HOW TO OBTAIN A REVERSE SOUND EFFECT!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will answer a question made to me by a band I'm recording these days: how to create the "reverse" sound that can be heard on the snare drum at the beginning of the Muse song "Panic Station", and in countless other great songs.
This is an effect which is mainly used on vocals, cymbals and snare drums, and consists in creating a sense of "anticipation", a "crescendo" of tension for the part that is about to start.
The effect we're talking about is also different from a completely inverted section: sometimes for example a guitar solo is taken and completely inverted to give it a "sitar-like" sound, like on the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Give it Away" song, and to have this effect is sufficient to take the track and reverse it.

The effect we're talking about instead consists in taking a wave track (in the image depicted, we have taken some snare hit for example), to copy it on a second track and to reverse this second track (on the Cubase/Nuendo interface the path is Audio -> Process -> Reverse);
now we're gonna move the second track in order to match its peaks with the ones in the straight one, so that the sound builds up, reaches its peak and starts lowering again on its tail.

Now we have to make sure that the reversed track is not as loud as the straight one, in facts there will be a part of the peak that it's going basically to result doubled, and therefore it will largely increase its gain.
It's a good rule to compress and Eq this second track on the same Buss as the straight one, in order to level down the peaks.

Use this effect on your songs with parsimony as an abuse may result annoying, and never stop experimenting! Hope this was helpful!

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