You may not think of compression as a necessity for every song you create, but utilizing it can have a profound effect on the quality of your tracks.
What is Compression?
Compression, or limited dynamic range, is the act of squashing the dynamic range of your audio. This affects how loud or quiet your audio is. Say you have a track that starts out very quiet and gets really loud later. With compression, the track’s dynamic range is narrowed down so that it remains consistent from start to finish. It is an effect that reduces the overall volume of low, mid, and high frequencies, often by significant amounts. When used correctly, compression can add punch and clarity to an otherwise dull mix or reduce any popping or hissing noises from loud, unruly sounds.
In many parts of music production, compression is used to enhance the sound. It comes in many forms, such as limiting or dynamic range compression. These effects can be fancy and detailed or simple and one-dimensional. Compression can also affect how sounds are processed, clipped, or attenuated.
Here’s a Beginner’s Guide to Using Compression in Music Production:
Applying Compression Tools Like The Waves CLA-2A Compressor.
Compression is a plugin effect that can be applied to many or all of your tracks. It will soften the tone of your music. It can also add impact, drive, and punch. Applying compression tools like the Waves CLA-2A Compressor can make a world of difference to your mixes.
Putting Sounds Together.
Compression is an effect that can reduce the volume of a recorded sound by 50 to 80 percent without changing the pitch. You can use this effect to smooth out an acoustic guitar, remove breathing between tracks, or add a punch to a bass guitar. It comes in different varieties, each with its own strengths and limitations. Compression is a sound editing technique that uses something more like a weapon than a method. You use it to glue sounds together or even cut out the sound itself. And most of the time, it comes from a compressor, a digital effect that feeds incoming sounds into a processor that limits the amount of power they send out—the harder the signal is hitting the compressor, the less power it will send. This limits the amount of “level” the sounds will have the signal above before the compressor kicks in and helps keep the noise floor down and sounds smooth, controlled, and consistent. A compression is a great tool for emphasizing certain parts of a song or softening and shaping the overall sound. With it, you can emphasize a single note or instrument or soften the sounds in a large group. Compression is also great for adding depth to a song, making instruments sound less like they’re too direct and more like they’re part of the dynamic music surrounding them, and adding space to sounds so that they don’t all sound too close to each other.
Manage the Dynamic Range of a Sound
Compression is an effect that makes it easy to combine sounds from across a wide dynamic range, usually by reducing their dynamic range. Most modern music uses compression to some degree, but experienced compression enthusiasts can employ it to make very specific sounds for very specific reasons. You can use it for dynamic effects, like getting instruments to sound louder when there’s lots of activity, or use it to make instruments quieter when there’s quieter activity.
Shape/Color Sound
Compression is an effect that compresses the audio, so it sounds louder or quieter. Many effects programs include compression built in, but you can also buy plugins to use with your computer and DAW. Compression is used heavily in music and is something new producers need to learn before jumping in. Compression can make a song sound louder, fatter, or warmer. It is one of the most powerful things you can apply to music production. It allows you to take an otherwise flat, dull, and lifeless audio file and turn it into something richer, fuller, and full of incredible energy.
Most think of compressor pedals for playing live, but the same principles apply to creating music in the studio. Compression can make a mix stand out by bringing some subtler elements to the forefront. The compressor controls the amount of gain reduction, from soft to hard. The more subtle you compress, the more effect it will have on the dynamics of the track. The harder you compress, the more compression effect it will have on the track.