what's good fp,
Question today is, How do I know when a sound needs to be compressed? I understand the fundamentals of what compressors do, but I'm not quite sure what to listen for to say "oh yeah that needs to be compressed".
Any suggestions or tips would be great yall!
Hello there bands!
I could offer some thoughts here as well, perhaps it would be helpful or interesting
My initial thought here is: what you are "listening for" depends on your procedural frames of reference, perspective, goals, and/or intention
So this idea is based on the assumption that engineering, mixing, mastering, etc is worked through and completed via Process---the notion that we have a relatively linear series of decisions and preferred points of view or reference that guides us through and to completion during this sonic-actualization process. perhaps this is so.
okay, so given the above assumption it is then perhaps appropriate to consider the various perspectives guiding decision making for the audio processing, which again inform what details to set your deliberate or intuitive sights on. I will try to show a particular overall approach to illustrate these ideas and the related details to logically focus on. This is just one approach of many, none better or worse, just variation, and that is all.
Example 1: lets say you have decided your mix requires multiple frequency (and/or dynamically) variable and competitive tracks to fit together in one mix---to tickle my own fancy, lets say this situation involves
several layers of drum room mics/tracks, woe-is-me/us. lolz.
This could be complicated. drum room tracks have several varying items (a set of drums/cymbs/perc) with theoretically infinite variation in recorded sound. Briefly breaking down the "infinite variation": There is presumably one drummer/drum set in a given recorded performance. The air and ambiance of a room is constantly moving from performed percussive impact. This force on air is equally subject to environment input (air conditioning, windows, doors, people, general air fluctuation over time, so on). Beyond this, the angles from which the recording engineer can orient microphones to capture this air movement varies significantly from track to track (musically or not). Sooo this physical and situational
variation in mind, for mixing multiple drum room tracks these air-movement factors create theoretically infinite phase interactions between room tracks as each track contains markedly different point of views on specifically captured (recorded) air movement related to the drummer's performance. In the end, the interactive relationship between each drum room track and the next will constantly orient final phase relationship in non-linear ways for your mix. this lovely inherent chaos is just what we got & what we get. Here one could conclude a solution: the intensely chaotic phase relationships between said rooms could benefit from control. control, with the intent to balance and actualize a musically representation of our fictional drummer's performance in the equally fictional room of this illustration. woe is me/us
So. This is the part where you take a
conceptualization of this issue (see previous rambles on air, movement, the whims of silly engineers, etc for example) and this informs the lens with which you will play detective, sniffing out various details to focus on for the musical-actualization process in front of you (mixing)---this lens (based on conceptualization) informs what you want to listen for.
SO. further summed down illustration of this perspective on process:
example 1: mixing multiple drum room tracks to fit well together for entire song as whole:
The Conceptualization of issue: "multiple drum rooms have bonkers phase relationships, because: physics."
The Lens to orient analysis of decided issue: "controlling varying aspects of tracks for the sake of balance tames chaos".
What to look for under this lens: "what details are chaotic and would benefit from control-to-balance"
Beyond this, being savy with the art/craft of mixing comes in, one could suppose. Balancing frequency, harmonics, dynamics, sound stage placement, stereo image etc. There are some great posts here and beyond this site where one could find examples of recording/mixing/master for the sake of balance with some diggin round
wishing the best
-MadHat