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I was mixing at my school the other day and I called my teacher to check out how was everything going. He saw that I had the whole kit grouped, but I was sending to a reverb unit each element separately. I was doing it that way because I thought that I had more control over the different elements going to the effect and how it was going to end up sounding. He told me that it was more coherent if I sent the whole kit, because that way the effect was acting like a room, a space. That made sense to me, but led me to think "what happens if have too much kick sounding on the reverb?"

I know there isn't a "correct" way of doing it, but What's your general approach to do this kind of things? Do you tend to see the reverb as a "space added" or more like an effect?


Also, do you usually send the other elements to the same reverb as the kit, or do you use different ones for each instrument?

It would depend entirely on the situation.

A lot of more "live" bands I'll quite often set up ambient mics way away and use that, no reverb.

If I'm using a closer sound I generally just treat the toms and the snare with a fairly small room or plate (reverb can wash out cymbals or make the kick too nondescript for my liking)

I did have excellent results once when I had to try and add some live feel to drums that had been very close miked in a dead room. I took the overheads, copied them to 2 extratra and delayed the about 20ms (to suggest an ambient mic 20 feet away) then rolled soom top end off and ran them through a brightish room patch on a unit. Voila, instant fake ambience.

For you final question, to me too many different reverbs can make a mix disjointed. I would mostly use 2 reverbs maximum on a mix if I was recording a guitar band though, of course, there are exceptions.