Compressing all your drums - Return track?

[beantownbeats]

Ableton pro's -

I am looking to squash my drums so I have a nice foundational layer for my tracks, but still with plenty of headroom for the rest of my sounds. I have a few questions.

- In logic, I've seen people send drums to a bus with a compressor on it... is there a similar technique that people use with Ableton, using perhaps a send/return?

- What elements do you compress along with your drums... snare/claps? hats?

Pretty basic questions... curious to hear about your techniques.

Thanks!

[Vicious_Angel]

I am quite new but what i do is:
I select all the drum tracks holdng down control key (this lets you multiselect different tracks) and then i group them (right click group tracks or ctrl+G).
This will create a new mixer track with everything you selected under it. Then you can add compression filters whatever you like on them by simply draging something on this channel.

Edit: This for live 8 on a pc.
I tend to sidechain compress: snares, hi hats.

[Jekblad]

you can send signal to a bus that has a heavy compresser on it, or you can use racks and do it all on one channel.

I would think you'd compress claps and perc to, but it's all about style and taste there, no?

www.covops.org had a tut on NYC compression style using racks, not sure if it's still up, but it'd offer you a step by step of using racks for compression like this.

good luck!

[abletony84]

yeah theres a lotta good nyc tips in this forum too - look out!