Music Tips: Explanation on compression in mixing

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all the idea behind compression. 

Let’s get into it. 

 Music 101 Volume

So back in the day, when recording first started. 

They were pretty ingenious in the way that they recorded. 

However, they still faced certain problems with the way that the recorded session would come out. 

One of those problems was the volume problem. 

What happens is that microphones pick up absolutely everything about the noise that’s being made. 

Including the absence of noise. 

So what they found was that in certain parts of the song, it would sound really loud and nice, but other parts of the song, it felt like it lacked impact because of the volume of the noise. 

But there were other problems too. 

When you record a vocalist, a vocalist tends to move around a lot when they are recording. 

And when they move around a lot, it makes for an all over the place recording. 

You hear really big parts and then really low parts but not in a good way.

This is where compression kicks in.

Introducing compression the answer to the volume problem. 

Compression just condenses every volume on the acoustic instruments to the point where they all sound relatively similar in volume. 

And what it can do to the voice, is that it can raise the volume on the low parts and diminish the volume on the really loud parts.

So that way, it all sounds consistent. 

If you ever mess around recording things, you will hear where this is so important. 

It honestly sounds bad if you have a song where the volume is all over the place. 

Also, if you send a track to mastering without adding compression to the vocals or other acoustic instruments, the mastering engineer will just send it back to you because there wouldn’t be a possible way to master the song without a whole lot of clipping. 

Clipping is essentially when the song is too loud for regular speakers. 

Compression can be used for all sorts of instruments, but it’s mainly used for acoustic instruments and voices. 

So for acoustic guitars, electric guitars that are played by a real guitarist, pianos, vocals, are all examples of acoustic noise even though electric guitars are an electric noise, it’s still considered acoustic because you are using a microphone to record it. 

Basically anything that uses a microphone is considered acoustic. 

So Saxophones, violins, trumpets, cellos, drums, etc. etc. 

It’s best to learn how to use compression and fast because 90% of all songs use compression. 

I should say 100% but I’m pretty sure that there is that 10% that have figured it out already. 

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Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!