How To Use Compressor Pedals

all right guys how you doing it's Robair hope you're well thank you for checking out my youtube channel for today's installment of some guitar related stuff in this video I wanted to talk to you about compression and using compressors in your guitar sound a few of you guys sent me messages actually asking me about this like where do I find the most use for compressor in my guitar town my pedal board so you know what's the use for it whilst I'm sure some of you guys are going well I know exactly why I'd use a compressor probably some of you were going I actually don't know so let me clear it up for you in a nutshell compression is where you take high and low transients and you can press them together so everything sounds perceivably louder dynamics become less dynamic almost in the sense like for example let's say you listen to a drum drummer play and he's playing ghosties on the snare so he's got his main hit and then he's got all these little ghosties in between if using pressure on that snare it's going to bring those ghosties right up so you can really hear the detail of what was going on there but at the same time it's gonna sort of squash or bring down the the top transient that first hit that big loud one so that it's not so dynamically like bang and then quiet and then bang and then quiet it becomes more like a arthas's a hackable sounds loud and powerful kind of sound and in mixing especially heavy modern music the stuff I like to listen to it like sick for example you know it's a compressed sound it's part of the trend to compress heavy music so that it brings all that out it's they call it loudness was because compression is essentially making things sound louder than they actually are it plays with your mind so the idea is that you think things sound more loud and aggressive than they actually are because of the way compression is used let's go back to guitar related people use compressors for things like if you're playing funky soul the R&B stuff and there's a lot of like rhythm shanking going on you can slap a compressor on to bring out those dynamics to make things more rhythmical you can also use compressor to allow for more sustain so when you play lead and it's it's like maybe even high gain or cleaner sound it's going to provide a longer mod No which makes things sound nicer if that's the effect you want on top of which it changes the response and the way you play actually becomes easier to play because when you throw your fingers around the fretboard during legato and chicken picking all that gets brought out because it's compressed therefore it feels easier and these the response of the guitar somehow it becomes more hackable to play so in this video I've been supplied by the wonderful people at Kili electronics a compressor Plus now Keeley has been renowned for his compressors the Keeling body compressors that you guys know and love not only they don't want to show you how the compressor works but I also wanted to explain how it would work if you were using it in front of distortion or a boost because with the same theory of it bringing high and low transients together when you're talking about low gain sounds like low gain you that little bit of bite using a compressor can actually suddenly make that guitar sound go way heavier and more saturated so the compressor plus has four controls you've got sustain blend level and tone and you also got a little toggle switch that moves between single coil and humbucker I'm just going to breeze over the controls really quickly to explain exactly what they do so we'll start the toggle switch single coil and humbucker mode essentially changes the attack which is how quick the compressor effects sort of affects the sound but also it's used as more of an output control on this pedal on this pedal because you know single cores are lower output than a humbucker so those are the sort of two ways to look at the toggle switch and then we'll start on the left the sustain effects of course it's a spit affects the sustain so it's going to affect how long a note can be held for and generally the response on that end but also its ratio ratio in compression terms is for every so for example you can have ratios of like two two one four two one eight or ten to one all that twenty to one on you classic 1176 compressors that's gonna feel like when you hit the guitar harder it actually quietens down more drastically and then brings it back and that's a dynamic thing so you probably never put that on full sustain because that'd be just way too much but it's an effect if you want it there blend that's essentially pulling in the effect from all the way over to the left which is half blend so that's half the compression effect all their way over to fall which is everything and then everything in between level acts as little volume so twelve o'clock it's pretty much unity so you won't know it's much difference but if you go above it's gonna boost that and of course it'll boost if you put it in the front of any amplifier it's gonna start pushing that for an end a bit more so you can use that as almost like you gain control as well and then finally turn which is just the tone of the pedal so adding a bit of high frequencies there if it if the compression starts and muddy things up a little bit and that brings me on to my next point using something like in this case I'm using the DM Drive because we've got both a boost sort con circuit and you know like a overdrive circuit that can get quite muddy if you're starting to compress that a lot so I'll demonstrate that anyway you can use the term to bring everything back up again so hopefully that all makes sense let's get into the demonstration using my 61 artist inspired Custom Shop strat the reverb you can hear is the specular reverb - by GFI systems let's go [Music] immediately you can hear the effect I'm going to do that again it's subtle but what you might have noticed is that those rhythms start to pop out a little bit more and that first attack no actually dips in volume because of where we've got sustain set I probably wouldn't have had that much sustain if I'm playing rhythm stuff if I'm playing exclusively lead I'll push it up so that it brings out all the nuances so let me start by demonstrating a funky chord progression so now if we put the compressor in you should notice a dip in volume a little bit before we boost the level and also the rhythm nuances start popping out more hopefully you can hear that it's rounding things out it's dynamically pushing things down and bringing the lowest stuff up so I'm going to boost the level and knock off a bit of sustain to get more of a natural sort of compression sound backed off the sustain and blend boosted the level services without and this is with [Music] so it's immediately easier to play lead on because of the way that the response is changed by the fact that it's making things smoother and the response better but if I go back to strumming chords without it and back on by boosting the level backing off the sustain and blend a bit what it's giving me is just as more solid thicker clean sound first strumming [Music] let me give you an extreme example before we move on to how you'd use it with Drive and boost and all that kind of stuff so [Music] [Music] you [Music] you [Music] it feels really good to play like I was like hanging on but the idea being is that it's just you know the rhythm stuff and and the lead stuff you think way it start dropping out in such a clean sound I mean that isn't that characteristic for a clean amplifier shouldn't be that compressed naturally clean amplifiers aren't normally compressed because compression comes in when you start using gain stages and because otherwise the clipping of nature of an amplifier would just be so intense that you have to have levels of compression to tame everything and that you know when a good amplifier is well compressed in the high end in in terms of a like a high gain amplifier because it's not overbearing harsh shrill or anything like that but try plug-in like a Fender you know custom reverb deluxe or whatever it is you know amplifier it's deafeningly loud on a clean because the Headroom is maximized by the fact there's very little compression going on because there's no need to there's no overdrive in the circuit so yeah basically that's what a compressor does and I could mess around with it for hours and just be chatting away some funk but let's get on to the meat of this video by the fact that I'm going to show you what happens when you put a compressor in front of a overdrive or boost so gonna keep my settings as they are hopefully you can see I've got the dnm drive down here this is what it's like without pocket in [Music] so I'm just gonna boost the level and I'm going to boost the gain so this is the way that the dnm drive is going to sound before we compress it you can hear a very very slight amount of gain [Music] now watch what happens as soon as I as soon as I press the Cillian check out how much more game we're gonna have [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's a weird thing because it's psychosomatically saying way there's more gain there's no more gain it's just that it's pulling the dynamics closer together resulting in what sounds like more gain and sustain now if I was to push up the sustain and blend you'll notice that you'll get even longer drawn-out sort of sound and you might even hear a little bit let more of a squelch so it might actually sound less gaining but we'll show you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you see my point you're boosting the sustain you're getting way longer Evernote you boost the amount of blend of the compression you're getting way more of that effect so you're almost getting a little bit more of the game but you're most certainly getting more sustain so that's that's really really why you would use it in in front of something like a tube screamer or even an overdrive so let's do that now so I'm gonna reset the controls and again dnm Drive I've got the downside now that's quite intense amount more game now I put a compress in front of it [Music] first thing you might notice is less of a shrill quality [Music] and we're getting way more sustained out of the pedal and generally it smoothens things out and it's going to make things easy to play I'm going to boost the level of touch I'm going to boost the sustain a touch back off the blend [Music] [Music] so there you go that's what happens when you put a compressor in front of any kind of drive sound immediately the response it's easy to play one thing I should point out is that if you are using a compressor it's obviously bringing high and low transients up so as you can hear now I'm still with the dnm drive on but as soon as I turn the compressor on it's bringing up low transients meaning that his as you can hear that it's it's brought it up a lot so that's something to bear in mind you don't want to take it over the top too much if you are using a compressor because that will happen something else that I wanted to point out is that using the single coil humbucker mode as I said on the compressor plus it's going to be giving you a different level of output so if you do want to push it a little bit further with your single coils you can throw that in there to boost a little bit more so here we go this is without this is with on single coil and then this is with the humbucker [Applause] [Music] [Music] so there you go that's what happens when use compressor in front of a boost or a distortion pedal and I hope I've cleared up a little bit of information there about compressors in general the effect itself and how you can use it in a guitar application that isn't just for sort of clean changqin and funky stuff as fun as that is so it's been really good to use the compressor plus Thank You tequila for sending it over this particular compressor is 129 pounds and you can get that from Anderton's I'll put links in the description box but I like it because it's straightforward and you've got the option of a single coil in humbucker mode as well as just being able to blend in the effect as much as you need mess around with the essential controls that a compressor has and I think it does a good job it's also been nice trying it in front of something like a dnm Drive just because you've got a clone TS style pedal on one side and then you've got your like full-on overdrive you know I love man king of tone style pedal on the other side so you do get a nice demonstration of how a compressor works with both those applications so yeah I hope it was helpful and insightful once again thank you all very much for watching please like subscribe and share and if you would if you want to there's a little bell symbol next to the subscribe button that gives you notifications whenever I upload a video so if you want to see more please hit that button comment in the comment section see you all very soon

Channel: Rabea Massaad

Views: 664,060

Rating: 4.9212766 out of 5

Keywords: rabea, afro, massaad, toska, dorje, music, guitar, victory, chapman, guitars, chappers, rob, andertons, musicisum, shred, solo, band, live, fender, gibson, lesson, top, 10, lick, how, to, play, sweep, picking, steve, via, nuno, bettencourt, hero, guitarhero3, keeley compressor, how to use, how top, use a compressor, best compressor, vompressor + pedal, keeley electronics, pedal demo, keeley pedal demo

Id: QAiuMeJxUhU

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017