing, slap back, delay, chorus, and everything in between. It’s also one of the best transparent tape saturation/tape compression overdrives I’ve ever heard. The Greer Lightspeed is damn close.

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Yeah there’s Tape Delay plugins that can do this too.

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You could automate the send as well…forgot to add that part

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There’s convolver and IR plugins that will work nicely for reverse reverb (or other convolution effects) as well.

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Have you ever tried Shaperbox?

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