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Good morning children. Today we're going
to talk about compressors. Compressors.
Who came up with that idea? Well,
originally early 20th centuryish,
compressors were invented as a way to
prevent equipment from blowing up from
too much level. For example, you had a
guy who knew how to read music, who
would follow the orchestra reading the
score while the orchestra was playing
live, and his job was to anticipate just
how loud the orchestra would get and
compensate on the feder, bring it down
when the orchestra would get too loud
and overload the gear. Simple. Somebody
came down and say, "Hm, I bet you I can
make a machine that does that
automatically." So, they made the
machine. They fired the guy. And then as
time went by, compressors got better and
cheaper, some derivative uses were
invented. But really, that's what it is.
It's an automatic gain writing device.
Meaning, it's a machine that's designed
to keep levels consistent. That's it. As
an example of what I just said, I'm
going to play you a vocal track that has
a lot of dynamic range level
changes. I'm going to play it raw. Then
I'm gonna attempt to write it by hand
and then I will let the compressor write
it for me. So first flat sounds like
this. Don't think I need to tell you the
details. I can't do those things again.
All right. Nice. Simple preorus.
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Obviously quite a bit louder. Maybe
leaned in the mic. you do the
same. Let's get down to
business. You know what we're both here
for. So, obviously the chorus gets much
louder. Maybe it's a punch in. Maybe
it's assembled from a different take.
Maybe he leaned into the microphone very
much. Anyway, I can't have that. Um, so
I'm going to try and write it by hand.
Here it comes with my finger trying to
write this levels from the same spot.
I need to tell you the details. I can't
do those things again. Okay, that's my
reference. I'm going to take it down 3
dBsish.
Not bad. And here comes the chorus.
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Let's get down to business.
you know what we're both here.
So obviously here I underestimated just
how loud the chorus was going to get and
the word same caught me by surprise. So
say if I'm to do that part again, I'm
going to start from the pre chorus here
for example and I was about minus three
on the pre chorus. Let's do that again
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and then stay here and then come down.
you do the
same. Let's get down to business.
You know what we're both here for.
So, that's much better. I kind of missed
on the Let's Get Down. I think that kind
of dynamic range would be okay with the
full track. Now, let's listen to the
compressor doing the same thing without
me doing anything. So, I'm going to put
the level back at zero here and turn my
compressor on. This is a UA emulation of
an LA2A which is often used to compress
vocals. Here you go. Check it out.
I can't do those things again. So here
it did very little because that's our
reference level. And then
that's nice. It's still a little louder
but contained chorus. You do the
same. Let's get down to
business. You know what we're both here
for. So, obviously the compressor did a
better job than I did at catching the
word same and then the word
lets. But it changes the sound. Check it
out. Let's play this track flat. No
compression at say minus 6 dB to
compensate for the fact that it's louder
manually. Here you go.
Let's get down to
business. You know what we're both here.
Nice. Now, I'm going to put it back at 0
dB and let the compressor take the level
down. Let's get down
to
here. If you listen carefully, you heard
a difference between the manual gain
writing and the automatic gain writing.
And if you did not hear the difference,
that's okay. Press rewind. Play it again
and again until you hear the difference.
You will. The key here is to form our
taste on the benefits of compression
versus the drawbacks of compression and
use that taste to decide whether we need
compression or not on a track basis.
Let's listen to a bunch of tracks with
and without compression to learn what it
does to music. Here's a snare drum, just
a one bar loop on a live snare drum from
an actual drummer playing an actual drum
set. Pay attention to the transients,
the ghost notes, the tone of the loud
hits. Just try and learn how the snare
sounds by itself. Here it
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comes. Okay. So, I'm going to use a
built-in DJ rack compressor that comes
with ProTools, and I'm going to use
presets because the point here is not to
learn how to get there. The point is to
hear different tones and imagine
different tones without touching the
compressor. So, I made some presets uh
on this snare drum. The way it sounds
right now, the peaks annoying me a
little bit. I I don't like that point. I
don't like the tone of that point. I
think the microphone was a little too
close to the snare, and it does that
sound I don't like. So, I made a preset
that attempts to tuck in just those
peaks on two and four. I'll play the
track. Two bars raw, two bars
compressed. Here we go.
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So that's cool. That does what I wanted.
But that's a very utilitarian version of
it. What if I wanted to manipulate the
sound a little bit? What if I wanted to
raise those ghost notes because they're
very interesting to me. I like all that
little detail is playing. Well, what I
would do is I would attempt to take
those peaks down so that they're quiet
enough that I can raise the whole track
up and I can hear more ghost notes.
Right? If the peaks are softer, then the
ghost notes are going to be able to go
louder. So, I made a a little preset for
that called raise ghost notes. Fancy
that. Two bars without, two bars with
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So obviously there there's a compromise
because the peak gets squashed.
Um maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's
not. Maybe the overheads are going to
compensate for that. I don't know. But
it gives me an idea. What if I wanted to
really change the tone of the snare and
go crazy on it and completely crush it?
So here's two bars sound and two bars
with a crush.
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Obviously a completely different sound.
So now we have the same compressor,
three different settings, three
different approaches. And so to the
question, well, how do you compress a
snare? The answer is, I don't know. What
do you want it to sound like? And that's
the
key. Let's listen to a bass drum. In
this case, I'm using an Oxford
compressor. Right now, it's bypassed.
I'll play two bars flat and two bars
with the setting I made when I mixed
this record. Check it out.
In this case, I used the compressor to
give the bass drum more attack and a
weird kind of sustain thing. Probably
because at the time I was more in a
fiction mode than a documentary mode. I
think it is very important to have a
vision of what the sound should be like
before we start fiddling with the
equipment and let that vision dictate
the settings, not the other way
around. Ultimately, it's all about taste
and that's the beauty of the whole
thing. Everybody raves about the sound
of older recordings or what they
remember they sound like. Sometimes take
a second to listen to an old Beatles
recording for example. They're available
like Love Me Do on your studio monitors.
Ask yourself, does it sound the way I
remember? Go ahead, listen. I'll
wait. Interesting, isn't it? At the
time, they didn't use compression much,
if at all. They did have tape. Now, tape
does something that's sort of kind of
like compression, but not really.
Probably it would be a good idea to
listen to what tape does. So, let's
print that drum track to tape and
compare. That's me setting up tape the
best I can. It's a skill. I have a
Studio B67 quarter inch. Quarter inch
sounds great. We'll be using 30 inch per
second and an old piece of Studio Master
900 tape, which sounds great. Now, every
piece of tape sounds different. Every
tape machine sounds different. Every
speed sounds different, but we're not
going to worry about that. We're just
going to try and focus on what tape in
general can do to music and then we can
discuss the rest another day. So, here's
how it's going to work. Two positions.
When the switch is up and this light is
lit, you're on input. No tape sound.
When the switch is down and this light
is lit, you're on ripro. You're hearing
tape. We'll start without. I'll play two
bars with and two bars without. Here we
go.
Cool. If you haven't heard it, I'll play
it again. Pay attention to the bass. Is
it the same? Is it fatter, more forward
or backwards? And then also the snare,
especially the attack of the snare. Is
it peaky? Is it like aggressive,
angular, or is it different? A little
softer? Is the tone a little darker? Ask
yourself those questions. Okay, here we
go. First without and then with
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cool. That's a good sound. I personally
like that sound. I made many records
before I even had a chance to listen or
use tape. And I remember spending a lot
of time trying to imitate this feel and
the stone, usually using compressors.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it
doesn't. We can discuss that. But until
then, I thought it would be worth a
thought. That was interesting, too.
Ultimately, tape went away. Since then,
we got digital big consoles, insane
track counts. We also got the fact that
people no longer play in the room
together to cut the song, which means
that dynamics are no longer molded
together. They kind of sound unnatural
unless you do something about it. And
then modern music sounds more and more
in your face. uh people swallow the
microphone and if you've ever seen a
bass drum swallow a microphone, it's an
ugly ugly
sight. All this to say that compressors
have become over time more and more
needed and
useful. Fortunately, every dock comes
with one, two, three, four free
compressors. You can even buy more and
then hardware units are more and more
affordable and
available.
However, it's not because I got them
that I know how to use them. So, I
propose we spend the next few videos
exploring compressor controls one by one
to learn to make the settings we'll need
to achieve the sounds we're looking for.
Hey, voila.
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