Accent Galaxy Drums

Creating a Reverse Cymbal Swell in Pro Tools

The technique that I am affectionately calling the “reverse swell” has been around a long time. It’s a wonderful way to build intensity and anticipation in a song. Its also a sneaky way to tie song parts together. The technique has been used with lots of different sources; cymbal, vocals, keyboard, samples, guitars, etc. 

In this video, I go through the basic technique of creating a reverse swell with a cymbal. The most important aspect is to find the cymbal sound that you like. You can cut a cymbal out of the song, from a sample, sample your own, or record a cymbal out of a virtual instrument. In this case, I recorded a cymbal out of Space Cabin Audio’s, Galaxy Drums. For reverb in the example, I use the Sonnox Oxford Reverb. Everything else is just routing and tools included in Pro Tools.

There is a lot of different ways to employ the technique and limitless results. This is just 1 way of a million different ways to pull it off.  Hopefully you can bend, twist, and morph this idea into your own productions.

Watch the video here!

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