EQ and Compression Techniques For Vocals and Acoustic Guitar
Compression
When I first started reading about compressors I was hopelessly lost. The terminology was technical in an almost mean-spirited way and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was being written. To keep things simple, I think of compression as a way of evening out the loud and soft parts of any vocal or instrument so that its behavior is a bit more predictable. In other words, compression brings up the really soft spots and tames the really loud spots so that you’re not constantly reaching for the volume fader on your mixing board (or virtual mixing board on your DAW). In its simplest form, a compressor, whether a hardware unit or a plug-in, will squeeze the Read more
Ducking to Get Low
Ever wondered how to get your low-end right in your mixes while keeping it crystal clear and punchy? You should try this:
Duck your bass guitar under the kick drum hit.
This lets the kick drum stand out in the mix and makes it punchier. This technique is great for metal music with a lot of low-end and demand for a non-muddy low and low-mid range sound.
All you need to do is use your Read more
Compressor Settings
Compressor Settings
This list is a guide only and must only be used as a starting point…
Vocals
- Either hard or soft knee types (soft knee will be less artificial)
- Start with a ratio of around 4:1, and then fine tune it by ear (up to around 8:1 for a hard compressed rock vocal)
- Use a fairly fast attack time
- Release time would normally be around 0.5 sec
- You may find that an untrained vocalist may need up to 12dB gain reduction during loud sections
- Vocals are often recorded using compression, but you must be careful not to over compress; you can always add more later, but you cannot take the compression off the recording
Acoustic Guitar
- Treat in a similar way to vocals, except…
- The attack time can be set to between 10-40ms to let the guitar’s initial attack through uncompressed
- Release time can be between 0.1-0.25 secs
- Can be compressed both at recording and mixdown
Bass Guitar
- Either hard or soft knee types
- Similar attack times as for acoustic guitar
- The release time must be set for the bassist’s playing style; short notes will need a fast release time (watch out for the background noise ‘pumping’)
- You may need to increase the ratio to 5:1 or more to control the louder notes
Electric Guitar
- You have to decide what sound you want to achieve; for example, overdrive already has an element of natural compression, so you will need to add very little (or no) compression
- Clean electric guitar can be treated very much like acoustic guitar
- For sustain, set a fast attack time and a release of around 250ms. Set the ratio from 4:1 upwards, and expect to apply gain reduction up to 20dB
Synthesisers and Samplers
- Most synthesized signals don’t need compression
- Analogue filter sweeps with a lot of resonance will need a ratio of 4:1 or greater, with the threshold set high enough that only the peaks are compressed
- A sampler’s output does not need compression, but it is a good idea to compress signals before they are sampled
Drums
- Rock and pop; bass drum and toms are compressed
- Dance; bass drum, toms and snare are compressed
- Either hard or soft knee types
- ‘Peak’ will react quickly to loud transients
- Ratio between 4:1 and 6:1
- Attack time around 10ms to emphasise the start of each beat
- The release time must be faster than the time delay between successive beats; try between 20 and 100ms
- Set the threshold so that the quieter beats are being compressed slightly; this will mean the louder beats will be compressed harder
Remember that this is a guide only, and should only be used as a starting point for experimentation; if it sounds right, it is right!
Parallel Compression
Parallel Compression
This technique is commonly used on drums or vocal tracks, but it also works very well on other material like guitar and bass guitar, even on brass and strings.
If you haven’t heard of this yet, it involves making a split copy of an original signal, then applying heavy compression before balancing the copy back with the source signal.
The idea behind it is to maintain the dynamics of the original source, which works quite well because all the transient signals are still there. Additionally you get louder “quiet” parts of your signal. The result is a different compression curve, which gives the sound a different character.
There is a great article on http://www.hometracked.com/2007/03/31/parallel-compression-for-fatter-drum-tones/ which goes into a bit more detail.
If you use Pro Tools LE/M-Powered, be aware that this technique creates phasing issues which you need to compensate. You can do this using either the onboard time adjuster or the Mellowmuse ATA plug-in. See the Pro Tools category of this blog for more information about delay compensation in Pro Tools.
