Compress to impress: a complete compression tutorial - dnbscene.com: the very best of underground drum and bass music. ContentsThis is a follow-up to our popular article on EQ, "Thinking inside the box: a complete EQ tutorial", which was written by dnbscene co-founder Steve Mercer (aka hipnotic). This article was written by Marc Crouch, owner of dnbscene.com, and is intended as an accompaniment to Steve's article. Ah, the compressor. This magical tool will fix all your volume problems and make your tunes instantly sound fat and professional. Just pull your tune into an audio editor, pick a "mastering" preset and whack the ratio up. Now play it back and... what's that? It sounds lifeless? Compression is an oddly misunderstood tool in digital music production, and yet it is one of the two most essential processes you can apply to give your tracks that professional "full" sound.
Now, let's lift the lid on this mysterious "compression" concept and get your tracks sounding loud and full. Part One: Grasping the concept Now, consider this waveform: Thinking inside the Box: a complete EQ tutorial - dnbscene.com: the very best of underground drum and bass music. ContentsThis article was originally written and published on dnbscene.com in 2003. Part One: Intro To begin: an anecdote. I started making music with Impulse Tracker. After a few years of gaining decidedly unprofessional results with that, I moved onto Buzz. Slowly I came to realise the problem. EQ and compression are simply the two most important tools in music production. Think of it this way. My mistake - and, I think, the mistake made by many learning producers - was to be tempted by the more exciting task of choosing the colour schemes and leather sofas, when my walls could be knocked down by a sneeze and my roof was made of paper. Hence this tutorial. Now I could simply do a lightning quick tutorial on compression - I could say, for example, "for basslines it's best to compress at a ratio of 3:1, threshold -6db" or whatever (that's a totally fictional example by the way).
My central concept is that producers in the digital domain are effectively working inside a box. Production Tip 13 : Using EQ 101. Bands: You will often hear a unit or plug-in described in terms of a number of bands, such as a '3 band' or '5 band' EQ. This simply indicates how many individual EQ controls a particular unit has. So going back to the hi-fi example with a treble and bass control, this would be a 2 Band EQ.
Peaking, Shelving and Pass Filters: These are the three main EQ types and their names give a good indication as to how they work. A Peaking equalizer will create a bell-like boost or cut around a particular frequency, whereas a Shelving equalizer shelves up or down to a particular point and then remains constant its level of boost or cut. Frequency: Expressed in Hz (hertz) this control allows us to adjust the frequency around which our EQ cut or boost is centred. Fixed or Swept: On the basic EQs that ship with most small format mixers and mic pre-amps you might find that some of the bands are what is called 'fixed' and others 'swept'. General EQing Reference - Page 14. Guidetomixing. EQ Frequencies. Using Equalization When it comes to using an equalizer to treat a sound there is no substitute for trial and error and using your ears.
That said, some useful notes to use as a reference will help you take a more educated approach to mixing and help cement in the observations you make with your ears. Tweak and listen! Audio Frequency Ranges 50Hz Boost: To thicken up bass drums and sub-bass parts. Cut: Below this frequency on all vocal tracks. 70-100Hz Boost: For bass lines and bass drums. Cut: For vocals. General: Be wary of boosting the bass of too many tracks. 200-400Hz Boost: To add warmth to vocals or to thicken a guitar sound. Cut: To bring more clarity to vocals or to thin cymbals and higher frequency percussion.
Boost or Cut: to control the ‘woody’ sound of a snare. 400-800Hz Boost: To add warmth to toms. Boost or Cut: To control bass clarity, or to thicken or thin guitar sounds. 800Hz-1KHz Boost: To thicken vocal tracks. 1-3KHz Boost: To make a piano more aggressive. 3-6KHz 6-10KHz 10-16KHz Vocals.