Ableton Forum

Hi,

I'm fairly new to music production and have a bit of a newbie question.

How do you know which elements of a track to add compression on? I know this will come with experience, but I am not sure where to start when the waveform on particular tracks is fairly consistent with no major peaks.

When listening back to anything I have made, its pretty clear that some elements of the track are louder than others. I've tried sorting out the levels manually, but the overall mix didn't sound right. Plus I am still red lining? Given that my tracks currently don't have a lot of compression on them, I am guessing that would be a good place to start.

Should I put compression on the overall master?

Any tips massively appreciated!

I use compression to add umphhh to a bass like signal like kicks and bass synth/bass guitars etc. That's one..... I also use compression to even out inconsistencies on a given track. Leveling tracks to form a good sounding song is done by the faders though.

And there is a very importend rule: do what you think sounds best, but overcompressing doesn't sound nice!

Start sparse and hear what the result is, mixing is done by ears mostly, altough keep an eye on the levels, adjusted by the faders.

Thanks so much for the response and tips miyaru.

I totally get it will come with practice. I've definitely gone down the route of overcompressing and making everything sound flat.

I watched a fanu tutorial when he compressed a vocal which was a great example as it haD inconsistent peaks across the waveform. Compressing evened everything out, but when looking at my tracks with no vocals its not clear to me where I should start. I'll try with the kick and bass and go from there!

Thanks again.

Personally I think you can consider compression on just about any instrument that has a lot of dynamics in it's performance. For example piano is a great candidate whereas organ may or may not be depending on how much the volume changes throughout the performance. The key is adding just enough compression to lift up the lighter segments and roll off the very tops on the louder passages. In all cases a compressor with a gain reduction indicator is an absolute necessity. This makes it MUCH easier to balance the dynamics between different instruments to get a nice mix with all of them. It's not unthinkable to add a final mix compressor to very lightly tie the final mix together so it's consistent even if you have some instruments with their own compressors.

Just take it easy at first with compression, on a side note, I noticed that SSL have a sale on their native essential bundle which is Channel Strip 2 & Mix Buss Compressor 2 @ £46 from pluginboutique. The Mix bus compressor 2 is nice

Great feedback, thanks all.

I lost a couple of hours this afternoon adding compression to various different elements within one of my tracks and am not sure it sounds any netter tbh!

Someone mentioned that a good tip is to bring the levels down to zero on each track and then slowly bring up the level until it sits nicely in the mix. Sounds logical. Will be giving that a go also.

wilki wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 15, 2022 1:56 pm

Hi,

I'm fairly new to music production and have a bit of a newbie question.

How do you know which elements of a track to add compression on? I know this will come with experience, but I am not sure where to start when the waveform on particular tracks is fairly consistent with no major peaks.

When listening back to anything I have made, its pretty clear that some elements of the track are louder than others. I've tried sorting out the levels manually, but the overall mix didn't sound right. Plus I am still red lining? Given that my tracks currently don't have a lot of compression on them, I am guessing that would be a good place to start.

Should I put compression on the overall master?

Any tips massively appreciated!

The first place to look is tracks with wild fluctuations in volume in such a way that it makes it either hard to hear a sound, sound annoying, or makes it hard to set a static fader level. Vocals usually fit this description.

The next place would be sounds where you want to either affect the transient (sharpen or tame them) or change the sustain of the sound. Drums especially live recorded ones might need this but sometimes whole mixes where you might want the mix to creatively pump.

Another scenario is when you want one sound in the mix to reduce the volume of other sounds (ducking).


Those are probably the big three although sometimes certain compressors might also be used to "color" a sound such as adding FET distortion or Tube Saturation.


Should you put a compressor on your master depends on alot of things such as the genre of your music, or how much or little dynamics are already in your mix, or if your mix sounds like it can use a bit of "gel" or "glue". Some people hate mix bus compression, others swear by it. I find that it is usually a fairly subtle effect but it can help to "mix" into a compressor where it can help with the process of leveling sounds (if you set it correctly).


It often help to use reference mixes to see how your mixes stack up against commercial recordings. Certain compression effects can be pretty subtle and when you start focusing on how engineers got certain sounds to "pop out", "blend in", or "breath" a certain way, it could be compression.

If I could offer one piece of advice about compression, I would suggest to experiment with it as a separate activity. I get a lot of tracks sent to me for mastering where the producer just over did the compression on their track and made it flat and lifeless because they weren't used to the effect enough to realize they were overdoing it. Play around, see what works and what doesn't when A/Bing with the original files. Louder isn't always better all the time, so make sure it's not the volume boost you get from compression sometimes clouding how much of it you apply.

Nothin wrong with spending a couple weeks playing around with it on some of your older songs you know well, versus using it in a new song when you're not sure exactly what you're heading yet.

as beginners we often add processing because we think that is what we are "supposed" to do, without much idea about why we are adding the effects, or what they are hoping to achieve. gotta use all those shiny toys, right?

with all kinds of audio processing it's helpful to have in mind what you are trying to make happen when you tweak the knobs. otherwise things can become random crashing around. don't get me wrong — sometimes random crashing around produces wonderful things, however if you are trying to learn how to do something well then it requires learning the cause and effect of things.

some of the many things you can do with compression include:
- reduce dynamic range
- smooth out transients
- shorten sounds
- shape the envelope of sounds in other ways
- change the tone colour of sounds
- duck sounds to make space for other sounds in the mix
- making sounds appear more cohesive by compressing them together
- etc.

also, i'd like to emphasise what Tarekith mentioned above: it's very, very important to level match when you are comparing things. because of the way human hearing works, louder things tend to sound "better" to us. so, if you apply an effect and the output is louder than before you can be tricked into thinking that the effect made the sound "better" when it mostly just made the sound louder...

this just dropped:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqN2YoC6yBg