How can I create this sound effect?

May 3, 2007 12:34 PM

How do I make that backwards echoish sound?

I've never been able to figure out how to make that backwards echo-ish sound with vocals/music. I don't know what it's called, but to describe it, imagine someone saying "Yes we did". But the sound plays as if the "Y.." is echoed backwards (before, instead of after the sound), and it's smoothed out so it's just like one long sound as opposed to a repeating echo. But also, it builds somehow. So it comes out as "yyaaaaaaAAA-es we did". It's a neat little sound effect.

For a second I thought it was called a slow attack, but that doesn't appear to be it. You can hear it in Bill Hicks' Arizona Bay, I believe. At the beginning of one routine, the word "folks" is backward echoed. You can hear it in the verses of Dr. Dre's "Murder Ink" on his "2001" album.

I tried the reverse echo smoothing several different times, a few different ways and it didn't produce that effect. I'm not necessarily looking for how to do it with any specific software, though I have access to Acid, Audacity and other programs and that is welcomed. How do you make that sound?

posted by cashman to media & arts (16 comments total)

Are you talking about the effect from Poltergeist? That's called "reverse reverb" and you need a special unit (or plug-in) for it.
posted by sourwookie at 12:55 PM on May 3, 2007

Seconding reverse reverb.
posted by odinsdream at 12:55 PM on May 3, 2007

Are you thinking of the sound made by inhaling rather than exhaling when speaking the word? That has been discussed previously on AskMe.
posted by alms at 12:56 PM on May 3, 2007

This used to be a huge hassle to do with tape, but with digital it's a snap. It can be done with delay or reverb.

1. Send the vocal through the delay/reverb effect and record the effect alone on a new track. Make sure it is effect only and none of the original vocal.
2. Reverse the new effect track.
3. Position it so it ends just before the dry vocal.

You can edit the reverse effect track to contain just the words you want. Different effect settings will (obviously) also give different results.
posted by dickyvibe at 1:09 PM on May 3, 2007

Back in the day we'd play our fourtrack tape backwards (flip it over) through a reverb or delay unit to create this effect. I'm sure there's a official name for it, and I'm sure it can be done in software (but not to live music), but I'm not sure what that is.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:10 PM on May 3, 2007

you don't need a special unit or plugin for it. there are some reverbs that allow dynamic shaping which simulates this but it's impossible to do in realtime.

here's what you do, starting with a duplicate recording of your dry signal. I'm going to assume you are doing this in a linear audio editing program since you mentioned Audacity (in soundtrack pro, logic, ableton, cubase, etc. you have more flexibility and can duplicate this file/crop it more easily):

1. reverse the audio.

2. apply a reverb to the signal. Bake and process (flatten, render, whatever you'd like to call it that results in a new audio file with the reverb instead of a dry signal with a plug-in instantiated).

3. Reverse again.
posted by Señor Pantalones at 1:12 PM on May 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

What Señor Pantalones said.

Flip the audio, add reverb (the more the better, for a long tail-out which will become your lead-in), then flip it again.

Easy to do in Sound Forge, Audacity (which is free), and other audio editing software.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:17 PM on May 3, 2007

BTW, "echo" usually refers to discrete repetitions of a sound, rather than non-discrete reverb. The echo effect is better known in mixing/production circles as delay.

A reverse echo effect (as opposed to the reverse reverb effect we're talking about here) would consist of complete repetitions of the audio sample that start at a very low level. Each repetition is a little louder, until the final, full-volume audio sample.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:21 PM on May 3, 2007

Thank you for all the answers! I can't wait to try what you've suggested.
posted by cashman at 1:50 PM on May 3, 2007

Audacity (which is free)

Doesn't seem to have a reverb effect.
posted by signal at 3:07 PM on May 3, 2007

signal: Use the Gverb plugin.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:50 PM on May 3, 2007

Indeed the Señor got it right. Gotta reverse the audio first...
posted by dickyvibe at 5:03 PM on May 3, 2007

My Behringer 1202FX mixer board has something like that built in and does it "live" meaning you don't have to record and replay the audio.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 5:36 PM on May 3, 2007

Can't possibly do it live in realtime, bottlebrushtree.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:21 PM on May 3, 2007

There are digital vocal FX processors that have settings for this, but no, the result is not really live.

What they do is "hold" the input coming from the mic for a short time (say, 1 second), in order to add the "reverb in" effect to the front of it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:57 PM on May 3, 2007

I've always heard it refered to as "preverb."
posted by Eothele at 10:23 PM on May 3, 2007