Unit 7

The first file is from my mix of this song by Unit 6. The second file is from this unit, Unit 7. Listen to the difference compression makes! Skip to 1:30 in the second file to get to the same part in the song.

Screenshots of compression in action:

Full-size images: https://imgur.com/a/QoBY9

"...Make sure the soundman doesn't cockblock the drums

Let the snare knock the air right out of your lungs

And those words be the oxygen..."
- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, "Ten Thousand Hours"

I listened to this song by Macklemore in the middle of working on this unit. I realized I'm the soundman(-in-training), so consequently, I actually thought about these lines a lot and decided to make sure I wouldn't do that! ... I spent most of my time during class trying to enhance the drums with compression. I don't know enough to call my mix perfect yet, but I think that it's come a long way even since my progress last unit, and I have begun to enjoy listening to this song over and over much more.

I had fun mixing this. I experimented with all the aspects of the compressor (threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee, makeup gain) on the bass track, the kick drum track, and the snare drum track particularly. I also experimented with some reverb (especially on the bass and kick) and gates (on the snare and kick) while I was at it. Downloading and adding in the original mix of the song by The Police was helpful to me in seeing how the professionals did it, which resulted in me realizing some shortcomings of my mix so far and spending more time on this unit than earlier units to make the song better than the original. The second most helpful thing I did was learn about the multimeter, which I kept open most of the time to see where my mix needed cuts and boosts to keep a straight line at listening frequencies. In the last unit, I tackled different audial elements like panning and volume step by step in each assignment, but only focused on and bounced out a 30-second clip of the song each time. This time, I went back to bouncing out the whole song mostly so you can really hear the punch that bass and those drums carry when they are first introduced after the weird synthy sound at the beginning.

For the bass, much of the punch comes from reverb I added on, but I also used the recommended bass guitar compressor preset including settings like a fast attack to punctuate those notes and a 5:1 ratio. The drum recordings, unlike the bass, the electric guitar, and the vocal part, are not independent from each other and have crap in the background; the "cymbals" track is the worst victim, with the snare in "cymbals" originally almost overpowering the hi-hat and crash sounds, but "snare" has crashes in it and "kick" has snare sounds. This extra crap made it hard to use a compressor without having the compressor catch these superfluous sounds too, so I added gates to the snare and the kick, which worked especially well on the kick. I moved on to accentuating the kick, first by actually re-enabling some higher frequencies that I had reduced in the EQ because I realized my kick sounded very stifled compared to the original mix's kick. I also added a space designer reverb and used the "Type R Kick Drum" compressor preset, which I improved by exploring different attack and release speeds and adjusting the final setting accordingly. I am really happy with the way the kick turned out by the end of this... I now realize it sounds like a heartbeat. The snare was harder to customize, and it took an effort to get the sound I wanted out of it. I watched a YouTube tutorial called "How to make Dr. Dre snares" in which a guy used various plugins to turn his bad snare into a good, punchy snare. He explained himself well, and I took his advice for improving my EQ, reverb, gate, and compressor; however, my snare continued to sound subpar. I tried very hard to further adjust the space designer and compressor settings, but finally, to my surprise, I increased the ratio from a low value (the guy had 2:1, I think) to a higher value like 6:1 and the sound was immediately better. I had taken more than a whole week on this unit already so at this point I decided to bounce out and move on.

I worked with a group in Cinematography class to create this short "commercial" for a product we made up, except the catch is there is something hidden in the product! We have a lot to improve in the way of actual cinematography... but, as part of my contribution to the project I decided to take one class period and some time after school to add the music and sound effects using my knowledge of Logic Pro. This was a difficult process at times, and included normalizing and using a compressor on the voiceover part, as it was recorded pretty quiet and dull to begin with, which was luckily very relevant for applying my learning in this unit! Film scoring and editing audio like this is a skill that I want to continue to improve as I get into more advanced projects in Cinematography.

Compression!:

• Compressors are used to reduce high volume peaks, making the overall volume disparity between highs and lows more balanced, generally useful in making things sound better
• Compressor threshold (dB) - how loud the sound signal must be before compression is applied
• Compressor ratio (x:1) - however much past the threshold for the compressed signal to increase 1 dB; for example 6:1 ratio means a 6 dB signal over threshold pre-compression will only be 1 dB over the threshold after compression
• Compressor attack (ms) - how quickly the compressor activates
• Compressor release (ms) - how soon after the signal dips below the threshold the compressor stops
• Compressor makeup gain (dB) - allows you to boost the total compressed signal volume. as compression often reduces volume significantly
• Compressor knee - hard knee - solid line, signal is cut right away; soft knee, curved arc, the compression kicks in more gently as the signal goes further past the threshold
• Gate - opposite to a compressor, takes the softest signals and removes them, useful in cleaning up drum clutter
• Lower output gain to reduce clipping without quality loss

Recommended compression per instrument:

• Acoustic Guitar - Threshold: low; Attack: 5-10 ms; Release: 0.5 s; Ratio: 5-10:1; Knee: Soft
• Electric Guitar - Threshold: low; Attack: 2-5 ms; Release: 0.5 s; Ratio: 8:1; Knee:  Hard
• Bass - varies - Threshold: medium; Attack: fast; Release: medium; Ratio: 3-5:1; Knee: Hard
• Drums - use a gate first - compression varies