Drum Reverb

Phil Collins' song "In the Air Tonight" is probably best known for that iconic drum break. It's short, but it stands out and seems to be known by everyone. It's arguably the most famous use of a technique known as "gated reverb," which Collins accidentally discovered a year before recording that song.

Collins was working on a song with Peter Gabriel at the time, and the studio where they were recording had a talkback microphone. Hugh Padgham, the sound engineer, noticed that it picked up Collins' drumming in an unusual way. The talkback mic was not intended to record music; rather, it was a communication tool for speaking. It was heavily compressed and removed a lot of noise. It also had something called a "noise gate," which quickly stopped recording sounds. This resulted in the punchy reverb effect of the drums, which was a stark contrast to the more flat drum sound that was previously prevalent in music.

The sound became huge and you can find it in a ton of ’80s music and even in stuff being recorded today.

Year: 1981

Events: Compression, gating, and reverb together