Hi, everybody. I'm rick beato today's everything music is called how the pros use compression It's how they use it on individual instruments and on the mix buss. It's coming up next Okay, so what is compression a compressor in music is something that makes music or instrument sound louder without? Increasing its amplitude amplitude is volume makes them sound louder without increasing his volume it's also used to turn down the loudest part of a sound to make it sound more even or Consistent so if I have a bass player, and he's playing where some notes are really loud and some notes are really soft I'm going to compress the bass so that it's more even and it sits in the mix a lot better because if I don't compress it It's going to sound like it's coming in and out and one of the things about your low-end in your mix is that you don't Want the low-end to be dropping in and out ratio ratios and threshold of the presser? Determine when the compressor actually kicks in and is working once it passes a certain threshold the compressor kicks in and starts to reduce The sound or the amplitude to one compression ratio is usually where you begin engaging compression one to one is No compression at all as you see here straight line That's just the sound directly through Two to one is the lowest ratio 4 to 1 6 to 1 10 to 1 and 20 to 1 over 20 to 1 is? Basically limiting. Here's your compression curves 1 2 1 boom that means it's not even on 2 2 1 You're just reducing the dynamics with slight bit 4 to 1 you're reducing a little more 20 to 1 and This is infinite to 1 you're limiting 20 to 1 is pretty much going to sound like limiting anyways limiting is where the sound goes up hits a brick wall and doesn't go any louder it flat tops the sound or flat tops the wave if you look at a sound that's been highly compressed and Tracking it literally is flat-topped meaning the waveforms Have a top on them like a little plateau and straight over that's one of the reasons. Why you don't typically? Compress Distorted electric guitars or since that have square waves Moog synthesizer sounds things like that or buzzy sounding pads You don't have to compress those sound because they're already compressed because they're basically square wave sound and a square wave goes zip zip zip zIp zip Square waves look like this They have flat tops on them because they are compressed You don't need to compress things that are already compressed like distorted electric guitars now if you want to use a Multiband compressor Which we'll talk about after to tone shape that's a completely different thing. We'll come to that in a minute. Okay the first thing We're going to talk about is ratio. You know your compressor when you see these things It says like two to one or four to one That is your ratio. Let me explain the ratio control whether you're going into logic or pro tools or Sonar whatever you're going into a two to one ratio Once a signal that coming into the compressor exceeds the threshold by two DB It will be attenuated Or turned down by one DB if the threshold was exceeded by 8 DB it would be turned Down by 4 DB so that's us 2 to 1 works if it were 16 DB and Being turned down by 8 TB and the other ratios worked the same way But typically 2 to 1 ratio is Mild Compression it start to get more Moderate around 3 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 is typically what mixers use on the mix? Buss okay. I based here that's kind of common, but mix buss is really Most big Mixers will use a 4 to 1 ratio on the mix buss. We'll talk about that more in a minute Then you start getting into medium Compression around 6 to 1 or so and then you start getting into stronger compressor on 10 to one that's recert Compressing your room mics where you want to get that kind of lead zeppelin when the levee breaks kind of sound is? Compression of those room mics so they start to pump and it sound like they have a lot of energy Next we have attack and release times Ok the attack time simply is how fast does your compressor? Grab the sound if you have a slow attack time it lets more of the transient get through the transiency initial stripe I guess their drum has a very quick transient and Then the sound decays fast or a piano has a quick transient or acoustic guitar Did you notice how the piano and snare drum waves looked almost identical they have this huge transient here? and then it tapers afterwards this transient is what you want to control sometimes if You heavily compress it it will literally flat top That and compress the bandwidth that's what compression does right there same with the acoustic guitar It's got a lot of the spikes in it spikes right the dynamic range of those spikes can be controlled by compression same with bass parts You'll see a lot of these really sharp transients on the tacks and then you might see the Volume the amplitude go up and down what you want to do is you want to smooth that and make it more consistent? That's one of the things you use compression for if you have a fast attack time on something that has a quick transient You're going to hear the compression you may want the sound actually a lot of times you want that snare to really attack? but Generally with drums the slower attack times give you more punch because you really want those transients here in the top track I'm going to play the uncompressed snare and sounds like this That's hardly any sustain. This is a very compressed snare No, so much longer the waveform is Jiri here. They are played back-to-back. You can really hear the difference Things that you might want to use a fast attack on are really the bass if you have a bass player that plays really inconsistently You're going to want to have a fast attack time because a lot of times that initial transients are really inconsistent You'll see these spikes all over the place. You just look at the track in your dawt say oh
That's really inconsistent because you can see this transients or acoustic guitar same thing if you want to really Level out that sound the pick attack and make it much more consistent and punchy actually a fast attack really works same thing that sense sounds if you have really quick transients on the sounds a Fast attack will make the thing jump out of the mix a lot of times no vocals a lot of times when I'm sure Vocals I'll use two compressors. This is on the tracking part of it I use one compressor to kind of slow down the Transients Because you don't want your vocals to be jumping all over then you can go through and ride these things And you might not want your vocal to be compressed really at all But a lot of times you want that sound so sometimes I'll have a compressors set at a really slow setting like a two-To-one Ratio with a slow attack time, but then I'll have another one Set with a higher ratio behind it with a fast attack time okay, but I won't have the input up this side So only certain peaks so grab that so it'll grab any really loud transients So you don't have to go back through and ride these things in the mix all the time you don't want to be going up? And ride hand riding every single attack if you don't have to sometimes you have to do that You'll know just by looking at the waveforms. What have the really sharp transients things like drums though I like to use a slow attack time because I want those transients to come through that's what gives you your attack That's which gives your aggressiveness and your punch the slow attack times So your release time is how fast the compressor lets go of the sound? How quickly it lets go of it if you want to get that Led zepplin when the levee breaks sound? So you can hear the difference between the dry and compressed room when I go to the compressed sound I'm using a high compression ratio About 20 to 1 and I have the release time set just right So that has that Pumping that you want to hear and gives you that led zepplin sound a great time to use a long release time on your compressor Is when you have a bass note that dies off too fast Notice how the first note tapers off check out the second bass note That's been compressed with a high ratio of 6 to 1 and a long release time You know so this bass note here tapers off But you see how fat the back end of this be that's what the compression is doing this fat back-end Here is making a note have a lot more sustain and amplitude So the bass does not drop off and taper like it does here So you use that? Compressor to hold up the back end of the note and keep it steady so that your low-end doesn't dissipate your attack and release times Are really crucial on the mix buss? Most Mixers will put set the mix cuts at a four to one ratio And if you're using an SSL compressor, which is pretty much been the standard I'm talking plug-in or if you're mixing on a console That's pretty much been the standard of for mixing as a mixed buss compression for the last 30 years 35 years With the exception of the Chris Lord-alge it uses a focusrite red compressor on his mix bus the attAck time will vary usually from 1 to 10 milliseconds and the release time if you're using an sSL compressor Most Mixers whether it's a plug-in waves as one Universal Audio has one Ssl. Makes one there's many different G+ compressors that are out there in the plug-in world most mixers use the auto release the same goes for the alan smart c 2 if you have the hardware unit or a software emulation of it That's just a copy of the g series compressor bios a cell or the focusrite Red 3 That's a compressor crystal red LG Uses he will use the auto release on that as well the attack time will vary really dependent on what you're mixing What the tempo is a punch you want to make it if you have slower attack times, you're going to get more punch But sometimes you want that compressor to grab things and glue it together So you use a faster attack time as far as the emulations of the ss. LG + compressor Steven slate makes one you ad makes one waves makes one and Ssl. Makes one I've tried them all they're all fairly similar. I've actually put them on a mix buss I've matched the input to where you're getting the exact same gain reduction and They're pretty similar I guess it sells a lot. I like you 80s a lot, but you know I own all of them, so You know sometimes I'll do a mix and I'll go from song to song and I'll use a different Ssl, buss compressor around it so it's really a kind of a personal taste And it's depending on the song anyways now I've been talking about all these compressors, but we haven't even discussed types of compressors You've heard a lot of these terms like optical or opto compressor Your standard optical compressors that are most commonly seen in plug-in form or in hardware units the la to eight By tell atronics or Universal audio has a great emulation of an l a 3 a 2 2 XC L-1B That's a really common compressor That's used in Nashville every time I go up there people use it to track with vocals and things like that It's great on bass these things are great on based La-2a Incredibly Great, Daniel, Lanois Who's a phenomenal producer produced Peter gabriel's records he brings you tues many of their records? He use it on everything and vocals guitars. You name it Chris Lord-Alge II this is kind of just go to compressor La 3a for electric guitars if you're looking for something That's going to grab really quick transients That's not the compressor to use la qa though on a bass anything has low-end like a bass guitar killer sounds great the fet compressor field effect transistor well the main one that everyone knows is the Ua 1176 is probably the most common compressor and most widely used compressor in any Genre of music Both in the hardware form and in the softer form there are great emulations. I own the waves ones I own the bomb Factory I own the Uad ones I like the uad ones I like the fact that they are the ones that Did their own modeling of their own hardware? I think they sound fantastic? These are very colored sounding, and they're not transparent Which means the same thing these are very colored setting I says I say not transparent oil means the same thing They start with a four to one ratio They have super fast attack and release times 11 70s a bit confusing to people Regarding the attack and release time because they're actually backwards from what you would think the fastest attack is 7 and the fastest release is 7 on it so all the way to the right for tracking vocals Go to compressor right there killer sounding at the bottom here the VCA compressor voltage controlled amplifier Ssl g + or you can find a rack unit 384th called the neve 33609 Compressor limiter these are mixed buss compressors. They're mastering compressors. They're great at handling Program information meaning, they're great at handling mixes if you can afford that the real ones You'd be psyched, but the emulations are fantastic. I have The waves ones I've uad ones on both of these I love the uad version of the 33609 here this is really a killer compressor and it's actually a lot more versatile than the ssl buss compressor because you can use that on other things and Because of the limiting function because it has a compressor and a limiter with it It's it's really really useful the 4th compressor design is a variable mu it's an older design of gain control that use a rebuy Esteem Tube for its gain reduction They actually lack a traditional threshold and ratio but rely on Input and output controls to drive the compressor the most common kind that you see and think of is the fairchild 660 or 670 and 650 is this mono unit 672 stare unit think of the beatles think of pink Floyd things like that that these are Incredibly rich sounding compressors are incredibly expensive the emulations are very good that are made of them a lot of companies make emulations of plug-ins Emi made their own compressor to emulate in a hardware form the fairchild it's called the Emi t Ge one two four one three that's the Abbey road compressor and those are Incredibly good sounding chandler makes a copy called the Tg one and it's one of my favorite compressors ever it's really expensive hard unit But it's unbelievable on drum room mics It is so fat you can take the the weakest sounding drum room sound Put it through that and all of a sudden you sound like Led zeppelin the manly variable mu is also It's named after this of course and it's a really great sounding compressor to words I would use to describe this glue and rich sounding these these are really rich sounding. They had a lot of harmonic distortion Information to them and they really make your mix sound fat and glue it together you have to experiment with them especially with the input and output controls to get them to compress just how you want it to but You can ever afford a real fairchild. They're phenomenal you can use the fairchild plugins. They're incredibly good sounding I own the uad steven slate and ways I use all three of them if you want to get that drum sound like tomorrow never Knows by the Beatles it's on Revolver That's a fairchild 660 I use them on the mix bus when I want something to have a vintage vibe Or if I really want to compress the drums in a real particular way it Squishes them it makes them sound super explosive other types of compressors that I use all the time Multiband compressor z' I've been using them for ever I started out years ago with the McGee s PMC 2000 and then they introduced the Ml 4000 I remember talking with Chad blake who's one of the best mixers out there and chad uses this ML. 4000 Multi band limiter on his mix bus what's great about it? Is that you can use it instead of an Eq you can take a sound you could take a guitar son? You can take a keyboard son And radically change it because you can select What areas of the sound like an Eq you can compress them then you can move the volume sliders and actually? Completely change the tone, and I actually find them more effective than Eq's in some cases If there's a problem Frequency and an instrument or I want to just radically alter a sound I'll go with a Multiband compressor Most of them have at least four bands And you can move the crossover point the C6 is actually a six band fabfilter Pro-Mb is Fantastic all the fabfilter there Kate is one of the bad. I really like fabfilter stuff ISotope Ozone 7. I have their whole suite, so I'm a big fan of Multiband compressor. 'he's like I said I've used him on the mix but sometimes I'll put a multiband compressor on the mix bus Before my buss compressor, and I will shape the mix with it and mix into the buss compressor number, two Here's sidechain our ducting it's using a signal to trigger the compressor Let's say you get a snare drum that sounded really bad in your overheads, and you wanted to put in a sample To cover it up And you didn't want the real snare drum in there you can trigger the compressor to duck the snare from the overhead track Every time it hits and they'll just disappear out of there, so that your snare sample can be heard Unimpeded by what's coming through the overhead mics? Also, this is really used a lot in Edm music You can have a scent bass sound and have a kick drum going and when your kick hits what you can do is you can send the kick signal to the compressed bass channel and use a Compressor plug-in that has a key gate in it so you send this bus signal to it And you say let's say you send it up buss 10 you put the input of the compressors key Gate to buss 10 So every time the kick is it ducks the level of the base So it makes the kick much more present and punchy and it Keeps you from having to do things with Eq that you don't really want to do because you want to keep your low-end really full Some of the compressors that have key gaining waves each compressor the api 2500 and the Fabfilter Pro-Mb these are all great Side-chaining and ducting and compressors and the last thing on here is parallel compression Most of you know what parallel compression is now because virtually all compressors have mix knobs on them basically they call it New York Style compression That's what they call it years and years ago But it's basically blending an uncompressed sound with a heavily compressed sound I love parallel compression on all different instruments It's really great on vocals if you have a vocal that's not quite sitting in the mix and sometimes just it's buried Having the parallel compression We have that really rest track that when the initial one is not as compressed drops below that threshold The track with parallel compression comes up And it fills it in and makes it sound way fatter like I said most Compressors that are out today in plug-in form having mix knob on them one of my favorite ones that I've used forever is the glue I love the glue. It's kind of like an emulation of an sSL compressor. I like to use it on my drum buss It's really cool because you can shape the sound with it and using that mixed knob you can Really compress it but you can then back it off So you don't really hear the pumping on it But yet It just makes the drum some way way more tight and solid also The Kush audio ubk one you saw me use it earlier in the video on my drum room mics I've had that plug-in since it came out, and it's really really great. It's got a lot of different things That's got you can add harmonic distortion with it You can have compression it emulates five different compressors And it's one of my favorite plugins period Here's the plugins I like to use on my drum set for both Tracking and mixing because I have some of these hardware units for example on the kick I like to track with a DBX 160 Vu because I have one but most of the time I'll track with no compression on it it depends on what I'm doing But for mixing you ad makes a great emulation of it's really snappy I also like the waves SsL channel strip. I like the metric a low channel strip It's really versatile, and it's got a great Eq on it. It's got a compression and a great Eq on there I like the DBX 160 Ssl, Channel strip the Ua 1176 or Bond Factory there are many different ones the wave ones are great the crystalloid LG ones I like the metric a low channel strip again if I need that Eq along with the compression that has such a Tight cue that you can really notch out unwanted ring if it's out of tune with the track I also like a de-stressor the plug-in the uae plug-in distress or plug-in and I own the de-stresser And I'll use it sometimes tracking the snare for the times. I like the ssL channel strip because I'm always Compressing them just a little bit and I'm going to take out some more 500 Hertz or so or maybe for between 4 and 500 Hertz? My overheads. I don't compress the overheads a lot. I like to ride them up and down I like to ride them on the hits and then ride them back because I don't like to influence the drum son too much So I don't like to compress them if I'm going to compress them I'm going to might do some radical stuff. I like this 1176 plug in the Ssl channel strip plug-in channel strip biometric Halo, I like the renaissance channel strip I like Channel strips because I Can shape the sound if I want to take mid-range out of the overheads for some reason or if I want to take a lot? Of low end of the overheads and use them assemble mics I can do that because I like to have that compressor and Eq Together a lot of people ask me. What do you like? Do you like putting Eq first or last it depends depends on what the sound is you don't want to accentuate? Something that has a weird Eq With compression so you'll Eq it before But if you like the sound you want to shape it after it's been compressed and you put the Eq after On the room mics my favorite room mic Compressor Plug-in is the cush audio you BK1 you see it in the video here. I like the sSL channel strip I like the MC 2000 by 8 McGee Sp. That's a great Multiband compressor sound kill around room mics any of the 1176 Emulations the bomb Factory the Chris Lord-alge e once at waste makes. They're all great. They were great and the de-stresser Emulation works great as well compressor plugins alike on bass La-2a I love it for tracking as well as my favorite tracking compressor for bass The DBX 160 is my second favor one that sounds killer for tracking and mixing 1176 Works great thing about the le to A Fairchild these things really retain the low-end a lot especially the la-2a Retains the big bottom end and just levels it out nicely But the fairchild is an excellent choice as well for the bass on acoustic guitar I always compress acoustic guitar when I'm tracking so I'm going to use something like my de-stresser 1176 Something is fast. I don't like to over compress the acoustic I'm tracking because you a lot of times you get stuck with something that you don't want but in mix I always Compression or most of the time these compression these used to guitar 1176 Plug-in le to a plug-in a lot of times they use a Multiband compressor And I have all different Multiband compressor z' they work really well the wave cla guitar Fader pack works really great because it's got Compression on it that sounds good, and it's got effects along with it So you can actually do everything right in it for electric guitar if it's a distorted electric guitar I usually do not compress it at all. It's already super compressed but for a clean electric guitar if it has a lot of like a skank part onsen is going to grab it fast La 3 a 1176 DBX 160, but a lot of times those things I will put compression while I'm tracking on it Maybe even with a pedal before hands and a piano I pretty much only use compression if I'm doing rock music or any type of electronic music if I'm doing jazz or Well you get it from recording country. I'll use compression. It helps to jump out of the mix I want something in the ubk Compressor the Cache Audio Ssl channel strip is great 1176 Fairchild is great the Api 2500 It could be a lot of different things because generally to make the piano sit in the track You're going to want to use maybe some compression, and you're going to Eq it as well Really depends if it's a piano feature, then you're not going to use it so much because you don't want it to you Don't want to hear it. That's the thing. It's really all It really depends of what's going on in the track with the piano but if you're trying to cut through a Dense rock track And you've got piano in there you're going to be using some compression on it for vocals have a bunch of go-to Compressors it really depends when I'm tracking I pretty much always use compression I'll use an 1176 or a de-stressor or sometimes I'll use an la-2a That's a slow compressor And then grab the peaks with a distress or something that's really fast it can grab it just the really really loud peaks 11:36 distress or fairchild if you want to color in your vocals DBX 160 La-2a is a great vocal compressor La3 is a great Compressor up in Nashville people on vocals use the Tube tech Cl. 1b I've seen people use that for years in Nashville That's kind of a go-to compressor for vocals on the drum box the glue is one of my favorite compressors. I love the fabfilter Compressor I love all their products their gate there I mean they they make great great plugins named 33609 and the SSL channel strip Those are my go-to drum buss plugins. I'm going to go through a few buss compressors I'm going to turn them on and off will the tracks playing. This is a track. I wrote with a Good friend of mine Australian, DJ. Tidy back in 2013 it's called live this Lie and I'm going to put it on the mix buss so I'm going to go between four different buss compressors just so you can kind of hear what they do and Make up your own mind. So this tune is called live this lie, okay? I'm going to put on four different buss compressors Well, this mix is playing you can see they're all bypassed by the brown bypass button So when you see when I click one on it'll look like that, so I'm going to switch between them Well the track is playing so check it out starting out with nothing And when can we meet I'll see you at the Chateau Don't make me wait. I miss you when you're gone I was the things you have never known So many faces we where where? Hey I Tried to set all the levels so that the gain reduction is about minus 4 DB So that you could at least hear what they're doing I'd be curious to see what your thoughts are if there's any that you thought were better than others The Glue is basically an emulation of an sSL buss compressor Then I had the universal audio Ssl buss compressor Then I had stephen slade's Ssl buss compressor, and I had the uad neve 33609 Compressor which is a completely different flavor really curious to see what you think about the difference between them? That's all for now Please subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel and if you're interested in the beato book you can go to my website at wwlp.com And find it there, thanks for watching
His channel is very much worth subbing to.
Yee I love Rick Beato
This is awesome. Thank you for sharing