hello it's Patrick here from the GarageBandGuide.com in this video I'm
gonna take a closer look at garage bands compressor plug-in it may not be the
most glamorous flashy or exciting effect in garage bands plug-in arsenal but rest
assured the built-in compressor as one of the most useful available to you like
a lot of garage bands plugins the compressor is a stripped-down version of
the one found in Apple's broader Logic Pro 10 the garage band version of the
compressor has less controls to play with and a stripped-down GUI it's worth
noting however that all of the presets remain the same in both versions not
sure what compression actually does to your audio here's a quick refresher in a
nutshell applying compression to a track in GarageBand lowers the volume of loud
sounds to the same level as the quieter sounds you can then raise the gain of
your compressed track having reduced any Peaks or troughs in the volume how much
compression you want to apply depends entirely on the type of instrument or
genre of music you're working with you wouldn't use the same compression
settings on a face-melting guitar solo as you would on a violin melody or the
same setup on a drum track as you would on a vocal track for example you can
find the compressor plug-in in the plugins drop-down menu with and
GarageBand smart controls window I should point out that you do have other
options there are other compressor plugins within the plugins drop down
menu we're gonna focus on this basic compressor as it does have everything
you need to compress your audio while keeping things pretty straightforward
and simple to use GarageBand compressor has four settings that you can use
the threshold controls the point at which the compressor kicks in when you
click on the up or down arrows or adjust the slider a decibel level is displayed
any sound above this decibel level will be compressed do you want only the
loader sounds and attract compressed or do you want to really level out your
sound by setting the threshold at a lower volume the ratio determines how
much volume to reduce the higher the ratio the more volume is reduced and
squashed while a lower ratio will reduce less volume so for example if you select
a ratio of 2 to 1 for every one decibel that your audio goes over your threshold
setting its volume will be reduced by 2 decibels if you select a ratio of 30 to
1 the volume will be reduced by 30 decibels for every one decibel over your
threshold setting the attack governs the speed at which compression kicks in how
much attack you use depends entirely on what it is that you're compressing snare
drums kick drums and certain vocals all traditionally have a fast attack setting
whereas pianos guitars and other instruments we're preserving the dynamic
performance and the needs are so natural are important generally have a slower
attack speed remember that compression reduces load
zones down to the same volume as the quieter zones once this has happened you
need to boost the output level to make up for the lost volume you do this by
you guessed it increasing the game using the built-in presets as a starting
point it's fairly easy to get things sounding good fast here are some
examples of how these presets affect different recorded instruments and
sounds and GarageBand and some adjustments I've made to fine-tune them
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so there you have it that is an overview of garage bands compressor plug-in which
of garage bands plugins do you want to see me cover next leave a comment and
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I've been Patrick from the Garage Band guide calm and I'll see you next time
bye for now