My City Was Gone

  • Artist: The Pretenders
  • Album: Learning to Crawl
  • Label: Sire
  • Year: 1982 (single), 1983 (album)
  • Producer: Chris Thomas
  • Engineer: Steve Churchyard
  • Studio: Air Studios, London

Notes:
It's not just plate reverb on the snare, it's plate reverb plus an added sixteenth and eighth note predelay into the same plate. Predelay in a concert hall is on the order of 20 to 30 milliseconds. Plate reverb occurs all but instantly, with no natural predelay. So it isn't unusual to insert a delay on the send to the plate. Here, we have instant plate plus predelayed plate. And the predelay is stretched well beyond 30 milliseconds. The delay time is in fact selected to have a musical value for the tempo of the song. It adds a rhythmic element to the reverb.
Of course, the bass line is melodic to a fault and the guitars jangle most jangley.


Sources

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