Thanks to those who have appreciated my OP. It was intended to give people a starting point. There has been some interesting discussion here too. I can see Dean's point as well but I wonder that maybe it is not a bad thing to have some sort of approach first to get there at least and then go out from there.

On attack issues when I say use a slower attack I do not necessarily mean 15ms or so. What I mean is in step 1 for example you might start with a superfast attack eg 0.1 ms. As you slowly slow down the attack it might only get to 2 ms for example before the leading edge of the sound starts to sound right. So in the end the attack could be still classed as fast but it is just slower than the initial setting. In step 1 it is more about listening to the leading edge of the sound and slowly adjusting the attack until the desired attack in the sound is reached and stopping there. That might be quite different to say a 15ms attack which is going to let a much bigger transient through.

Others here have made some interesting suggestions for compression effects. But I think though that you can still use an organised approach to it and still obtain many variations in the resulting compression. It does allow for the many variations in material you are trying to compress.

And of course if after when everything is in the mix you certainly might go back and adjust things a bit. I have found that even when you do this it is possible to go through the steps I have suggested in that order and you wil get to the desired compression effect.

Deans approach reminds me of a musician trying to play jazz but has never learned it. They will do a sort of OK job. But when someone does all the study and hard work (and there are very defined ways of learning how) and then goes out there and lets go of all that (study) and then just plays, it will sound much better. Because without even thinking about  it they are playing the right notes.

If you are sifting your way through opinions presented as information...  it IS often better to simply start getting your own experience by twisting some knobs.

Or, at least retreat to the owners manual for advice.

I wish I had something like this when I was learning:



instead I had that famous dbx VCA crunch>over/hiss and a few blinky lights with some unknown response characteristic to keep me busy.

But my point IS ABOUT the study and the hard work. That's what it is. It has nothing to do with mixing. It's what you first. It's like trying different pick attacks, different pick angles, different picking positions, different fingering styles, different pickups. Anyone who plays the guitar will need to work out all these things for him or herself to figure out what he likes and what creates his or her own style.

That's what I'm talking about. This is practice. Anyone who sits down and never does anything but play what's in a book is never going to be a great player. Any great player will try everything just to see how it works. You do that as a form of practice and experimentation. You should do the same with compressors and EQs and delays and so forth. You don't wait until it's time to mix a song to do it. You do it like you would practice scales. You MAY want to try some radical experimentation sometimes during a mix. Any creative and intuitive person might. But generally the point of this is to do this experimentation as a learning exercise, in isolation, on various types of material.
 

FWIW,

I've heard the Jazz as serious study theory before... It doesn't play well down here in the South where my neighbors invented Jazz music.

There's a sort of out spoken rivalry between the two schools.of thought. One group plays what they want to play that day...  and the other group plays catch up studying all of those folks licks... all the while earning advanced degrees in recognition of the serious study.

It is not a popular subject to bring up amongst jazz enthusiasts.

best regards,
mike

Mike I am sorry, I dont want to get into a Jazz discussion although one could talk about Jazz forever. (BTW Who are you listening to right now, for me its Brad Melhdau. I am just loving the quality of the recordings too. For me Brad has redifined the Jazz trio piano bass and drums thing)

I was trying to use it as an analogy comparing organised kaos as compared to unorganised kaos. Dean's point is very valid and I don't want to convey the impression that it is not good to experiment. Of course, it is good and important. But some may be going around in circles and not getting anywhere with their compressor experimentation and the approach I suggest in my OP is just a way out of that and it might lead to a good compressed sound in less time. I suppose if you find yourself getting nowhere with experimentation then it's time to look into an organised approach to see how it turns out.

And for those who know how to use a compressor and use a different approach to my suggestion, then why not try it and see how it turns out. Isn't that a form of experimentation too.

Thanks to all those that have contributed to the discussion so far. I had no idea it was going to go onto the page 2 situation! I just had an idea to post something about compression and it has gone from there. And thanks to those who have thanked me for the tips as well. I appreciate it. For a while there I thought it might have been a bad idea but now overall I think it was an OK idea after all.

It's not technically Jazz per se.. but I've been listening to Lucky and the Lion: Luckey Roberts and  Willie the Lion Smith playing Harlem Stride Piano.

I reckon it's an off shoot from a pre jazz style... if one considers Ragtime as a precursor to Jazz music rather than a early form of Jazz music.

I find it sort of fascinating that the early years of Jazz are sort of a mystery hidden in sheet music and news paper reviews rather than music recordings. Music recording arrived a few years after Jazz was breaking out nationally.

This Harlem Stride album I referred to above was recorded in the late 50's when the two layers were essentially living custodians of a old style of bar room piano playing when the recordings were made.


best regards,
mike

Jeff Evans


Firstly this approach does apply to compressors that offer the full range of parameter adjustment. With the ones that are much simpler in their operation (and afterall that is not a bad thing) then you obviously don't have the options I have suggested. I am sure you can still get a great sound and I don't blame you for wanting that type of compressor. It just seems to work.

Rbh You simply lower the threshold during step 1 so the compressor is doing its thing. Try it my way and see what comes out. Transients first. They are vital and important. The reason why compressors overcompress is because the transients are being smashed. They are not set right from the start.

droddey You will never get it right. You will just go around in circles and never really obtain the maximum performance your compressor is capable. It certainly is vague. You will never set a compressor correctly during a mastering session that way either. What I am suggesting is a way to avoid that approach. It does not work.

Jeff you kind of made my point.  You lower the threshold so it's doing it's thing..is where I was coming from..energy levels first  then transients/ envelope control. I agree to agree then.....

Thanks for getting us all to put on our thinking caps Jeff!

Jeff, you've given us the ABC's (ARRTs) of compression which no one here has given, IIRC.

I'll never forget your sweet pearl as I'm constantly defeating myself compressing/limiting vox, snare, kick, guitars, strings, busses, and masters ... and oft with MultiComps.

Thanks Philip. You can definately apply these principles to multiband compressors too. What is good about them is their ability to be able to handle the different parts of the frequency spectrum differently. The idea is to solo the multiband compressor bands one by one. It is a little harder to get used to just listening to quite narrow parts of the frequency spectrum at one time, especially the lower end areas. But even with the various bands in solo mode, you can still apply the ARRT approach to each band. You can also start with the lower bands and leave them on while you bring in the next band higher up and adjacent to it.

You can start by coming up with some great settings for the full spectrum first. Then transfer those settings as a starting point onto the individual bands one by one and modify them out from there to suit each band of frequencies a little more. The fact you can add or subtract gain for each band turns them into a sort of active equaliser as well making fine tuning of the various band levels a nice way to alter the overall sound too.

Another thing, if working with digital compressors you will start coming up with a similar setting of various individual instrument types as well as types of mixes. Nothing to stop you from storing these as presets and calling them up quickly for a great starting point to springboard off and tweak. Before long you will have some killer prests for either a full range compressor or multiband for a wide range of indivual instruments and mixes etc..They will still need final tuning though as there will always be variations in how a musician plays any given part and altering the qualites of the sound. eg an acoustic guitarist who might just pick a little harder and therefore you might speed up the attack a tad to ease off the hard edge to the attack part of the sound.

Also this is very relevent with the release of Producer X1. They have added even more compressors in so more important to get their settings better. Looks like and excellent thing the Pro Channel. That will be worth the upgrade alone. It is going to give a more professional sound have access to more compressors so easily. And adding some analog warmth by the looks too. Individual channel compressors will all require adjusting well and the same applies for busses etc. But getting these compressors wrong could destroy your sound too and we don't want that. They have given us the exact controls we need to do a fine job.