Compression Pedals explained

all right guys it is 5:00 on Friday and we're going to talk about compression is the biggest question that's been asked to me for months what is compression why do I need it you it you know you name it okay so let's talk about what it is and that hopefully will explain why you would need it so compression well here's what compression does it's really referred to sometimes as a compression limiter and sometimes as a compression sustainer now here's what's interesting about that compression does two things and because it does one thing that one thing creates the secondary thing so even though you might have need for one of more one or the other of the of the two things compressor does you get the residual of the other so let's start with that first let's talk about what compression does what it does is it sets a limit and it says hey nothing will be basically or than this nothing will be troubler than this and nothing will be louder than this so it doesn't matter how much base you turn up is matter how much trouble you turn up it doesn't matter how bright your guitar is or how bass your guitar is it doesn't matter how hard you hit or how light you hit nothing will go above this volume level but it's compression which means it comes from the other side too which means if your bass is weak I'll bring it up if your treble is weak I will bring that up if you're picking in other words if your note is not strong I will push that up so when you pick light it's this loud when you pick up when you pick hard it's this loud you get it everything comes right in the middle it says this is the sound now how does it do that well here's an interesting thing I'm going to use this analogy you take a pebble and you throw it in the lake it breaks the water line the splash is the most intense the second the pebble hits the water lines that make sense what it would do is I almost imagine like we put a glass ceiling on the water the water hits the glass ceiling and then falls back down faster that water hitting the lake spreads out in other words like a little wave and so the energy is stopped from being P right like Pete right says okay the energy can't go this high so it's got to go somewhere so it goes sideways so a limiter compression limiter by setting a limit and put and setting on element on both sides of how loud something will be and how loud something has to be it has to do something with that sonic energy so what it does is it pushes it sideways that's the way I like to think of it which means sustained so nothing explained it better than any G chord let's take a base of G chord when you hit a G chord because you're going across all six strings these strings the sound sounds the sonic properties are dominant basses bass frequencies are dominant treble frequencies are dominant they stick out so while your bass drum and your cymbals always kind of poke out right okay here we go ready now will you hear really is kind of like a bass what I call a boom ling and now as you hear the bass part and then you hear the hot trouble right we get that chord right base in the trouble now if we go ahead and hit compression you'll notice an even disbursement of all those notes across now you're hearing more about for Lillian you're hearing all the notes okay so that evens out now the reason why you'd want that is because you don't want one sound overtaking another sound it's used in studios all the time to even out drums and bass guitar right bass players have a problem with when they slap that the one frequency dominates the other without compression it's kind of like this with compression again you hear the thump and the pluck bigger so it is a dominant sound okay so that being said that's what a compressing limited limiter side of a compression pedal would do so let's talk about the sustainer side well like say the energy has to go somewhere so let's explain where it goes and the best way to explain that is a country lick okay a really popular country lick is to basically play this you know kind of you know now what happens when you hit I know is it does the same thing that analogy does with a pebble in the lake and then words when you hit the note the note is most intense the first time that hits it the energy is hit the notes struck it is immediately the loudest and then immediately falls off in other words as soon as I hit just like that splash bam slash goes up comes right back down right so boom and dive okay so the notes do not hang around right if I hit the compressor here's where we go see how much longer they hang around not only to the sustain but the notes don't decay is fast in other words you could think right and hang around again without compression with compression okay so that's what compressor is going to do for you it's going to even out your sound which may or may not be something you're interested in but also at sustain let's give you another reference since we did the country lick let's do one of the most famous licks in the last ten years which is John Mayer with compression without with compressor the lick sounds like this okay without compression the link now sounds like this obviously John Mayer is a fan of compression so here we see all the notes just their plump big because it helps fatten up the notes because again if the note is not if the note doesn't have enough base for frequencies the compressor will intensify those bass frequencies and if it has too much of a brightness to it because a single note it'll take it down it makes the note rounder and fuller it also chicken pickin I kind of lick helps for that lake us evens out again those kind of thumping notes so why would you want compression that's why is because if I sustained to your individual notes also chords too sometimes if you're playing in a band you got to hit a chord right think about this the courts can sustain twice as long I'd be a long Jane right the reason that's interesting is because one of the most common ways to do that same thing would be with delay right lazy you wouldn't you delay you can use compression I can use the compressor way more than the way to give me those sustain notes so that's one of the other uses for compression so you have to decide if compression work for you but most importantly you have to know how it works and that's what it's doing I hope that it kind of explained it again it's a very technical subject there's tons of compressors but here's what I can tell you about compressors what you want to find out about compressors it leans one way or another in other words it's more of a limiter and less the sustainer it's more of a sustainer and less of a limiter in that scenario you have to figure out which one of the two things you really need you need notes to hang around for a long time or do you want your sound to be even out a little bit the last thing I want to talk about is distortion real quick a lot of players play compression with distortion and they say they don't like it and some say they like it I just want you understand it because the way compression works it adds noise take overdrive add the compression you get that big hiss and the reason is is because almost like another overdrive is stacking so it's really you gotta understand that compression has a little effect on distortion because distortion already has sustain built into it distortion by the means of how it works in the overdrive it is creating its own sustain so I'm not saying don't use it for that I'm just saying it's redundant I sometimes use it because the same thing I'm trying to get this lick to hang a little bit longer and maybe compress will help that but also with the distortion it evens out that tone which is sometimes not very nice because again you want a tree to be articulate alright guys thanks your time know you're here

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 140,660

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Id: iAu-Mm7Croo

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2015