(instrumental music)
- [Female Speaker] Let's compress this vocal.
So I've already got the EQ on here,
I've got his soloed, and I have
one section of the vocal isolated.
So I'm going to go to the next
insert point here, and I'm going to
navigate to Dynamics this time.
Let's load this Bomb Factory 1176.
This is native to Pro Tools.
So right here this might just
be confusing and overwhelming,
but let's take a look at all of
the different parameters here,
and we'll start by looking at this meter.
So however far this needle goes
up the meter, that's how much
gain reduction, that's how much
compression is actually happening.
So you can see here I have 10 decibels,
and then it goes straight to 20
so it gets a little bit more extreme
the further you get up the meter.
So we want to set the input, which
is equivalent to the threshold
so that we're docking or compressing
a tasteful amount, maybe somewhere
between five, six, definitely
under 10 dB for a vocal.
So let's start by doing that and
see if we can get this input knob set properly.
- [Female Vocalist] It's not that easy,
too much of a sacrifice.
Don't, it's not that...
- [Female Speaker] So that's actually pretty good.
It looks like I'm getting six
or seven dB of compression or reduction.
Let's just adjust this and you
can see what's happening as I
raise or lower the input.
- [Female Vocalist] It's not that easy,
too much of a sacrifice.
Don't, it's not that easy,
too much of a sacrifice.
Don't, it's not that easy.
- [Female Speaker] Let's go to a different
part of the song and see what's happening here.
- [Female Vocalist] You don't remember them,
they remember you.
You turn around and there they are,
staring back at you, put you in your place.
- [Female Speaker] So a lot less
compression in this area, but that
makes since because we've got less gain, less signal.
- [Female Vocalist] Oh, close your eyes,
and see the light.
- [Female Speaker] So this is a good level for it.
So now we need to set the output
so that we're getting pretty much
the same amount of signal as we
were before and after.
A lot of people use compression to
get additional gain or volume
which is the incorrect use for this tool.
We're just evening out the dynamic range.
So let's go here, this is a very dynamic area.
You can see there's lots of peaks
and valley's and then I'm going to
just set this output so that as
I bypass it you don't really notice
a change in the volume.
- [Female Vocalist] It's not that easy,
too much of a sacrifice.
It's not that easy.
- [Female Speaker] So it's a lot louder
naturally so we need to raise the output here.
- [Female Vocalist] It's not that easy,
too much of a sacrifice.
It's not that easy, too much of a sacrifice.
It's not that easy, too much of a sacri...
- [Female Speaker] I think I went
a little too hot, it's a little bit louder.
Like a little bit is fine you
just don't want to be using this
to give yourself more volume.
So once this is set, I've got about
seven below 10 dB...
of gain reduction
with the input and we can see that metering here.
Then I'm going to raise the output level
so that as I bypass this plugin
we're not getting extra volume.
We're just using it to even out the dynamic range.
Here's where we set the ratio
so four-to-one is a good setting for a vocal.
It's subtle, it's not overly compressed.
You don't want to get rid of the
dynamics you just want to manage
the dynamics a bit better.
So this 20-to-one would be more
of a limiter situation, and we
can just be here at four-to-one,
and that's how you're going to
set the compressor for your vocal.
(Electronic music and drum beat)