There is a really good discussion about compression with a great example video started by musicalmemoriesuk in the following thread:
https://chellos-keyboard-players-club.co...ompression
This got me thinking, to give some tips based on my learning journey about compression and sound design in general.
The video mentioned in the above thread is a very good video explaining the basic concepts when starting with compression. There are three tools in my opinion that are very important to master when you dive into sound design and they work together to achieve the basic sound design you are after, based on importancy:
1 EQ
this is the most important tool when creating the sound you are after, it defines the end result of your sound (for the total mix or just an individual sound, it's all very important). If you want to learn this technique then there are a few things that you need to look in to;
- frequencies
- Q factor
- gain
- headroom
- masking
These concepts are all working together to let every sound you want to breath in the mix. It can bring life to dull sounds but when doing it wrong it also can completely destroy the end-result. This takes a lot of time to master, but it's so much fun to experiment with and develop your own signature sound.
2: reverbs
reverbs are very important to place sounds in your total mix, depending on your decisions you can set sounds or elements of sounds on a certain position of your mix and give the listener the impression of what kind of room the sound is placed in. Things to look in to:
- pre delay
- size
- decay
- diffusion
- EQ (pre and post)
Especially the EQ part of the reverb is something a lot of people are forgetting when they start to add reverbs. Adding reverbs without taking EQ frequencies in to account can completely clutter up your mix. It makes the difference between good sounds or bad sounds.
3: compression
As shown in the video mentioned in the start of this thread, the basic concepts are not that hard learn. My suggestion would be to start with this and really learn how to do it by experimenting a lot with compression on drums but also with compression on the full sound. A lot of people do think that using compression destroys the dynamic of your sound, but actually it's a fantastic tool for you as a sound wizard to have full control over the complete sound you are feeding in to it. Examples like removing that annoying ambience reverb on a snare, it's so easy to do with a compressor, or to bring out the transient attack of a guitar strum pattern, it makes all the difference to your end result.
The video mentioned in the thread at the start of this post is just the beginning, once you dive into compression you will see that there are a lot more varieties to this approach and you can apply compression to every source you want, it's not only drums, but it also greatly affects things like electric piano, guitars, synth leads, etc. Once you understand it, your endmixes will stand out to the typical keyboard performances you see online.
My favorite compression technique is parallel compression, this is hard to learn but once you have mastered it you can add compression techniques on top of your original signal, very powerful and so fun to play with. I use the one below for this:
My last tip is:
Don't go extreme with your edits!!!! Sound design is all in subtlety, a simple way to learn this at the beginning is to have very extreme results and then dial it back until you hardly hear it.
https://chellos-keyboard-players-club.co...ompression
This got me thinking, to give some tips based on my learning journey about compression and sound design in general.
The video mentioned in the above thread is a very good video explaining the basic concepts when starting with compression. There are three tools in my opinion that are very important to master when you dive into sound design and they work together to achieve the basic sound design you are after, based on importancy:
1 EQ
this is the most important tool when creating the sound you are after, it defines the end result of your sound (for the total mix or just an individual sound, it's all very important). If you want to learn this technique then there are a few things that you need to look in to;
- frequencies
- Q factor
- gain
- headroom
- masking
These concepts are all working together to let every sound you want to breath in the mix. It can bring life to dull sounds but when doing it wrong it also can completely destroy the end-result. This takes a lot of time to master, but it's so much fun to experiment with and develop your own signature sound.
2: reverbs
reverbs are very important to place sounds in your total mix, depending on your decisions you can set sounds or elements of sounds on a certain position of your mix and give the listener the impression of what kind of room the sound is placed in. Things to look in to:
- pre delay
- size
- decay
- diffusion
- EQ (pre and post)
Especially the EQ part of the reverb is something a lot of people are forgetting when they start to add reverbs. Adding reverbs without taking EQ frequencies in to account can completely clutter up your mix. It makes the difference between good sounds or bad sounds.
3: compression
As shown in the video mentioned in the start of this thread, the basic concepts are not that hard learn. My suggestion would be to start with this and really learn how to do it by experimenting a lot with compression on drums but also with compression on the full sound. A lot of people do think that using compression destroys the dynamic of your sound, but actually it's a fantastic tool for you as a sound wizard to have full control over the complete sound you are feeding in to it. Examples like removing that annoying ambience reverb on a snare, it's so easy to do with a compressor, or to bring out the transient attack of a guitar strum pattern, it makes all the difference to your end result.
The video mentioned in the thread at the start of this post is just the beginning, once you dive into compression you will see that there are a lot more varieties to this approach and you can apply compression to every source you want, it's not only drums, but it also greatly affects things like electric piano, guitars, synth leads, etc. Once you understand it, your endmixes will stand out to the typical keyboard performances you see online.
My favorite compression technique is parallel compression, this is hard to learn but once you have mastered it you can add compression techniques on top of your original signal, very powerful and so fun to play with. I use the one below for this:
My last tip is:
Don't go extreme with your edits!!!! Sound design is all in subtlety, a simple way to learn this at the beginning is to have very extreme results and then dial it back until you hardly hear it.
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