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Multiband, Sidechain and Glue Compression Techniques

Lesson 16 from: Mixing Electronic Music In Ableton Live

Isaac Cotec

Multiband, Sidechain and Glue Compression Techniques

Lesson 16 from: Mixing Electronic Music In Ableton Live

Isaac Cotec

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Lesson Info

16. Multiband, Sidechain and Glue Compression Techniques

Lesson Info

Multiband, Sidechain and Glue Compression Techniques

Now we're going to go over advanced compression techniques. So we have side chain compression, which I get questions about all the time we're gonna look at using that. It's very easy, especially now that we know what all these parameters do. I'm just gonna go over to pressure basics. Didn't didn't don't. And here we go with advanced compression again. All these examples, except for his music, is included. Ah, great. So I have the sine wave. We have this signal analyzer again. I'm gonna open up, so we're going to see it flat sine wave, right? Well, if I have my drums playing if I wanted that sine wave to come out a little bit more or no, if I wanted to kicks to come out a little bit more compared to that kind of submits of base, that's when I use side chain compression. And all you need to do with that is you come in here and you press that little triangle right here opens up this option, you choose what you want. So I turned side chain on and where I wanted to point 0.2 drums, which is...

where this is. And now, when I press play. Watch that the input is now the drums through the compressor, no longer its own compression. So I turned on the threshold wear. Now, every time the drums that are coming in peak the threshold it pushes down the sine wave, which is great, but not what I wanted. I wanted to kick, so if I turn on E t mode, I can eq you, Theo input. So now I'm just getting the kick, creating that pumping sound. So if I solo this, it's kind of traditional pumping sound, and it's very common in electronic music. Teoh put on E either the reverb or put it on a pad or something like that, to give it that pushing sound because of the quality of it. I want usually a medium to fit well, a faster attack, the releases to taste, usually usually about there in the mid range. And the ratio can be as crazy as you wanted to really pump it or not right that side chain compression very easy to use. Can I have a really great effect of gluing things together? So now there are plug ins that basically simulate side chain compression. How do they compare actual sexual telephones, usually through just filters? They're great, I would actually say before you should use that because a Bolton gets pretty nerdy, able to doesn't Autumn doesn't make up late and see for automation, and it has a harder time with Leighton. See issues when it deals with actually creating the effect you're looking for plugging latency. But live 9.2 that just came out completely erased that problem. So you can automate and have no longer late and see issues around automation. And with compression, it's totally fine. So great update from those guys. Absolutely super happy they did that, Um, it just comes down to ease of use. What's faster for you if that LFO tools like what you use all time, use dragon in cool. If a compressor is already on or near just, I mean, they're the same thing, Really. The only advantage to a compressor is well, I guess you could eat you different things that you want to, and it's just more of listening to that track. So if later on the track you change the rhythm, then you don't have to change the LFO parameter right resin is already listening to the track. It's already adjusting. If you're just looking for that pulsing effect, there's a way to use auto pen yet in a really fun way where you can change the time and make it go faster or slower. Yeah, I've seen you do this and it's great, Um, great idea. And all you do is you drag in an auto pan. Let's say we want to go like which one? Would you guess? Yeah, yeah, that one's fun. It gives a sharp, sort of like, Yeah, and then you can change the phase and it's just a different way of doing it. In a way, it's no other compression. It's in effect. But if I put it there and if you invert it, you get this sort of 2nd 0 yeah, cause I'm getting it. I'm getting but down. Where is that? On the left for of normal? I've got it. Oh, it's because the single analyzers, after I was so confused what was happening there you go see your getting a similar effect, and then you can change your you're right stuff. A few of the other Abel's in tools also have that side chain ability. Yeah, you have side chaining in auto pan. No out of filter auto filter in the literal minded and you've got it. There's a few others, and then it's the same thing. You'll just side chain win. It pans to some other input, and then you get in a Maxwell life, which it's totally crazy. Way might bring that up later in advanced, but that's no longer compression. Uh, this is the meat and potatoes. That stuff is the color. Now we're gonna look a parallel compression and parallel compression when you first have to describe what is cereal processing versus parallel. Serial means something comes in. It happens linearly. Something goes out. Parallel processing is able in, able to racks to have a single come in, be separated amongst multiple chains, right. Those aren't affected separately and then come together as a final input. Now, what that means is you can say this chain is just the high end. This chain is just low in that chain is just the mid range or whatever. So you can really define what is happening to each chain. This happened. This becomes very interesting in compression because we get this thing called New York style compression. There's many different names for it. But the idea is what happens if you have a compressed signal doing something totally different as an effect and coming together at the end? Let me show you what I mean by that. If I create a see, I want just a compressor, I'm going to group it. And then I have these little buttons here that opened up the rack. I right click create chain. I'm gonna rename this dry and this compress And what I could do is now, this is going to be just the straight signal. Just let me solo that I'm gonna super compress it, get very obvious. So we're still hearing the dry right. If I go to the compressor, I'm really squashing it a lot. Now, if I come to change in here, I dragged this on both. Then I got this little white thing above it, which I can basically now feed in the compressing sound. Right? But that's not really the key of why you would do this. I'm gonna write, clip, just map it. So now this macro affects that, right? So that's the compress amount. Now Here's the key for side chain compression, and a lot of really interesting compression effects is if I take, uh, q eight, drag it into the compressor, either pre or post. I'm gonna just do it post for now. And if I do this, I'm now going to get a super compressed sound like a really cranky kind of aggressive sound. Onley in the mids and the low end in the high end and they come together and it gives it. It's really like Tonci. Higher quality. Turn this up. It's gonna be harder for you guys because the speakers were pointing to me and people online. But if I turn this up, they come together towards the end, and it creates a new, unique way of looking at compression. And you can also, you know, you can get crazy with parallel compression. You can compress it and then bring out only one little aspect or compress it and send it compressed, just the highs separate in the mids. That gets into a multibillion compression, which is pretty much what this is. But it's an interesting way of controlling it now to really quickly show something off. I'm going to show you, not by York. So here's an effect that I created, which you guys will all get if you get the class to New York style compression. He opened it up just a little bit more developed where I have eat you, my compressor that I can change e que mouth threshold to make it more clunky. Sounding my drying way. It's really like that kind of over compressed hip hop sound. You can get this way if you want it right, and then we're looking at upward compression in multi band dynamics. Now it's looking upward compression before to this point, we've talked about what's called downward compression, right? It hits the threshold. It's pushing the sound down. And then you can bring up the volume to get Mawr Mawr volume with less range, less dynamic range. So it's louder perceived louder. You could also do the opposite. There are some instances where you need and want to do that. You want to make the peaks more obvious. You want to give it more range. That is upward compression, which is a more advanced technique. A great example of this is, let's say I have turn that off shrink that for now. Um, I'm just gonna start from scratch. Now, if I have my multi band dynamics, which is a different type of compressor, I have the ability to compress comparatively to the band. Right. So I can say e I move this. This is like my threshold amount, and then I can compress it. Right? So just compressing the mid band. You guys gonna do that, right? Cool way of doing things. Well, there's something you can do upward compression, which is this other one. So this one turns things up if they're below a certain amount. So this isn't really doing anything but that up here. It's bringing up that range. So I'm pushing up specific frequencies or pushing down, or you can use a combination of both. Really? I mean, you start really distorting the sound. You gotta be very careful with this, because the ranges Guettel all wacky. But you can see how e completely affect the sound in a completely different way. There's another way of doing this. A viewing upward compression. Let me shrink that. So I have this sound here. All right. Very squash. Over. Compressed. I did this on purpose. Now, if I come in here and I grab a compressor, it's little button here called Expand. Inverts it now. Whenever it hits the threshold, it pushes it up. If I go to hear wherever those peaks are, turn up my ratio, which is now How much is it? Go up. It's really over compressed, so I'm not getting too much volume difference out of it. But if I re sampled it, Okay, so I re sampled it, right? I grabbed it here. And if I compare the two, just bring them close to each other. You're going to see more peaks if I bring up the volume so they're more equal. See how I'm getting just a little more peek out of that out of that. Not that much, because I mean it's super compressed. It's gonna be really hard to grab these peaks, but I can get just a little bit more out of it with about the same volume level. Um, it's just a different way of viewing your compression. That could be really good for, like, guitar. If you want some plucks to come out stronger or whatever

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Ratings and Reviews

Jose Gerardo Rendon Santana
 

Excellent Course, Isaac Cotec is a great instructor and a great producer. The course is very well organized explaining each important step of the mix. as well as great tips and techniques. He also includes a great deal of support material with the course including an Ableton Live Pack with tons of great presets and tools to put to practice the knowledge acquired in the course.

a Creativelive Student
 

Isaac covers an amazing amount of material in a clear and concise way. Great intro to mixing with Ableton or review for the intermediate user who wants to solidify their best practices, DAW knowledge as well as gain some production tips.

Ian turner
 

this is the best thing money can buy in my life. Isaac makes it look easy and the way he teaches makes you understand everything and makes it easy for you as well. its exactly what i wanted to learn in each video! i cant even sleep because another video loads and im like "ohhhh i need it" lol. i thank god for this class being affordable and the real deal.

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