I’m used to a Sound Tech cranking up the reverb on my whistle mike, especially for slower aires, and fills. Have any of you used settings that were drier, or emphasized some other tonal quality?
Beannacht Dé leat!
I use that thing that takes out static background noise…
I feel like the reverb effect on slower airs etc takes away from the listener’s focus on the skill of the player. I mean…a lesser player can have all this reverb to make the song sound dramatic and ethereal and stuff but when you take all that away and hear a slow air played without any effects, you can appreciate the skill of the player better.
Heavy, prominent reverb is a cheesy cliche all too often stuck on flutes and whistles willy-nilly by sound-techs (even good ones) who think it is “the thing to do”. It is, of course, a way of covering up poor tone production and iffy intonation (viz. the excessive use of vibrato in certain classical styles of string playing and"singing"!!!) but it does not enhance the sound of a good player on a decent instrument in any desirable way.
In general, I ask sound-men not to put any reverb on me when playing amplified, or only a judicious minimum necessary for “presence” in the particular acoustic space. Tuning the amplified sound of each instrument and the ensemble sound to the performance space is the chief task of the sound tech. Ultimately you have to trust their judgement on that as specialists in their own craft. The actual sound of your instrument is your choice and responsibility, and they should not modify it without your agreement/request - though telling them that can be tricky!
To my mind, with any acoustic music, the (obvious!) main purpose of amplification is to project the real acoustic sound as accurately as possible into a space where it would not be sufficiently audible unamplified, not to modify it. A legitimate secondary purpose can be to balance the output of instruments that do not compete equally when unamplified (say Appalchian dulcimer with bagpipes, as an extreme example), but that too should only be about sound level, not other qualities of sonority or artistic interpretation. Too often sound engineers whose primary experience is with Pop/Rock music and chiefly electronic instruments (most of the ones one comes across at festivals etc.) simply do not understand this, in my experience. Engineers who have specialised in Classical music or the acoustic folk world usually do much better job.
Beyond that, it is a matter of personal taste. To me aesthetically, big reverb = yuck - MOR, “Celtic Twilight”… I wouldn’t necessarily play (or record) completely “dry”, but certainly as dry as possible, unless I actually wanted a boomy reverb as a specific, chosen special effect in a particular musical context.
I used to go to gigs and festivals and use what ever mics the sound techs would set me up with. The problem with that was I had to spend time getting the sound tech to find the right balance in pick up/gain in the mic.
I found that most mics were set up for vocals meaning that the singer usually got right up close to the mic with lips touching the head of the mic. This option does not suit whistle playing as it picks up any air coming from ones nose or the windway of the whistle, making that awful phuff phuff sound. I play with a bit more gain in the mic so that I can play up to a hands width away from the mic, eliminating rumble from any stray air.
I have also acquired my own mics (Shure SM57, I am not promoting them, they just suit my needs) that I take with me anywhere I know that I am going to be amplified. The pick up area is more concentrated/single directional than a vocal mic so I get minimal rumble from breath or windway.
I never use any reverb, no matter what, but each to their own. When playing airs I like to drop off the pressure on held notes so that the pitch bends down slightly giving a nice effect, this would be lost with reverb.
Reverb may hide some shortcomings in technique(?)
I mostly agree with nikiaarrowsnith, I want to hear every nuance and ornamentation when listening to slow airs, not all the cliched ethereal haunting echoing sound of reverb.
Just my opinion anyway!