It's true, my light died, so I had to try something different this time. Also, iMovie pooped the bed, so I spent too much time trying to fight iMovie, and not enough time editing.

All that said, I hope you enjoy it.

Kompressor Break your Glowstick, Kompressor Eat your Candy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ofYNHRcspM Hank Green on the loudness war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSaP3EF-K5s

Notes

I'm Jonnay! Looks like we're trying something a little different!
stupid lightbulb burning out.
Well, thanks to Vihart for this kind of thing
Today we're getting a little technical so hold on to your pants. But if you do any kind of audio, from making music, videos, podcasts, or even talking to people over skype, you're going to want to know about this
bunny wearing pants
Taling about compression–as in squeezing the dynamic range of sound,
–Kompressor– Compressor (show picture)
- broken sad glowstick.
- sad candy
One of the primary weapons in the loudness war. - LIke most weapons they can be used for good for for awesome.
strongbad
Makes your quiet parts loud, and your loud parts loud so that your sound is percieved as louder.
- hot side hot, cool side cool
Actually, makes loud parts quiet, and then you turn it up.
- triangle going up
Why use one?
First of all to tame the dynamic range of some instruments or sounds, like your voice
- (1) big wave, squashed wave
Second, as mentioned as one of the primary arms in the loudness war
- (2) compressor with pith helmet, INCOMING
Third, as a way to imaprt a certain musical character by shaping the envelope of the sound
- musical notes as characters
- Adding more sustain to guitars and pianos
- "Glueing" together the drums of a song, or even the whole track
Some compressors are one knob jobs, you can turn em up, or turn em down. We'll start with these
- Box with a knob.
Magic threashold number, sound level it takes to turn the compressor on.
SO say you have a soundwave like this, when the waveform crosses this threshold
- sound graph
Bam! The compressor turns on
when the compressor is on, the volume is turned down on your sound.
Then the magic happens and your compressor turns up the overall level of the sound
- and then the output stage
Some compressors have 2 knobs … (heheheh they're like nipples)
- 2 knobs
The first one is still your threashold like before
Second: Ratio
This is how much the compressor is going to squeeeeze the sound.
- A low ratio like 1:2, or even 1:1.5 will gently round and sculpt the sound.
- A ratio like 1:10 will hammer it like a deranged communist mario
When working with compressors, start by using the hammer approach, and work your way to the sculpting
- It's a lot like your a stone sculpter, first you use a big hammer, but then work more delecately
Other compressors have more knobs!
- box with a zillion knobs
Attack (told you it was a weapon of war!)
- Attack is how long before the compressor starts to act when teh threshold is hit
- With an impulse like sound (like a hand-clap) and the attack is too long, the compressor will miss it entirely
- With a really fast attack, it will reduce the level of the clap
- The longer that you make the attack, the more transparent it will be, but beware of clipping!
Release … the prisoners of war!
- how long it takes the compressor to stop it's gain reduction after threashold has finished
- When used on a rhythmic track really defines the sound of compressor
With these two controlls You can really shape the sound here, how rhythmic you can get.
- Makeup gain
- If you have an "Auto" and you are just starting out, just use this
- use year ear, watch your meters for clipping.
Setting your compressor
In a lot of ways there is no real magickal settings for a compressor.
Because it reacts to the input level of what you feed it.
So start by giving it a massive threshold, massive ratio, fast attack and automatic relase
the gain reduction meter should be moving around lots.
Start by playing with the relase and get that sounding right. Then attack, and finally a decent ratio
Paralell compression - Also called New York Compression
mix compressor with dry signal
Really good on drums.
Boosts the in between, potentially gives you all the benefits of compression
Serial compression
You're gonna want this for vocals.
And maybe even ALL THE THINGS!
Set up a very gentle compressor first, low ratio, low threshold, maybe even slower attack/release
Then a really fast, hard and heavey compressor, with a high threshold.
Or.. try it the other way too!
Sidechains - So, you're taking a differnet sound (like, say a kick drum) and using that to trigger the compression of your sound
you can either do this really hard and heavy, or nice n gentle, but gives movement to your music.
plosives. When you ahve a sound with lots of explosive P's and B's
- Guess I am going to use sidechain compression here huh…
- run that sound through an eq to emphasise it, then into a compressor that would hammer hard on that sound
- may not need to makeup gain this!
- this should be an early stage effect.
Super interesting sonic scuplting capabilities here. Like giving michaelangelo a dremel!
Multiband compression, which is totally a thing, but I don't use one very often, so I am not going to talk about it! Right now it'd be the blind leading the blind.
A/B your sound! That's where you switch between the compressed signal and the normal signal back and forth.
The only way to A/B the sound properly is to boost the volume of the uncompressed sound to the same level of loudness!
You're not really testing to see if the signal is louder. Of course it is. You're testing to see what else the compressor did to your sound.
If you're on ableton, you might want to make an effect rack,
- wire up a knob to your compressors makeup gain,
- as well as a utility plugin on a second chain.
- Then you can mute them back and forth.
Use your ears! I would love it if there was a "double-blind" plugin wher eyou could hide the guts of yoru effect, and just make it randomly go wet or dry. That way you could better scientifically figure out whether your compressed sound was better.