Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey, how's it going? This is Eddie gray. I'm here to talk to you about compressors. Now we know that the primary use of a compressor when it was first created was to attenuate or bring down volume. And now the compressor does so many things and I'm so happy and proud to be able to bring you this content. Predominantly a compressors used to level out the signal of a dynamic range. In other words, if you want to bring the loud sounds down and the quieter sounds up, you want to stabilize your audio and this is a great tool for just that. But let me tell you in advance, it does way, way more. So if you want to learn this and you want to learn it well, and you want to learn it the first time so you don't have to go over it again and again and again. Then let me bring to you cracking the compression code. In this course, we're going to be talking about the various parameters inside of a compressor. We're gonna talk about all the models that you'll find in the marketplace today. And then on top of that, I'm going to give you some assignments so you can start to apply the knowledge that you learn in this course. Thank you so much for watching much love, much respect. I'll see you in the next video.
2. The Two Main Reasons People Never Learn Compression: Hey guys, what's up? This is Eddie gray, producer, composer out here in LA. I'm so happy to be able to talk about one of the most perplexing and E centric mystic subjects out in music production today. And that's compression. Now let me explain to you exactly why people do not thoroughly understand and grasp the concept of compression. But before we do, we're going to start with a quote. The modern producer is now required by necessity to learn how to wear several hats. He, she must know how to engineer, compose, sound design, Arrange, mix in, master their own music. And if that wasn't enough, we have to learn every facet of music. If I had to break down what mixing is. If I had to break down the art of mixing and mastering and modern music production, I would basically break it up into four cornerstones of EQ, compression. Reverb, delay, all things affects. And then imaging how you position the front-to-back placement, the width, that would be the last cornerstone. So this course will be central on the topic of compression. So the reason it's really hard to understand is because of this, Check it out of all the processes used in modern music production, compression is perhaps the least understood. Why. Well, one reason is compressions, sonic results are often subtle and they're very hard to hear. And I'm gonna give you an example of that in a second. Also, there are various and different compressor control parameters and various types of models. So this course right here is going to help you understand compression. My aim is to demystify it and make it very digestible. So you can finally grasp this concept. I'm going to get into all of the nitty-gritty. Okay, I'm gonna give you actual examples, and I'll also be giving you exercises for you to do this so you can actually conquer the subject. It's not enough just to listen to somebody pontificate on the subject. You have to actually do the work. You could learn the inner workings of the subject. So let me go ahead and just start off by giving you a couple of audio examples, okay? And then we're going to talk a lot more extensively about compression. All right, check this out. Okay, so I'm gonna give you some live examples of what compression sounds like. Now I want you to bear in mind before we get into this very basic description that it is much more complicated than this, okay, but if I paint the picture and down, I give you an overview. Once we get into all the minute details, we will go ahead and start to create a better picture of compression overall. So here on track number one, I've got a logic stuck string instrument drawn up. And if I play it, you'll hear that it has a lot of dynamics, meaning it can go and perform very lights and soft. And then if I hit the midi Controller at the top of its range, which is a 127 velocity. It'll sound much louder like this. And so between the most basic velocities like 20 2015 and 127, here we will find the difference between the loudest and the quietest parts. Well, if I go ahead and record a basic part, okay, you can hear that this performance is completely off-balance. And this happens to musicians, singers of the time. They're performing something and it's not steady. You'll have certain parts that are very loud in comparison to the others. For example, here we can see that the velocity is very light. The velocity is at 42. And then when we get to bar 29, it goes above and beyond to 99, right? So let's listen to that. Now. Of course, I'm exaggerating for all intents and purposes. But what I want you to do is look at the compressor. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and change the size of its. We can really get our eyeballs on it. And what's happening here is that the compressor when turned on and by design, you set it up in such a way where it controls the source signal. In this case the strings. What's going to happen is that it's going to regulate the loudest signal from the quietest signal. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and set this up. And I want you to not only look at the meter, but the graph view as well. So you can see how much of the signal is actually being compressed. And another way of thinking about compression, or another way to state it is how much of the signal is being attenuated or pushed down. Check it out. Okay. So you can see that there was some compression towards the middle as soon as I started lifting up the threshold. And again, we will go over these controllers. But if I play this back now without the compression, close your eyes and let's listen to the details, okay? Okay, and then now I'll play that back again with the compressor on. So essentially what's going on is that we're finding a happy medium where leveling out the dynamic range of the performance. Okay, let me go ahead and play that one more time. So this is the entire performance with no compression. I see you know what? Let me just play that first half with the compression. I'll check it out. So without the compression, you hear a big difference between the quietest parts and the loudest parts. Whereas when the compressor is on, it's essentially leveling out the performance. The quietest parts are just about as loud, as loud as parts of the loudest parts are just as bad, as quiet as the quietest parts. Check it out. And so that's the wheel we're going to start. There's a lot more to cover, there's a lot more details to hash out and we will definitely get to it. But what we are treating or what we are looking at is dynamic range. Okay? In the next video, we're going to cover what is dynamic range and why exactly are we compressing it anyway? Our team, I'll see you on the next video. Thank you very much for watching.
3. What exactly are we Compressing anyway?: Okay, welcome back. We want to give you a working definition of what a compressor does. A compressor reduces the difference between the loudest and quiet as parts of the audio. They allow you to control color and manipulate the dynamics of the audio. I'm going to repeat that. Compressors reduced the difference between the loudest in quiet as parts of the audio that it's processing. They allow you to control color and manipulate the dynamics of the audio. I find it so interesting that at the very end of the definition, we're using the words control, color, and manipulate the dynamics of the audio. C, because a compressor, it locks in the volume so that a certain instrument is never too loud or too quiet. If you want an instrument to be heard at a consistent level throughout the song, then you very well should be using compression. Of course, you could use this on a vocal as well. All right, so that being said, what exactly are we compressing any way? All this talk of a compressor, what is it doing? What is it treating? Well, it's treating something called the dynamic range. Now, working definition for that is the intensity of a signal that is constantly changing. The intensity of signal is constantly changing. So think of a violin player, a cellist, a saxophonist could be playing very quietly and then extremely loud. Sometimes you do not want the dynamic range. Let's think. Genre specific, EDM dubstep, future base. We don't want that texture. We don't want the dynamic range. But sometimes you do. In the case of a violin player, you very much desire a vast dynamic range. So most of the time, you're going to want to use compression to reduce the dynamic range of the signal or audio in question. Let me give you a concrete example. If I whisper and I'm monitoring my whisper with a sound pressure level meter or an SPL meter. And I get a readout of 20 decibels. And then right after that I start to shout and I immediately get a response at a 100 decibels. The dynamic range between those two extremes is 80 decibels. That makes sense. So in essence, the higher the dynamic range, the more room for expression. Now of course, there's a trade-off. Because if we have more dynamic range, your songs, your tracks, or music, an average level will not be as loud. Okay, so more dynamic range means a lower average loudness level. Whereas if I have less dynamic range, my song can actually be louder. I can have a higher average loudness level. Let me say it this way. If you decrease the dynamic range with compression, you will increase the average loudness level of your track. So a compressor on the master bus will absolutely decreased dynamic range, so will a limiter. Okay. And so it's going to make your tracks much louder. So I just wanted to understand what exactly are we compressing? And it's called dynamic range. So let me just give you a quick example. And I find that the secret to working with compression is to visually understand it first. Because we are visual creatures and it's the sense that takes the highest priority, then you will see what I mean. When I show you my spoken voice, which I recorded a little bit earlier through this incredible metering plugin called Shope. And what's going to happen is you'll be able to look at the transients in real time. So if I play this with no compression, I want you to look at the envelope, meaning the shape of the audio, how high the transient or the attack is, and then how it levels out. Because it just go ahead and look so we can understand the dynamic range. I'm going to talk really quietly and you'll hear that even though a minute about the chin, okay, so you see how small and still it is. I'm about to speak very loud in the recording. And look what happens. Change my volume, I'm going to get much louder and the compressor will still be able. Okay, so I raised my voice, the sound pressure level went up, and hence I increased the, the dynamic range, the difference between the quietest and the loudest signal. Okay, incomes the compressor. I'm going to compress this. And now look at what she does. Look at your use your eyes, okay? Right now I'm going to talk really quietly and you'll hear that. So we still get the overall quiet signal. But you can tell it's a little bit more beefy and clear. Now check out the rest of this and you'll hear that even though a minute about to change my volume, I'm going to get much louder and the compressor will still be able to handle the covering of the dynamic range. So in other words, is still going to be able to level it out because that is what a compressor does. So again, go back to whispering really quiet. Just the slightest amount of salmon still be able to see the compressor. So you can see that it did a much better job of handling the dynamic range of the spoken word. Now what was it? What if that was an instrument? That's exactly what we will be covering in the rest of this course. So go ahead and stay tuned, and I will see you in the next video. All right, Cheers.
4. What does Compression look like?: Hey, What's up team any gray here, look, we're talking about compression. How does it work? And how does it look? I will first, a compressor reduces the peaks in your signal and it's compensates by increasing the volume of anything below a certain threshold. So it can be used to smooth out or to fatten your sound, as well as to add sustain if you can believe that. And then of course, just by nature of adding a compressor, you will add a harmonic presence and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. So what does it actually do? How does it work? Well, you can see here that I have a diagram. And when a threshold starts to hit the peaks of the signal is can be a piano, this can be a drum set, this can be a synthesizer. You'll see that it starts to level out the dynamic range in response to that. Check it out. All right, so you determine the threshold where you're going to set it. And now the signal has leveled out to some degree. In other words, the high peaks get lower. And then as a result, the noise floor, the lower part of the sound will actually become higher as well. So the green there is the original and now it's been compressed down. Now how much of this is determined by a ratio? And we will certainly get into the details in a bit. Now you know that this is how it works. You have a visual sense of what it actually does. Now. What does it actually look like in the DAW? So at the top I have an uncompressed version, then a compressed version which looks like it's been leveled out. All of the peaks have been somewhat stabilized, right? And then at the very end of the process you want to add makeup again. This is another parameter that we will be using. So let's go through this. You have an uncompressed saxophone, violin, whatever it is. All of a sudden I put in some compression. Okay? Because we want to hit the peaks and we want to normalize the signal, we get something that's a bit flatter in nature. This could be a vocal that's a really good example as well. And then when we add the makeup gain now you can see in relation to the top, to the uncompressed version that it's been certainly level down. So this is what compression looks like in essence. Okay, a good exercise. Go back through DW, drop in a drum set, drop in a dynamic vocal, and go ahead and compress stuff could be a kick. What have you? Start looking at the transients, look at the envelope, look at how it shapes, it looks at how it changes the signal in essence. Go ahead and do that, and I will see you on the next video.
5. The Various Compressor Control Parameters: All right, Let's go the various compressor control parameters. So this is where people usually get messed up. But not us. We got the right programs, the right time, right mindset, right channel, less go. I'm going to break this down in the most basic and clear way that you've ever heard before. I've heard professionals try and describe what compression is, what it does. And they do nothing more than confuse the heck out of me. I've been on a mission ever since I started this seven years ago to bring the information to light in a way that is friendly, that is comfortable, that is bite-size, right? It doesn't take four years to understand it. And I do believe that I am the best in terms of explaining this in a way that we can all understand. Okay? So we're gonna look at threshold right now, team. Alright. So I'm going to define each one of these and then I'm going to give them a key word so as to allow you to remember them and to integrate them. So that when it's time to use compression, you can think about the key word. So threshold, as you can see here in the diagram, has to do with pushing down a signal. If a snare or a vocal, or a saxophone or a violin exceeds that threshold, compression starts. So if you set the threshold, it doesn't matter what the number is. This is say, an arbitrary negative 27, again doesn't matter. And the compressor does not reach that decibel level, then no compression will happen. So the way that I want you to think about threshold is by using the word when. That threshold sets the level at which the compressor will start reacting to the audio signal. So when does it start reacting to the audio signal? If this is not set correctly, you will not achieve compression. Do you understand me? If this does not hit the source sound for whatever reason, the signals to quiet you don't have your input gain staging for whatever reason, you will not achieve proper compression. Keyword when. Okay, so now we're going to talk about racial. This sets the amount of gain reduction. The higher the ratio, the more extreme the compression. How much is the phrase that you want to think about here? How much if threshold was when the signal hits, ratio is, when it hits, how much is it going to hit it, right? So you can think of it as an amount. How much if I have is set to one to one ratio. It's really not gonna do much because it's just going to go through the compressor. So the threshold and the ratio are intertwined in how they behave and affect one another. But as soon as I said, the ratio two to 14 to one and above. Now we start to sub-divide and affect the signal in a pretty serious way. And I'm going to give you examples a little bit later in the course. But again, to go over it, when and how much the next one we're going to cover is attack. Okay? And it's hack has to do with the amount of time it takes for the compressor to react to the incoming signal. So remember we talked about the threshold. When the compressor hits. How fast is it going to hit? Is it going to hit right away, like it is here in the diagram on the left-hand side, rails are going to be a fast attack? Or is it going to take a little bit of time and then compress the signal? Somewhere in the middle of its process. We're going to be a fast attack or a slow attack. And there are various reasons when and why you would be using a faster, slow attack. So if we have when we have how much attack is, how fast release, on the other hand, has to do with the amount of time that it takes for the compressor to go back to a non compressed state. So you can think of this like how long, how long before it gets back to its original uncompressed state. So if the threshold is set and disregard the attack, you get some compression, right? The ratio is set to something normal like four to one to one. How long is it going to take for this to go back to the non uncompressed signal z, going to take a long time. Two seconds, three seconds? Or is it going to be a fast release? And again, there are reasons why you would want this to change. For example, with a slow release. If you really want to push something back in the mix, you can really attenuated. You can really push it down and not have the release go back to its uncompressed day, right? So it just stays compressed as if something, somebody just pushing it down the whole time. And this is a great way to get things to blend into a mix. Okay. So when, how much, how fast? How long? Okay. We've got one more and this one is called knee. So when the threshold hits and depending on how fast it hits, how hard is it going to hit? A hardy is going to maintain edginess. So think EDM hard rock, whereas the soft knee has a smoothing effect. So an acoustic guitar, for example, it's a perfect idea to compress it to stabilize the audio signal and yet have it be smooth compression by utilizing a soft knee. Soft knee means the compression will be applied gradually as the signal approaches the threshold. Hardening, of course, means that the compression will be applied quickly, as soon as the audio surpasses that threshold. Now I want to show you one more thing, but let's repeat from the top. Okay? When, how much, how fast, how long, and how hard. Commit that to memory. Okay. It's very important that we ingrain this, that it becomes a part of who you are. Repetition is the mother of genius, repetition is the mother of invention. So if you really want to become next level, if you really want to stand out, this stuff is going to have to become a part of your brain. Be sure to watch the information again and again and again. Especially if this doesn't come natural to you. If you come from another field, if you don't have any experience here, you have no idea how long I've studied obsessed. Read this information over and over and over, watched videos over and over and over. So that literally I am made of this stuff. It's absolutely critical. Let me show you one more thing, guys. When we're talking about compression, we know we're compressing the dynamic range. And that relates to the gain reduction because we're actually attenuating the signal, we're pushing it down. And so when you're looking at a reduction meter, and they all look a little bit different. But this shows you how much the compressor is attenuating or restricting the signal. So you want to look at how much gain reduction you're getting on average. Okay? Just depends on what kind of sound you want. With compression, the overall volume is lower, right? To be expected to remember, when we first talked about compression, we talked about the two purposes. The first purpose being to push down and then the second level out the dynamic range. Now something we haven't talked about is how we're going to use a makeup gain to compensate for the attenuation that's going on. So to the degree that we get gain reduction, we're going to use a makeup gain if it's the desired result, by the way, because sometimes you just want to push something back and have to be quiet. But if you want something to be compressed, level down and yet still heard, then we'll, we'll, we'll be utilizing the makeup gain in order to create a nice solid signal. So when I see you in the next video, we're going to be talking about how to initialize a plugin, a compressor in order to make sure that you have command over. You don't always want to utilize the plugins. You want to be in charge. You want to be the king and queen of all US survey. So in order to do that, you have to learn how to use these controllers of that's really nice exercises. I will see you in the next video for a basic approach to compression.
6. A Basic Approach to Compression: What's going on team Eddie gray here. Let's get back into it. Let me teach you how to initialize a preset. So usually when you open up a compressor, in most cases, a preset will already be set default. And so the manufacturer of that plug-in is basically making some decisions for you without your consent. So my job is always to empower you to make sure that you're the one in charge. You are at the helm. You are the one making all the critical decisions. So before we get into my basic approach to compression, Let's go ahead and initialize the compressor. Okay, So it doesn't matter which one we have selected. These are various models. Okay? We are going to set the threshold to 0. That's all the way to the right. I know that sometimes feels weird because we're used to everything being on the left. But in this case that threshold is set all the way to the right. I want your ratio to be sets of 4-to-1 makeup gain to 0. Okay? And that their auto gain is certainly off. What this means is if that if I have this on, then logic will automatically or compensate by adjusting the makeup gain for me. Now what's confusing about it? I wouldn't mind it necessarily, but they don't show you what it's doing. It's just making these decisions internally. And I personally don't like that. I'd want to make the decision. I want to know how and why they're being made. The knee attack and release we will talk about after. But something that I do want to recommend, especially for my beginner's, is to use the auto release. Again, I will teach you how to use it in depth, but for now, this is how you initialize a preset I want you to do for me is I want you to click up here and Save as Default, so that now every single time you open up this plugin, you will have an initialized compressor. Okay? All right, so that being the case, let's move into a basic approach. And I believe that this system works nine out of 10 times. No joke. I believe that if you start to compress the way that I currently suggest that in most applications, you will be able to achieve the intent behind Year 1 in a compressible. So first I'm going to tell you, and then we're gonna do it. You're going to set the ratio four to one, okay? After you set that, which should be your default, you want to set that threshold so it actually hits the signal K. You'll set it right, you're all the way to the right to 0 and we'll pull back. And at some point, depending on how loud the signal hits the compressor, we will achieve gain reduction. In all cases, I want you to get negative 3 to 5 decibels of gain reduction. That tells me that we are in the right place now, after you do that, I want you to compensate for the lack of volume, for the reduction of volume. And I want you to use the makeup gain. So if you reduced negative four decibels or negative five, I'm going to show you how to look at it right now. I want you to use the makeup gain and make up for it. Okay? And then after that, I'm going to teach you how to set your attack and release times. But again, racial sub-threshold get negative 35 gain reduction, use the makeup gain to compensate. Pretty easy, right? All right, let's try it out. So I've got a drum set pulled up. I'm going to set the threshold negative 35. Alright, and then I'm going to make up for it. You ready? Here we go. Isn't that incredible? Such an easy formula that's going to work in most cases. Now something that I should throw out there is the responsible thing to do is that look, if this signal was recorded in a very loud fashion, then it's going to affect how it hits the compressor. Does that make sense? So right now I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to gain stage this so that it doesn't hit the compressor is harder. You might have noticed that I was getting some reds here on the right-hand side, output gain. So let's go ahead and check this out. Now, I've reduced it by seven decibels. Hey, here we go. So you see how it's not as high as it once was. Now let's say this was still an issue. I don't know if I would drop it that much more because now it's not going to hit the compressor at all. So you'll notice that I'm going to drop this a lot. And, and now the transistor getting smaller because we're literally making the signal quieter. So now look at this. See what's going on right there is not even hitting it anymore, guys. And so this is what I'm talking about. You have to intelligently make these decisions and you have to be informed so that you can be the best mixer that you can be. You have to be able to meet these critical decisions, these, these educated and intentional decisions every single time. Okay? All right, so that's not gonna work, right? So let me go back up to negative somewhere up here. All right, Let's make sure all of this is working as it should. So the question that I want you to have in the back your mind, when you're compressing something goes something like this. Does it need to be more exciting? So you listened to a signal, you to drums, that you listen to the guitar part. You listen to an arpeggiated acoustic guitar and you ask yourself, does it need to be more exciting? Now there are more purposes, and I will teach you the eight purposes of a compressor. But generally speaking, when you're listening, this is the question that I want you to ask yourself. I want you to pose this question to yourself and ask yourself who needs to be more exciting? And if it does, then I want you to try this out. Now there are different compressors that are all going to react in their own unique way. This is something that we will go over later as well. Okay? But this is how I want you to do it. This is how I want you to start the process, initialize the preset 3 to 4 gain reduction. Auto release our eye make up for the gain, for the loss of the game with the makeup gain. And then on the next video we're going to go ahead and we're going to hit the attack and the release. You go with that. Okay? All right, so bear in mind, all compressors are going to act a little bit different, okay? Like for example, this one, I think this is a really nice tool to work with when you're first learning this by MC, DSP, because it has a lot of emulations just kind of, you know, off the bat. So for example, this is something that I can use. And let's go ahead and test a couple of these out and you'll see how they're limited controllers. And some of them, you can see this only has two nouns, whereas these over here are going to be a little bit more complex in nature. But here let's try this out. So like that one right there, It's just the attenuating is just pushing something down. Right here is a gain knob, looks like so if you wanted to increase the signal going into the compressor, but here Let's find another one. This one has C as that attack. Okay, so we're going to talk about attack after you. Let's try this one. So this is a combination where it's attenuating it, but it's also kind of crushing it. There's no makeup gain, so you can't really work in the same way. And so you get different results, obviously because the control parameters are little different. But again, the ratio is more or less four to one. And then I'm trying to get three to five gain reduction. See right there I'm reducing the dynamic range that sounds a little bit more flat, and that's more of a character thing. You can use this creatively. You can use this like an engineer. The possibilities are many. Look at this 11 knob, check the cell. So that's fully dynamic. The fact of the matter is, is that our ears are used to hearing compression. This is something that has been used and abused for the last 30, 40 years, 50 years of production now. Okay, so our listeners are publishers, are licensors, they're expecting it at this point. Okay, so let's make the time. Let's go ahead and learn all the various simulations, how they work, and how they affect and react to the signal. So you can master compression, right? All right, go ahead and work on it. I'll catch you on the next one where we will cover the attack and release.
7. Setting Attack and Release: Team, How's it going, eddie gray here back at it. We've talked about setting the attack and the release time. I think everybody understood how to set up the compressor. Pretty obvious, created a system, right? We said that threshold you hit the source signal ratio is pretty much always four to one, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. Then after that, we compensate for the attenuation or the lack of volume by increasing the makeup gain. That being said, that will simply not be enough in order to really get the best out of any compressor. Now, something that I should say before we set the attack and really Sun is at every compressor in and of itself, is built a little bit differently, and hence it reacts a little bit different. And so you might get varying degrees of results depending on which compressor you're using, which manufacturer created it. There are a ton of variables, okay? Some of these compressors will have built-in attack and release times. So they don't even give you the option to set it. But it is built, had for example, the l2 way. It's set up in such a way where it has its own threshold and racial controllers. And so we'll go over some of that as well. So you just have to know what to look for. But all of the parameters are generally the same. Okay, you might have a brand new manufacturer that adds a bell and a whistle. But generally speaking, everything that we've spoken about really is the basis of compression. Okay? So I'm going to go ahead and set up the logic compressor. I'll use a couple others as well. And then I'll set up Shope by still audio so we can look at the envelope. We can look at the shape of the audio coming in and how it's being affected. Okay? Okay. So as a reminder, what we're gonna do now is we're going to set the attack and the release. Let's listen to this uncompressed. And then now with compression. So if we had to describe it, we would say it sounds bigger, it sounds thicker, it sounds more exciting, It sounds more alive. There's a lot more excitement to it, right? Okay, so again, following the instructions, we're gonna take this step-by-step. We're going to start with the slowest attack time. So this means you want to put it all the way to the right. Drag it to the left rather, that's going to be a fast attack time. Now in terms of the release, you want to set it to the fastest release time. So that would be all the way down here. Takeoff auto, OK, and make sure auto gain is also off. All right, so I'm getting the negative 35 gain reduction making up for it. Ratio four to one could be a little bit more, could be a little bit less. We're not going to talk about knee right now. The next step is to increase the attack time until you start to lose too much of the initial transient and then back off a bit. So in other words, we're going to increase the signal until we start to lose the transient. And then we're going to back off a little bit. So believe it or not, let me press Play. Right now there's no compression happening. Do you want to know why? Because the attack is not set properly. And so again, going back to my initial argument, why people don't understand compression is because they don't understand the various control and parameters. So as soon as I drag this back, I'm going to do it slowly. At some point we will hit the drums, the source signal. And then once it goes and it's a little bit over the top and it's covering the signal too much. In other words, on the right-hand side, if you're looking at show, once it's cutting off the head of the transient, if you will, or the beginning of the transient, then we'll back off. Okay, let's try this out. You want to go ahead and mostly look at Shope ready. Okay, So somewhere around there we started losing too much definition. Let me change the view of my scope. Okay, So let's go all the way back again. Right? You can see and define the kicks from the snares. I'm going to keep peeling back on the attack until we start shaving off to material. You see how it sounds like there's a big giant blanket over it now. See, I can pull back on it to show some, a little bit more of the sound. In other words, how fast the compressors going to attack if it's all the way at 0 milliseconds, the compressor is working right away. But if I back off, I can allow the first transient to come through and then compress after this. This kinda makes for a more natural sound. Okay, so let's go ahead and back off from here. Again with no attacker or very slow attack, we get nothing, no compression happening. And if we trigger it somewhere around here, we get a healthy level of compression. Here's before bland, boring vanilla just not, they're, not, they're not interesting enough. And then here, check this out. I'm going to pull back on the volume a little bit. Here we go. The baby. So that sounds really nice, right? Nice texture sounds really fall. Let's keep going with the instruction. Then slowly decrease the release time to make the compressor breathe in time with the tempo of the song. Okay, so then now there's a natural rhythm to everything. When we're dealing with legato or sustained instruments, there's another kind of protocol where we can think about. But in this case we're just dealing with the breath, the tempo of this specific audio loop. Okay, so I'm gonna press Play and I'm going to slowly go back until this is breathing in time. With the drum loop. Here we go. Now if I go too much, look at what happens. The compressor does not have enough time to go back to its uncompressed date, right? It just stays compressed or attenuated the whole time, check it out. So what it does is it pushes it far back into the mix. It's a different effect. I'm not saying it is not a desirable one. It could very well work for your truck. But for right now, for what we're doing, we wanted to breathe with the song, with the loop. So let's try this. See here it's barely doing its job. Let's affected a little bit more. So a quick rule of thumb here is if you want the sound source to be brighter, have more transient, you might want to faster attack time of release time rather. And if you want it to kind of be pushed back in the mix, be a little bit softer, then you would want a slower or longer release time. Alright, so I'm gonna kinda split the difference. Again, here's before. I'm just saying it's not as exciting as now. Let's say you thought that was too loud in general while then we would just back off the output game. Okay? All right. Then the next instruction is to look at the needle and it should return back to 0 just before the next transient. Many compressors feature and auto setting. I love auto release and see if there's any difference. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I like it a little bit before that. But again, this is the drum for a synthesizer. Could have been a whole different set of protocols. So let's see if I have a synth in here somewhere. I'm pretty sure I do. Let's look at this guy. Okay. So again, the material is going to be little different, but more or less it's in the same space. Okay, so let's pretend that the setting is perfect for the synth. Let me just look at it really quick. Okay, so the now but a soapy attack time go back until it's shaping up too much of the envelope again, please look here as we're doing this, okay. See how we got software nature because I'm shaving off the initial transient hears brighter. See how there's a lot more dynamics inside of Shope going to level out. So in a way we're kind of using it like an EQ here, right? There is an old myth that an EQ can very well act like a compressor and a compressor connect like an EQ. And I can vouch for that. Now with the release time, we're going to try and get this to breed notices a little bit of a different signal, right, has longer sustained notes. Let's see if we can make a work. We're not going to use auto release. I want you to learn how to use this on your own first and then after that, taking liberties with auto release, here we go. So without it, check it out. Just this kind of brass sound. It's just out there. It's, it's unkempt, not clean, not not a groomed. Right. But as soon as we put it on, you can see that it's now contained. It sounds really clean and soft. Again before compression, look at show. And we are leveling out the response. So go ahead and practice this exercise. It's your turn. Okay? It matter how long you listened to me, doesn't matter how many times you watch me do this exercise. The real lesson is when you do the work, Let's go ahead and pop open logic. Do this on three source sounds, drums, some kinda synthesiser. So kinda guitar and perhaps a vocal if you've got one laying around. Okay, here's the system. Take a quick screenshot. This is how you set your attack and release time. I know you're going to love this system. It's going to be really great. And please share your new found results. If you guys really understand this on a whole different level, go ahead and share this with your friends. Go and share this with some of your fellow collaborators that may perhaps need some clarification. Personally, I believe that most people don't understand compression. They really don't. I had producer ones come in. Great guy makes great music. And he was explaining how he uses a compressor and he had no clue what he was doing. Now, that's not to say as music wasn't great, but how much better could it have been if he had the proper knowledge, if he had the right information. All right. So take advantage of this. Go ahead, practice it. Practice it diligently. And I will see you on the next video. Cheers.
8. Multiple Stages of Compression: Hey, What's up team Eddie gray here. We're going into the next section where we'll be talking about multiple stages of compression. So here's the application. When you're compressing on a single audio track. This is if you choose, this is where you want to use a fair amount of compression. When you're compressing on a group level. Think of utilizing a bus or something like that. You're going to want to use a little bit less. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but most likely if you're compressing on the track level on that track is contained within a group. Probably a good idea to kinda just use the group level compression as a way to just glue the track together or the group together. So when you use a compressor, it's very important to be very intentional. And this is why I'm going to teach you the eight different ways that you can use a compressor. But before we get to that, we're going to be talking about compression on a track level, on a group level and on a master level. So the last thing here is that when we do compress on the master channel and you guys know that I like to mix and write music into a compressor. It's already on the stereo output. You want to do it very lightly here i, and so it goes from hard medium to very light, multiple stages of compression. So here I've got a basic drumbeat. You can see that I already have a compressor instantiated on the master level. So you go ahead and release that so that we're just listening to the track itself. Clean. Okay, here we go. Now, by now you've heard me use various terms and I've compared to the sound, you know, moving up and down, front and back, these kinds of things. So in this case, we're going to add compression to certain elements. Let's start with the kick. I firstly located inside a drum machine designer. And I'm going to double-click to locate a compressor right here underneath the channel strip setting. And let me go through the process that I've already taught you, okay, except here I'm going to use a different compressor. Why? Because you'll come to find that all of these respond a little bit differently. And they all kinda have their own response time and character. Okay, so let's try this out just on the kick. So this is compression on a track level. Okay, so you can see that there's a little bit more energy that we didn't have before, so here's before. So what ends up happening is that the song just becomes a little bit tighter because we're doing the work of compression. So this is again manifold. It tightens up your tracks as well and also use a gate for something like that. So here is without the compression, do a little bit more. Okay, here we go. So you can see that the signals coming in hard, it's hitting a little bit more. And then it compresses it thereafter. Are so there's a little bit of energy there. I will take that. Let's now add compression on a group level. So I'm going to add it to the drum machine designer. It looks like they already have instantiated. And rather than using an FET like I did on the kick, I'm going to use a VCA, which are known to be more gentle. Again, I'll go over the characteristics of each and every one of these models. So now we're compressing to just bring all the drums together. So that's the intention. Want to have an intention. Now once you know the reasons and the capabilities of compressor, then of course you'll know what to do and when to do it. But we're starting off just one thing at a time here. Okay, we're, we're building up a story, a fabrication here we go. Before no movement, it just kinda sit there and now with some bounce. Now I want you to consider that if everything is bouncing, then everything is just going to be noisy. If you've got 45 tracks and everything's bouncing like bad, just going to be a bunch of noise. So there is a limit to how much you could compress, just like distortion. And really just like any other effect, there is a limit to how much you could do it. So just be aware and allocate your compression accordingly. Okay, So that is on a group level, would be played as before. Both compressors, me see if I could turn these off right before. Ok, and now I'll turn them both on. And while I'm at with this up our Here we go. So a lot more energy coming out of the speakers there. For my last trick, I'm going to go ahead and instantiate a compressor on the master channel. And then here, you could also use a VCA, but just for the sake of changing it up, I'm going to use an app DOT and let me just make sure I got my settings were let me go ahead and reset this to something like that. All right, let's go. So this is something that you really have to try out for yourself to understand. Okay? There are intricate lessons that occur when a creative forms a relationship with their DAW. It is simply not enough to listen to me. It is not. I am telling you. I don't care who believes they have the one methodology to learn this. And I believe quite frankly that I do have the best system in the world to learn compression, but even that will not be enough, okay? It is critical that you do the work, that you go ahead and you set up a track stack and then you compress on a track, on a group and on a master level. Because never in a song are you just going to pull up drums like this and then send this off? Right? This happens in the context of a song. So I need you to try this. In the real-world. This is a simulation, right? We're just practicing here. We're talking shop. The real work always starts when you close the door, when you put your phone down and you lock in. All right. Before all levels of compression. Okay. And against dating back to the beginning of my argument where I said, the differences can be subtle. So these are things that you need to listen to with your speaker, with your headphones. This needs to be closely examined. It's not enough just to kind of do it in passing. Take your time with this one, okay, really understand what we're doing here because you will find that it is better to do multiple stages of compression and have a little bit more finesse rather than to rough. How's it? Overdo it by instantiating it just on one track and completely crushing it and crushing the life out of your source. Okay? Alright, compressing on a track, on a group, on a master level. So you guys in the next video, Cheers.
9. The 8 Basic Functions of a Compressor: How's it going, team, we are back the eight basic functions of a compressor. Do you remember in the beginning when we started this whole process, we talked about the two basic functions, right? We know that compressor can attenuate the signal and then of course it can even out the dynamic range. Well, it came to be that this beast of a component can do quite a lot more than just those two things. And your goal always with compression should be two. Musically bring up the natural dynamics. Now that's the first goal. And you can always break the rules, of course. And you can do a whole bunch of other stuff which I'm gonna show you right now as well. Okay. Let me read something to you using a compressor to balance out audio with a large dynamic variation will give a very uneven sound. The software parts will sound unchanged and the louder parts will be squashed in an unnatural way. Automating a gain plug-in is a much more natural approach, the level of audio with large dynamic variation. So I just wanted to give you another option. Once your channel has an even volume balanced, then you can use a compressor to thicken the sound and control the transients taking on artistic approach rather than a corrective approach. So there's always more than one way to skin a cat. Okay, Let's go ahead, go into my session here and talk about the basic functions we've already attenuated, we've pushed stuff back into the mix. We've already even doubt the dynamic range of a performance a now we're going to control the peaks and this also offers some movement that is going to, It's an excitement to our song. So I have a sample here. I want you to listen to it. Check this out. Okay, so that's a very dynamic signal. I'm going to control the peaks by inserting a compressor. Now I'm specifically using the SSL Glue Compressor by cyclotomic. But regardless, it's still going to compress the peak. Check it out. Compare that to hello and compare that to. Now I'm going to do that midway through so you can understand how it's containing the signal. All right, so hopefully that helps you understand how it can control the peaks of a signal. You can also cite chain, which is more of a creative pursuit, but still, I'll go ahead and show that really quick. Let me okay. And I'm going to side chain this to a pad, this one here. So you'll notice that the pad is going to duck because its side chain to these kicks. All right, So check this out. And it's also good to just line these up together so you can really see what is going on. So every time these kick it, this is ducking down in volume without the sights and sounds like this. Right? You're not hearing the ducking. But then when I open up the side chain function, set up my parameters accordingly, check it out. Okay, so that's called side chaining and it is imperative if you want to have remarkable audio, right? That just sounds like it's alive from top to bottom. So go ahead and practice your side chain. You want to color and shape it brings out the tone. So just inserting a plugin sometimes can just completely change the overall characteristics similar to inserting a tape emulator or something. It just changes the way that it sounds. You see if I have a good example, this one's a really good example actually. Here, let me play this without the compressor. Okay? Check out this brute heavy duty compression. So that's different character, that's a different beast right there, guys. Okay, so to all my people out there, this is also a way to be creative. It's not just a corrective tool. You can think of it like animating your audio before. After. It's taking everything and it's extracting all the information and you're hearing more reverb and intensity, just overall check it out. You're hearing the noise floor of the quiet stuff come up, right. And so you're hearing everything in full detail here. You're hearing it in six K or HD quality. All right, so similar, you also can create definition which will allow things to cut through a mixed up. For this example, I'm gonna go ahead and show you one of my favorite plug-ins of all time. It is called core presser by clever grant. Now the reason I really like it is it has all the controllers built in. I don't really have to know what I'm doing. I just need to squeeze the signal. Okay, so here is the uncompressed version of the arpeggio. Now you'll notice that as I squeeze, we're going to extract more and more and more definition. Can press Play and I'll do that nice and slow here we go. So by the end of the process, through the use of corepressor, which is, which simulated what a compressor would do, but you just have more nabs, right? It, there is no difference between the quietest and the loudest signal. It's all just in your face. So if you're looking for more definition, if you want something to cut through the mix, you can use that technique as well. You can also use parallel compression, which is altogether another technique which we're not even going to talk about here. You can look it up, okay? So colors and shapes that creates definition. It also creates cohesiveness, which I've already shown, glue compression. And something we haven't talked about is upward compression is really interesting. Let's see if there's anything else I want to talk to you about. Well, real quick, just overall, you can, you can hear this kick here that I've got. And this signal is going to sound too. I have something. So, yeah, here we go. This signal is going to sound just kind of there. By means of compression. It's going to come out, going to couple to the mix and it's going to punch. So the kick is a kind of bystanders right now. But if I apply some compression, now if I add another compressor in order to further enhance the sound, check it out. So five bypass both of these. That's very much a sound that you are going to want to implement and have ready in your arsenal. Okay, let's talk about upwards compressing. Know we can attenuate, we can extract riots in some characteristic will. Now we're going to talk about upward compression. So what does that mean? Well, if you look at percussion loop here, wait a minute. What track here it is, I'm sorry. This one right here. Let's take a listen without the compression. Okay, Now let's listen to the compression. So let's bring this up. This is no regular compressor. This is a multiband compressor. So now what this does is it allows you to create multiple compressors along the frequency spectrum. So you can have one at 30 hertz. You can have one in the mid-range, one in the high range. Now what's important here is that we can set it to an expand mode. We're not gonna get into multi-band compression in this course necessarily. But if you are interested, go ahead and let us know. If you're interested will definitely create some more content for you. But the idea is that we're taking the information here and when it hits that threshold, we're allowing it to expand further into the mix. So this is before you see how this is being enhanced and it's how it's doing it in a natural way. It's expanding. And so this use of upwards compression is nice. Now you want to be subtle with it, of course, so that it does sound natural so you can play with your ratio a little bit. Now remember if this doesn't hit the threshold, nothing happens. So it's very important that your standard controllers, and we will go from there. I could use the regular compressor, but this illustrates it. Okay, so I just wanted to show you what it does. You can, you can in some compressors, like in the, in the Ableton compressor, you can set it to expand mode except they would be treating everything, right? And so I didn't want to get into them. So hopefully that helps you better understand the eight basic functions of a compressor to attenuate, to even up the dynamic range, to control the peaks to side chain, to color, to shape, and, or in other words, to bring up the tone of something to create definition. A harder sound, a more, a more harsh sound to glue stuff together, and then finally upwards compression. All right guys. Thank you very much. Go ahead, try out each and every one of these techniques. You might be able to master just 123 of them at first, but eventually you'll be able to use them all in your arsenal. I'll see you in the next video.
10. The 8 Basic Functions of a Compressor (Part II): Okay, team, we talked about the eight basic functions of a compressor. Now we're gonna go a little bit more in depth. Okay, so let's look at attenuating the signal. So here we're compressing the dynamic range of the entire signal. Not just the peaks. Okay? Not a bad idea to set this to four to one. You obviously would set that threshold as needed to push something down. And a soft knee compressor usually works well in this kind of situation. So we're going to listen to this idea here. And I am going to use a compressor. If I go to graph and I shift this all the way to the left, you can see that it turns into a hard decompressor. So if I Folks in a little bit here, the slope becomes rounder and hear harder. So this is softy. And we're going to set the threshold as needed. I'll leave this on auto. Here we go. And by the way, we're compressing the base. You see how it's now kind of being pushed further back in the mix. Let's do the same with the drums now. Again, we'll go soft knee. Hear me press Play. So you can see that at the end of that process, we've now pushed the drums all the way back. Now, that's not really how you'd use it. You would just kinda blend to taste. But the idea is that we're pushing something back. We're using software to do it in a subtle fashion. And that is attenuation at its core. Let's go to the next one here. Now we're talking about evening out a dynamic range. So this is about the entire signal, not just the peaks. Again, racial somewhere between four to one, a little bit lower than that. And you want a threshold around 30 decibels below peak level, so that, so in a situation like this, when you're trying to even out the dynamic range, you want to go ahead and use softening compressors, because a very gentle overall on an uncommonly, they would use this during mastering. Okay, so we're going to even out the dynamic range of performance. So C, B, C, which one of these, his very dynamic in nature. Let me see. No, that's catching a peak. Well, here let me show you what. Here, let me this or this. Yeah, this is a good example. So let's slap on compressor, use VCA. Ok, and now somewhere in that 30 decibel range, again, this can be a little bit lower. And this is a subtle effect where we want everything to kinda just start yelling together, okay? Okay, And a good exercise to always do is to bounce to audio the signal in question. And just compare. Bear both signals and see what exactly is happening. So in the case of this guy, we can see that the signal is a bit more stable here, right here. Let me show you what I mean. And increase the overall gain. And you'll see that there's not as many peaks as before, right? So if I take the one we bounced and bring it back to 0, you can see it's a bit more stable overall. See the lows are a little bit higher here, right? Highs are lower here. So just evening out the dynamic range o k. Let's go back here, delete that. So what that looks like in essence is. Something like this, right? You're pushing down the signal, attenuating it. And in an essence, and when you use your makeup gain, you are bring everything up right after that. So the difference between the quietest and the loudest signal has now changed in essence, right? And so what happens is a byproduct of compression is that it brings up the noise floor. So the compression signal can be quite noisy. They reduce the dynamic range of the signal being treated. So the makeup gain is needed to bring the peak signal level back to where it was. I, once you've adjusted the makeup gain, loud sounds are back and when the quieter sounds require, they're also going to be now much louder, right? So controlling the peaks here, we're going to set the racial little bit higher, right? Let's say you have a loop or something and at 1 it just gets too loud. Well, you can attenuate by using automation with volume, but sometimes it could be a natural. So we're gonna go ahead and set the racial control and watch the gain reduction of eight to ten decibel that here we will use a hard knee. Okay, so let's go here. So ratio five to one, E21, it's going up here somewhere. And to get somewhere in the range of each 10 decibels of gain reduction. Okay? Here we go. Okay, now something I want to point out is that without this first initial here's going to be way too loud. Check it out. So it's out of place side of contexts with the compressor though, we get much more stable. Setup, jack it up. Without it. Way too loud rabbit here. We're catching the peak of the signal. Now it was suggested here that we could use a hard knee in order to get better control over that peak. Let's try that out. Yeah, that did the job. So not a bad idea to use it BCA. In that case, we'll be going over the kinds of compressors right after this. We know that side chain is really good, creative thing that we can use. It's also very scientific, very pragmatic to use in a song where you really want to clean things up, right? So go ahead and use that whenever necessary, and not just on the kick and the bass. By the way, you can use this in multiple ways. You can have the keyboards ducked down when the guitar is playing. I mean, there's multiple uses here. Okay, so then now we're recoloring, we're shaping, and we know that there's different kinds of compressors again, which we'll cover in the next video. And this is just another way to get some, you know, some character and your sound. So use the attack and the release to alter the shape of the sounds. We can kinda play with the envelope. Kind of make things sharper or smoother, if you will. Another good reason to use multi-band compression. And the next reason is to create definition. So we want things to cut through the mix. Yeah, if I ever need anything to cut into the mix, I'll compress it or I'll use parallel compression. So in the case of something like this, see here, media this really quick. Yeah, this when we talked about extracting this on, if I wanted this to pop out of the mix, again, I would probably use something like this. We're would apply some parallel compression as well, and that would really make it come out. So let's pretend it was this quiet. Now we have two signals in essence, right? You've got the non compressed. And then I just created a bus and I sent it over. And now I'm creating a second version of it where I'm compressing it. This is called parallel compression, another great technique as well. So many great things that we can do. So again, creating definition. Let's keep going here. Cohesiveness, gluing, right? Everybody knows that S is L compressor disagree with a layer tracks together. Okay, so here I have a drumbeat that to my ears sounds kinda loose and just open. It sounds like a whole bunch of different loops played together, which it is. And when I slap on a compressor, I now have the opportunity to go ahead and get these to sit well in a mix. It's almost like I'm joining everything together so they sound like one. And this is subtle. This is more compression on a group level. But again, when done tastefully, it really does make really, really big difference. Okay? So then now we have movement. This is kind of another byproduct and upward compression which we talked about already. So just remember that for example, here on truck 14, we're going to change the character of this. We're going to, we're going to really treat this in a way or it's going to manipulate it and make it sound pretty insane. So here's the before, and here's after. That is a personal choice. That is also genre dependent pens will kind of stuff you're into highlighted, treat your audio. It, it's a very personal kind of choice. You know, my aim was just to kinda give you some of the applications and then have you try it on your own. So go ahead and try the exercises. I really feel that they would make a big difference in your productions. Now at first, it, it's not a natural thing. Okay, so want to be clear about this. You have to put in the work, it has to become intentional, and then you'll start finding opportunities to use a compressor. So go ahead and write these down, keep them close to you. And when I first started, I had a notebook and I will just keep a couple of notes that were close to home that I was really trying to integrate in my workflow. Okay. And then when the opportunity comes, go ahead and look at the notebook, verify what it is you're trying to do, and then get to work. All right, team. I hope this helps eight basic functions of a compressor. I will see you in the next video.
11. Compression Models: How's it going team? Eddie gray here at your service and now we're going into all the various compressor models. Now before we do, I want to make something very clear. There is an auto gain function that I would like for you to have off. I've demonstrated what it sounds like with it on. But just in case for those of you that really want to understand, the ins and outs of the compressor really want you to use this on the off auto gain. Now, before we go into this, some of these compressors are going to have this on by default. In other words, inside of their characteristic in the modelling of the compressor, they have an automatic makeup gain function. So you should be clear about that when you're working with your compressor. This could be done with research or just by listening. But let's be clear about what happens when you actually turn this on. When it's off, you get no makeup gain when it's on, logic is automatically going to add gain. And not just logic of course, but any compressor will automatically add gain to compensate. And so you notice that, that, that has a specific sound. In most cases, I want you to have it off because I want you to be the one making the decisions and developing your ears as a result of okay. So let's get into it here. Be CAs I really like BCAAs because they're very warm and not very punchy. They work well with less transient information. Think strings, acoustic guitars, pads, things of that nature. I also really like these for base, great for low frequency content. Because they're very smooth, the smooth out the peaks in a transparent way. It's a very versatile compressor, but it's very gentle. I would say that it's probably the most often used out of all the compressors. You will find that a lot of people use this for group compression or bus compression. So think of the SSL, the Neve has the 33, six or nine, the API mixed bus compressor. The focus right? There's a compressor called the C1 from waves. This, these are all modeled by the VCA. So you have full control of the attack and release parameters and smooth response to the compression itself. So this is an example of a VCA compressor. They all kinda look very similar to kinda look out for that, for that look. And you want to use VC compressors for any of your dynamic processing needs. So when we look at the logic compressor, we see that there are seven emulations. Okay, you've got the BCAAs. Here's the focus, right? Red. Here's the DBS 160 emulation, here's the SSL look at the knobs, and then here, all the way to the far left is what they call a transparent compressor. Okay, so we'll get into that in a second. So, yeah, use the VCA for smooth response. Here let me show an example actually before we get into it. So let's assume that these drums, and I'll bring up the, okay. And in terms of the knee, we're going to just choose a hard knee all the way to the right so you can hear how gentle it sounds. Okay. So let me go ahead and create a cycle region. Now something that I want you to keep in the back your mind is that the attack knob serves as a way to close the envelope. So if you want to make something even smoother still and you want to go ahead and close the attack function. I want to push something back into the mix, or I want the compressor to work in a little bit more of an intense fashion, then I would make sure that I have a slow or long release. So let me close the attacker so you can hear it soften and damping. So yes, of course it sounds base your thump ear because the base is the kick is rather loud, but just in general it's sounding like I'm, I'm putting a blanket over the entire sound. Right? Here's closed. And then here's open. So again, you're manipulating the envelope. Okay. Again, I really like using this one just to learn because I can just access all the various compressors in one shot. So here we have a tack, release or recovery. Let's put this to four to one and set the threshold here. You see how it's very smooth and how it responds. Here is before. That's really great. So if you want a smoother response, use a VCA. Let's keep moving here. Fet field effect transistor, also very prevalent in the music production world. It requires an amplifier to boost. So it has a very different sound. What is that sounds very punchy, very detailed. So great for transient material. Vocals, drums, staccato. It's all about adding aggressive sound. Think like of a growl, a heavy and thick sound. Bees usually have a very fast attack time, and hence they're going to sound more extreme. So This is really good for parallel compressing as well. Anything extreme, any attack, any byte, we definitely want to use FET. Now a quick disclaimer is the controllers are usually on the opposite side. So usually the attack and the release of both been on the left. Usually they're on the other sides. I just want to be clear when you're using an FET, just be clear about what you're using. Okay, so let me go ahead and grab want to see Here's a dvx 160. I'll put that on the right. And then I'll use the FET from logic. So we've got the studio of fat and the vintage. This is the London 76 emulation. Ok, so let's use this one. And this one here on the right is a BCA compressor, the dy dx 160. So let's use this 1 first and let's see the response. In logic, the controllers are the same, but when we use it on another emulation, you'll see that they're a little bit different. Let's try this. So you can see that that's a very intense sound just in general. Okay, Let's try out the dy dx 16 dilute mixture. It turned out yeah, I did. Okay. So let's try this one out. So very smooth round response, whereas this one is a lot thicker and more transient heavy. Now granted, you would use this also an individual sounds I'm just showing you through the means of this specific loop. Let's see if I can find another FET, maybe find another sound. Let's try this B here. And let me get, smash and grab. Okay, So see, Let's do this. Guy cycled. Okay, let's try this out. So again, a lot more excitement by use of a compressor. So epi t is really intense. There is another FET by soft tube right here and you can hear. That this is a very intense compressor. Let me just put on a quick preset and you'll see what I mean. So here is before and after. So a lot of energy that are now, of course it would be able to do that on every track, right, because then everything would just sound over the top. So you've got BCAAs, FETs. And again, these are for compressors where you're seeking aggressive compression, right? Think extreme compression. And again, also very good for parallel compression. Famous for the all knobs switch. There's a feature on somebody's where you can turn them all on at the same time. And it's pretty it's pretty it's pretty nuts. So check that out. All right guys. The third option and opt O stands for Optical compressor, Usually very clean. I find that when you want to control dynamics, but you do not want to hear the compressor. You can use an optimal great for vocals, electric guitars. I consider it a utilitarian compressor, sounds really good on most things. It levels out the dynamic range sounds very creamy, very velvety, warm, thick. I like it as a third option when I'm not trying to go smooth, I'm not trying to or to smooth what? I'm not trying to go too hard. Somewhere in the middle, I like an optimal. So it's less sensitive to transient in peaks. So again, somewhere in the middle. When to use it, use it when you're trying to average out the level of something. It really does a good job of tightening up something without getting noticed. I like it for vocals a lot. It doesn't sound flat, it doesn't, it gives it a sense of excitement, which I really like. And so it says here, use optical compressors to squeeze tracks and create consistent dinos. Again, I find fresh. Here we go Really good. Yeah, I like that a lot sounds very nice, doesn't it? Let's go ahead and look at the UHD version of this 1 second. So you'll find that there's no attack and release. It's just kind of automatically making decisions. So let's go ahead and add gain. And that is going to has an automatic kind of threshold. And then we'll decide how much we want to push this back with the peak reduction websites the other way, this way we set the threshold and then we make up gain here. So listen to the transients. There's so much transient information here. And this is much rounder. Okay, let's try it. A couple more of these. Let's bring this guy. All right, let's see if we can find and making all the decisions. Here we go. We should really look at Shope as well. I feel like this would be useful. So here's without the optimal compression. Look at how it's showing me freezer. Hello guys, the code seeding off the transient. See how it's much rounder here, Let's do it. Well, let's look at this transient information again. When I turn it on, completely shaves it off. So I hope you understand my point here. It's not enough just to hear this stuff. Of course, we need to be able to depend on our ears and on ourselves really. But it's really important to be able to look at the information. And this is one of the reasons why I feel my curriculum is going to benefit a lot of people all over the world because now they finally get to see it. And I went, you can see it. It's going to help you hear it as well. So that is phenomenal. I love it. So upto compression, so people use it on them, on the mix bus as well. I'll leave that up to you. Now. I'm not going to show you a very moving. I just want you to understand that this is also another option in the market. I find that people use this a lot. When it comes to master limiting. It creates a lot of glue and cohesion. So that's something, and then of course we talked about the, and you'll find that there's a lot of compressors out there in the market. Look at anything by Fairchild. But there's also digital compressors like the transparent compressor or the platinum compressor inside of logic. And this is non emulated, so it's good for versatility. It has precise control and it usually is extra features that are not possible on analog. Couple of other units that are digital compressors, H compressor, the compressor and the IMO D5, dynamics by waves. So in closing here, I hope that you see the value. The goal is to have 23 for optical compressors, 123 FETs, and then 123 BCAAs. And if you want to get into the world of vermouth, please go ahead by all means. But my goal is just to give you the richest information that's the most practical. You can really start to learn this today. I know when I first started it just seemed like way too much information. So this is all digestible. Anybody can comprehend this no matter what's your level of education or experience. Okay. So optical compressors, you think of the l2 way, the LAG-3, a C in FETs and 1176 ultra fast attack and release. Great for anything that needs bite or punch. Think of the soft tube, one that I used earlier that was super intense. And then VCA, All Things SSL, the Neve 33, 609. And again, it applicable to almost anything. I love it on acoustic guitars, I love it for group compression. Really outstanding. So hopefully that helps guys. I, I urge you to take your time and find every compressor that you have tested out, see if you like it, right, literally goes through each and every one. And c, is this something that I want to use is something that I can actually use? And it's really important to try them out, fill out their response, and then make a decision if this is something that you're actually going to stick with. I personally love having a handful of these. For example, this compressor I exclusively used for bus processing. Whereas the smash and grab I'll use for drums all the time. I just loved the way it sounds on snares are kicks. And so you'll start developing a repertoire vocabulary with the compressors to take your music and of course, your productions to the next level. All right guys, I'll see you in the next video. Talk soon.
12. Cracking the Compressor Code: How's it going? See this is Eddie gray and we're getting towards the end of this process. Look, this might be the kind of video series that you have to watch 12 or three times over y. Because as stated, this is a bit of a complex subject and it's subtle. And the only way you're really going to integrate it into your workflow is if you truly start doing the work, you gotta get your reps in in order to make it yours. I've essentially encapsulated the last seven years of my career or my understanding of my studies in this field, I didn't have a lot of time to waste. I didn't have the luxury of time and so I had to learn everything as quickly and as well as I could in order to succeed. Now, of course, in the process of educating myself, I became completely engrossed in and I fell in love with music production. In general, I've studied the traditions of it, some of the greats. And of course, I am looking forward to the future of all things music production. And so when my studies, I read a book by a gentleman named Michael Paul staff role called mixing with your mind and a bit of an unorthodox read, but it was worth reading and I thought it worth mentioning that this next part, this next video is dedicated to the cracking compressor chapter in that book. So without further ado fracking the compressor code, I. So it says in the book that the key to compression is basically as simple as the order in which you reach out and focus on adjusting the knobs. The four tumblers, as he calls them, what are the four main tumblers that a compressor threshold ratio, attack and release. And again, sometimes these are built-in. So I want you to use a compressor that has all of these readily available. So then he goes on to say like cracking any combination lock, a tumbler falls into place, then you need not return to it. Each step represents decisive progress. All right, So if that is the case, we are not going to go through his safe cracking exercise. Here's how we initialize and set up our compressor. The attack is anywhere released to minimum ratio, maximum and threshold, too sensitive. So the next thing we wanna do is we want to get some signal into the unit. Now we can do this by means of the threshold or the input gain. I'll do a little bit of both. All right, let me go and press Play. Okay, so now we're going to adjust the attack. So this is called the leading edge of the sound while we're rolling the attack, I want you to avoid maybe some of the crunch or pumping caused by the release time. It is a fast release. But what we're trying to do here is notice the size of the head, how it's going to affect, affect the texture. So here in the book it says if it's a snare drum that you're compressing, which it is here in this case, including the rest of the drums. Then it says, when you are in a fast setting, which we will be when we get all the way down to 0. It says, it says though the drumstick is really skinny. And when we back off as if the drum set gets, the drum stick gets thicker and thicker. So let's listen for that row all the way to the left. Listen to the texture of the drum stick change. Here we go. So you can hear how it's just so much bigger. Listened to the thickness of the attack. We want to come up with something tasting or this can be on a snare, that's going to be on a group, on a synth, or it can be on entire mix. If you want it thin, make it thin, and if you want it big, go ahead and do that. Just think about aesthetics here, okay? We do that one more time. Close your eyes if you have trouble hearing this stuff. Okay. So I'm going to leave it right there somewhere in the middle. I like the way it's slaps, so I'm going to stay there. So then this is a technique that essentially is turning up the sensitivity of our ears because the ratio is so high, so we're going to hear everything in real time. All right, so now we're going to set the release. And it says here that the trick is to get the speed to become a musical component. Of the sound. And this doesn't necessarily mean in time, just means that the compression is going to bounce back to reinforce or establish the groove of the music. So we're trying to enhance the groove of the music with this. Okay. Let's see. You said it also says here that we want to keep time, but not necessarily play the time. Look for the group and that's your release time. So it says you're allowed the compressor to push the sound towards you. And so the music makes its next statement. But let's go ahead and look at this and figure out our release time rigor. All right. So I noticed as I was pushing back, it was making it a little bit to have distinct, right? It was pushing it back into the mix. So this is a good setting for me. I want a loud rock sound. So this works for this particular setting. Now let's go with ratio. It says the next job is to take the ratio and lower it as much as you can without losing the effect you just created. All right, so let's go and do that. Little lower this until we just hear too much of it give way. So basically says you look, the lower the ratio, the bigger the sound is going to be more dynamic, but it's at the risk of getting out of control, right? Dynamics get out of control. Meanwhile, the higher the ratio, the smaller it is, although it's more contained, the ideas usually try and make it sound big, but in control. So bring down the ratio. Then when you don't really hear the effect that you like, the thickness of the stick, but Groovy created the release time. You can raise a ratio a little all the time focusing on size. Okay, so let's do that again. Here we go. So I like that a lie. Here's the for everything I'm bypassing the compressor. Now bear in mind, I've done no makeup gain, so that's pretty amazing. Ha, as you raise the ratio, the Sun will become firmer and smaller. And as you lower the ratio becomes softer but bigger. So you might want to think about how firm do I want this versus how big do I want this? So to the right, more firm, to the less to the left, left, less firm. Try saying that five times or I, or we go. So let's move on to threshold. Here. With threshold, it's important to turn the threshold knob so that it's not compressing all the time. Okay? Having uncompressed on emerging from the processor at an appropriate time, it adds a musical sense and it adds color and contrast to the sound. So let's try this out. We don't want this to compress the whole time. Okay? And those are the necessary steps to get what they call the expensive sound here is before, after. Now bear in mind also, you could have added a little bit of makeup gain to get some more out of it. And that could have sounded a little bit bigger overall, check it out. Okay, let's try this one more time on another signal. Let's try see what else I have in this session. One sec and another B here. Okay, I think I'll try that. Let me reduce the tempo. Okay, let's do it. So from the top again, we're going to initialize this attack wherever, release fast ratio all the way up. And then this to sensitive somewhere there. I'm going to bring that to 0. And why don't we go with the FET this time? Here we go. The very first step is to just get some gain reduction. Okay, Now we play with the attack and we just try and find the texture that we want. So thinner or thicker. Hey, then we set the release time in order to grow or to find some musical. Go in here. Okay. Yeah, That's nice. Are really hear that it's just pulling the sustain out fantastic. All right, so we're finding groove there with ratio. We're now thinking about if we go to the right, gets a little bit of what? Because remember, higher the racial, the smaller the sound and then the left the software. It is so more firm or less firm. Let's go see how that's two dynamics. Let's try and find a happy medium. Here's before bypassing case. Now we're going to threshold and it's important threshold now, so it's not compressing all the time. Setting will see the dynamic movement coming to rest at special moments. Otherwise, we're just going to get a flat, lifeless sound. So let's try and get the right ratio or the right threshold. Here we go. So there's that lifeless sound. Let's back off so we get something that is filled with life. Here we go. Bypass. Rlc is a little bit of makeup gain just to get some juice in there. Here we go. All right, team, Let's do one more. And then we will call it r and we're going to do a pad sound. So again, another compressor, this is deft Compressor by box angle ratio all the way up, attack anywhere fast release, and then threshold sensitive. So I believe yeah, it works this way, going from right to left. All right, I'm going to turn this punch feature off so we're not getting any coloration in this output gain is going to 0. You ready? Here we go. Going to set the attack. Wait a minute. We first have to get the gain reduction go. And here we go. Okay, good. So this is an interesting lesson real quick before we move on. The attack isn't set where it needs to be. This is why it's probably going to have a halfway. The signal never really reaches the compressor. So yeah, in other words, if the attack is all the way out here to the right, you may never get this to work appropriately. So maybe set it like a quarter halfway and you should be able to get the setup properly. Okay, so we've got the proper gain reduction has to do with attack. No, here we go. Now this one's interesting because it's reacting much differently, isn't it? Right? It's literally just squashing it. It's really fun to see how all of these different units respond. So I liked that somewhere in the middle. There is just completely open. Okay, let's set the release time. Now this is a much more sustained sound, so we'll see how this goes with the release, right? You have to you have to consider that if it doesn't move in announced just going to hold it down the whole time. So let's say. Okay, I feel like that's somewhat natural to giving it some grew feels like it's going in and out, right? It's, it's touching in and it's going back to its originally uncompressed ratio here. Here's before everything. Okay, so we set the racial so it's not too firm, right? A little bit softer and then threshold, that's not compressing it the whole time, right? This would be the whole time. Completely pushing it down. We find a happy medium. Or I before. And after. Yeah, you can hear that it is much more defined here. Just sounds a little bit, you know, just hazy, not really cleared on molded is just this This black. And you can hear the professionalism, that detail on the care. Once we compress our, we gotta try one more before we go. Hold on. Hold on. That's good. Yeah, That's great. I'm going to do that, but I want to be underneath that and see if I can just grab a quick 1 second. This, okay, now bear in mind the only thing that is actually being compressed are the synthesisers, okay, the synth, not the drums are. Let me choose Neutron 3 to close out on this amazing experience I'll bring up Shope is, well, this is how I recommend you guys learned compression. This is truly, I believe, the best way to learn it. Now only two here, but to see it in action. Now bear in mind, we also have some drums here. So maybe I'll maybe I'll mute the drums. Yeah, let me mute the drums. Take it back. I really want you to assess to see this. So 1 second, let me get these out of the way and then I'll bring them in whenever it's appropriate here. All right. Okay, so ratio all the way up, release fast, right? This one looks a little bit different, doesn't it? But it's all the same stuff, right? This is halfway. Threshold is set, somewhat sensible. And I'm going to move this all the way up. Okay? Just initializing it so it sounds proper. Here we go. All right, let's get some gain reduction. Here we go. All right, That's the first step. Let's play with the attack knob. Here we go. Listen to the aesthetics. Okay, now we're working with release. Musical time usable grew. Here we go. Okay, then we play with ratio and we're going for a firm, or softer or firmer and tighter or software more dynamic. Here we go. Yeah, for this one I really like this tight firm sounds. I'm going to go with 2201 and this is normally how I would approach it. I gotta be honest, but it's a fascinating take on it. And it's something that you should definitely have in your tool belt. Finally, with threshold, we're looking to turn the threshold so it's not compressing all the time. Yeah, here we go. All right, team, look, I hope that helped. I know this is not an easy subject to navigate. I seriously, thank you for the bottom of my heart for entrusting me. This is going to take some time, okay? Uh, really want you to take the time to learn this. If you just spend this time in your life, this chapter, you will not have to revisit this at a later moment. Just have to keep practicing. Gotta try it on all the various instruments in groups. And eventually, one day you will wake up and something will be different. There'll be something different about you about that day. When you sit to work on your DAW, you will have a thorough comprehension of compression. And you will have learned how to crack the compressor code. Thank you guys for spending some time with me here. I really appreciate the energy. We're all building something gray and something wonderful. We're going to look back and be so proud. And so thank you again from the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate the camaraderie, the friendship and just the love and the respect. So wish you guys the very best. Take good care of yourselves, take good care of your families, and always, always stay up. I'll see you guys next time. Cheers.