Glue your mix together with reverb

The term ‘glue’ is often used for compression, but there are more ways to create a coherent sound. Reverb is another way to place all elements of a song in the same room, glueing them together.

This technique is all about a subtle approach. Even though I’m talking about ‘reverb’, it would be technically more correct to call it ‘delay’. Because in order to create a glueing effect, we need to set a very short reverb time.

How is it done? In this example I will use the Soundtoys Little Plate plugin.

Place the Little Plate plugin on a bus or master channel
Set the decay time to .5, the lowest setting
Dial in the mix knob, usually between 0 to 5% for the master channel or higher for a bus channel

The result is subtle, but if used with other small steps, like compression, it will result in a coherent mix.

There are other reverb plugins that can achieve this effect, like the FabFilter Pro-R 2. Try to search for a plate reverb and set a very short reverb time and dial in the mix to achieve the same result.