Reverb on vocals

I just finished up this song that I started years ago. I did a quick recording with my daughter and now I want to finish up by adding other instruments. Every time I add reverb it seems messy. I want to get a little of that echo sound without too much of the tone of the reverb. I've tried using the pre-delay, and I've even tried using a delay plugin before the reverb. Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

You can try cutting some bass from the reverb and also check if there is to much low end on the guitars?

instead of reverb rather a short room or ambient (<1s) and a short delay. Use 2-3 different sends and make a nice balance with the return faders. Use longer reverbs/decay times for special words/notes where you have space in the song

Not sure how you apply reverb on a track.

 

Do you apply them on each individual track as a plugin or do you use the 'Send" routing?

 

With send routing, you can dial in the amount/percentage of your original sound going into a dedicated reverb bus.

 

On the reverb bus, you can use the Logic Space Designer, which is a really good Logic's own reverb plugin.

 

I'm assuming by 'messy' you're actually refer it to being sounding muddy and lacks clarity?

 

If that is the case, you need to EQ the signal going into the reverb with High and Low pass filter.

 

I'd place an EQ plugin BEFORE the Space Designer and do a High pass filter at 600Hz and Low pass filter at 11khz.

 

This technique of EQing BEFORE a reverb plugin is referred to as the Abbey Reverb Technique as it was said that it was first developed by the engineers in Abbey Road studio.

 

Point is, if reverbs causes a muddy/messy sound, or lacks clarity:

 

1. You would want to EQ the signal coming into the reverb plugin, cut the high and low, leave only the mid.
   
2. Control the amount of reverb applied to a track. Use Send routing instead of placing reverb plugin on each individual track.