Reverse Audio

Making a Reverse Cymbal or Riser

The most-used reversed sound in dance music is the reverse crash: take a cymbal (or the last second of any sustained sound), reverse it here, and you get a swell that builds from silence to a peak. Place the peak exactly on the downbeat of the next section and the transition carries itself. The same trick on a vocal phrase's tail, a piano chord, or a reverb-heavy snare gives you free risers that already sit in the track's key, because they came from the track. For longer builds, reverse a full bar, then run it through the Key & BPM Changer to stretch it across two.

Backmasking: Hearing Songs Backwards

Reversing full songs has a folklore of its own: hidden messages, real (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Missy Elliott all deliberately recorded backmasked lines) and imagined. If you came here to check one, drop the song, download the reversed WAV, and scrub to the rumored spot; you are hearing exactly the same samples the artist recorded, played end to front, with no quality lost in the flip.

Part of the Browser Audio Toolkit

Pair a reversed tail with a tempo-matched edit from the Key & BPM Changer, check what you are working with using the Song Key & BPM Finder, or convert formats with the audio converters. Everything runs locally, nothing uploads.

Frequently Asked Questions