Today’s musicians have more tools at their disposal than at any time in history. It seems a new breakthrough in technology every week entices people into believing the tools do the work. and so making a task easier must also make it instantly better. While I leave this to the marketing geniuses, there are certain tools, like the ancient hammer, that, no matter how fancily it’s packaged, one still just hits things with it.
Compression is one such tool for musicians.
We have all encountered compressors. A metal tank with a motor on it that sucks an incredible amount of air into the tank. From here one can now release it, at leisure. Like a balloon, you can control how much and how fast the air can escape.
A musical compressor works a little differently. It is designed to bring loud sounds down so quiet parts become more prominent. The main reasoning is that every sound in the stereo picture, like the faces in a 1970s family portrait, has its own space. A compressor is one way to keep the sounds from overlapping, allowing you to manipulate different sounds’ shapes to fit the picture.
The first thing you encounter with a compressor is a threshold, which dictates when the sound is enough for the compressor to begin working.
Let’s start with one big fat bass note. It hits the compressor. We have set the threshold at the number 6, the bass note smacks the compressor at 10, and the magic begins.
The next setting is called ratio. It dictates how much compression happens. For every number above the threshold the note is, the compressor will reduce the note by the number you dictate. For instance, with a 2:1 ratio, the sound will be reduced one number for every two above the threshold. In our example, the compressor would reduce it two because we are four above the threshold.
Next, we set the attack. This involves the speed at which the compressor does its job. A fast attack will begin to reduce the sound immediately upon breaking the threshold. If 10 bass notes hit the compressor at 10, with a fast attack the notes will be reduced immediately. A slower attack smooths the reduction out; that change allows for more of the note’s character to be heard before it is reduced.
Now we set how fast our bass note will fall back to zero (Release) once it drops below our threshold, which we previously set at six. If we set this control for a quick release, the sound of all the notes falling off a cliff quickly creates a pulsing sound. If we slow this release down, it’s like watching a feather in the wind that takes three minutes to hit the ground.
As with all our tech, there are more controls. Option paralysis is a common concern.
There’s a myriad of confusing knobs and switches, but the guys on TV only ever use about three of them. So … yeah.
