Original subtitles

Even if you're completely new to vocal

compression, I reckon you should be

trying out a tool which is very very

useful. It's commonly used by

professionals and is very very easy to

use. I'm talking about an LA-2A style

compressor. Now I'm using a plug-in

version here from Universal Audio who

also happened to make the original

hardware version. But there's also

plug-in versions available from Waves, IK

Multimedia. And here in this free DAW,

Katewalk by Bandlab, we have a free

plug-in version down here in the Pro

channel. The reason I describe this as

super easy to use is because there's only

really one knob that we use to control

the compression. And that's this one, the

peak reduction knob. As we turn it up,

there will be more compression. As we

turn it down, there'll be less

compression. It's as simple as that I'm

afraid. Now this knob is similar to

something called a threshold control that

we will see on other compressors. When we

set the threshold for a compressor, we

are setting a level in decibels. And

we're saying, hey, once the signal goes

over that level, start to compress it.

Meaning, start to turn it down. We call

that gain reduction. Now before the

signal reaches that threshold, that

level, there actually is no compression

happening. So this peak reduction knob is

similar to that if not the same. Now

before we go ahead and apply this to some

vocals and listen to the difference, I

just want to clear up some confusion

about this compressor, which I see

commonly even with experience mixes.

Okay. And that has to do with the other

main knob on this interface and that is

labeled the gain knob. This should

probably more correctly be labeled the

output gain knob because that's what it

does. Okay. This is simply controlling

the level or the volume after the

compress and at the end of the chain in

terms of this plug-in. It's very similar

to just using the fader. Okay. On the

vocal channel, it's just making things

louder or quieter, but it does not affect

the compression. A lot of people confuse

this for an input gain knob because some

other compressors will have one,

particularly on the left-hand side of the

interface and that will affect the amount

of compression, but in this case not. So

if you've been using this and thinking

it's an input gain knob and thinking

you're hearing some change in the

compression, I'm afraid your eyes have

been falling your ears. So let's go ahead

and listen to this vocal.

I'm originally going to push up this peak

reduction knob and you're also going to

see this needle start to move. Okay. This

will indicate that there is some gain

reduction or compression happening. Okay.

So when you see that happening, have a

listen carefully and see if you can hear

the difference in the vocal. You may need

to rewind and listen two or three times.

Okay. Let's go ahead and listen.

When you're laughing,

(...) I'll laugh with you.

When you're feeling sad, I'm feeling

blue.(...) Now, if you have listened to

this two or three times and you're

thinking, Mike, I can't really hear any

difference, I'm afraid. That's not

necessarily a bad thing. I have to tell

you. It is very subtle. Some of you may

have heard it, but many of you will

barely detect a difference there. And

that's almost the point of using this

compressor like this in my opinion,

because it means that the listener is not

really aware of any compression. The

vocal still sounds natural, but

nonetheless, there is some gain reduction

happening. Now, what has actually

happened is when we look at the top or

the loudest part of our vocal performance

and the quieter part, we've actually

reduced the louder part down a bit. Okay.

So what that means is we've changed

something called the dynamic range. The

dynamic range is the difference between

the quietest part and the loudest part.

We've reduced that louder part. That

means that if we want to, we can now push

the whole thing up so that the louder

part is the higher. So the loudest part

is now roughly where it was before, but

the quieter parts are now louder compared

to the way they were before. That will

give the impression of the vocal being

louder and a bit more present as well.

And that is where this gain knob comes

in, the output gain. That's the point

where we would use that. Sometimes this

is called make-up gain. Okay. So we're

making up for the fact we've actually

reduced the signal somewhat with the

compressor. So that's why I think that

this particular style of compress is

really useful, especially for beginners.

And this is my first tip of five vocal

compression tips you should know. Hi

folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well.

The other four tips are not so much tips

as strategies for compression that you

can use in all of your productions, which

I think will greatly improve the presence

of your vocals,(...) especially before we

dive in. Let's quickly thank the sponsor

of this video, DistroKid. If you follow

the VIP link in the description down

below, you'll get 7% off an already

incredible price to distribute your

music. Now let's start off with a

slightly unexpected tip. So my second

vocal compression tip is don't use

compression. Well, not always anyway.

Although as a byproduct of compressor

plug-ins and hardware, we may color or

add character to the sound. The primary

purpose of a compressor is to control the

volume as we did earlier. Now it's very,

very useful to use a compressor where

those volume changes are going to be very

frequent and will happen many, many times

throughout a performance. And we're able

to automate that process. However, when

there's much broader changes in volume, a

compressor is not always the most useful

tool. Let's take a look at this vocal

performance. And at the beginning in the

verse area here, you can see that we're

generally peaking at the same kind of

level.(...) But further on, when we look

at this bridge section here, we're

peaking at a much higher level. Okay,

it's a much louder section of the

performance. And it's really useful

sometimes to be able to even all of that

out. Okay. Now here in Katewalk by

BandLab, I'm going to show you exactly

how to do it. But the process and the

features available are going to be very

similar, if not the same in other doors

as well. So I'm going to start off by

selecting my split tool up here and just

drag out the area that I want to affect

like so. So that's now a separate clip.

Go back to my regular tool, hold control

on the keyboard and drag down. And you

can see that I'm changing the overall

level of that section. And I could just

even it out to make it much more

comparable to other parts of the song.

Okay, I'll go ahead and I'll do the same

thing. For example, to this section here,

I'll just change the volume of all of

that there. And you can see it's

beginning to be a lot more even. Now,

obviously, if I was doing this for real,

I may go in and do it in a little bit

more detail. But that's the general sort

of process. Now, definitely go ahead and

use a compressor after that. But it's not

the most useful tool for broad strokes

like this. I think it's important with

all compression, not just vocal

compression, to understand the concepts

of attack and release. Now, with the LA2A

compressor that we used at the beginning,

there is no attack and release control.

We don't have control over it. So in this

way, it's not always the most useful

compressor, okay, when we want to get

more fine control over what's happening.

So I'll close that and show you this

compressor. The reason I'm using this

compressor, and it's the compressor in

Fat Channel XT from Presonus, is because

it's completely free to download and you

can use it in any door. Okay, I'll put a

link for that in the description down

below. And we've got some nice, easy

controls on here. It's visually quite

easy to understand. Now, first of all,

let's go through some other controls

apart from attack and release. We have

our threshold control, which, as we

discussed earlier, sets the level at

which compression will kick in. And we

have a ratio control, which essentially

is how much gain reduction we're going to

do once we go over that threshold. Then

we have the attack and release controls

here. Before we get into using them, I

think it's really important to understand

a couple of concepts about the sounds

that we're working with. You can see just

above it here, I've got a part of the

vocal performance we were working with

earlier. I'll just play that.

I'm just going to focus for a moment on

this word here. This is the word given

okay, because visually, it's quite

interesting. We can see that this "g"

part of the word has quite a sudden sort

of increase in volume here. And it

quickly sort of dies off again here. And

the rest of the word is mostly at the

same sort of level. So that initial part

of the sound is what we refer to as the

transient. Okay, now with some sounds and

some words in a vocal performance, it'll

be more sudden like that. With other

words, it'll be more gradual, a sort of a

softer transient if you like. And we

often want to be controlling transients.

They tend to be the loudest part and they

tend to come and go sort of quite

quickly. Okay, so this is where the

attack parameter comes in. Attack is

essentially saying, hey, once we go over

the threshold, how quickly

should we then apply compression?

Okay, very quick. And we're going to get

most of that transient and be able to

reduce its volume very slow. And you

know, the transient may have already

happened by the time the compressor

actually kicks in. Okay, so that's why

this control is very, very important. Let

me start off by having it very, very slow

to begin with. I'm just going to play

that one word given. Given, given, given.

(...) Have a look over on the right hand

side of the metering here. This is good

shows us how much gain reduction we get

in this bar here. I'll play again and

you'll see there's hardly anything

happening. Given, given. You see one

little blue line there. Okay, and that's

because this attack is so slow that, you

know, this transit's come and gone by the

time compression happens. Okay, so let's

go to the other extreme and make it

super, super quick. A fast attack, okay.

That means the compressor is going to

respond really quickly to that transient

and have a look at the metering this

time. Given, given. Okay, there's quite a

big amount of compression happening

there. Okay, so you can see the

difference there and you can see how

important it is to

get that correct, okay.

Now, if it's too quick, if you make it

too quick, you may not get the result you

want because sometimes you do want the

initial impact of a sound. Okay, or a

word. Okay, so don't go through. Oh,

yeah, I'll just always make it super fast

and it's always going to work. That's not

quite the right approach. You want to

play with it until it seems right and

you're hearing the right thing. Now,

another control, which is super important

and kind of works in conjunction, you

could say is release because once that

compression kicks in.

Yeah, it's only going to switch off once

the signal falls below the threshold.

However, there's a sort of a delay in

that and that is called the release time.

If we put the release up really, really

long in this case, the problem we will

have and I'll just play it because we're

definitely grabbing that transient is

this. Given, given. Kind of the whole

word, the whole word given is now become

quieter.(...) That's because even though

after the initial transient, the level

falls down below the threshold, the

release is set to such a long time that

the compression is staying down. This is

staying on during the whole word and it's

actually lowering the volume of the whole

word. So if we only want to control that

initial transient, then we need to get

that that release down to a short enough

time as well. Perhaps down here. Let's

have a listen. Given, given, given. And,

you know, that's probably roughly where I

want it. You may want to experiment. So

I'm not going to tell you that there is a

correct or a good setting for attack and

release for a vocal. It sort of depends

what you want to achieve with the

compressor. Yeah. However, I do tend to

find that these kind of settings are

quite useful to me to control the initial

transients of a vocal. So using these

tips to improve your vocal can really add

the finishing touches before release. And

when you do release your music, you want

to tell people how to get to it really

easily. Now, distro kids has a feature

called hyper follow, which makes it super

easy to give links to people for your

tracks. This is the hyper follow page for

one of my EPs, Wonderland. When people

visit this Web page, they can choose for

themselves which one of these great

platforms they want to listen to my music

on. But I didn't have to create this

page. It was generated automatically for

me when I uploaded my EP to distro kid.

If we visit my distro kid page here and

look at this EP and scroll down, you can

see the section just at the bottom here

where they supply the link for me to

share. Now, I can share that on places

like Facebook where they will

automatically be generated my album

artwork and people can just click on this

and go straight to that hyperlink page.

Now, this is all included with the base

price of distro kid, which is just

nineteen ninety nine per year. If you

follow the link in the description,

you'll get seven percent off of that

already great price. So at the beginning,

when we use the L.A. to a compressor, we

used it as an insert on the vocal channel

itself, and we can see that here. I'm

going to combine that now with another

style of compression called parallel

compression. Sometimes this is known as

New York compression as well. And for

that, we're actually going to use a bus.

So you can see with the channel here, I'm

doing now a send to a bus, which is

called F Vox comp. And that bus is over

here. You can see in blue and that has a

different compressor inserted there.

Let's have a look at that. This is an

eleven seventy six style compressor.

Again, this one's from Universal Audio,

who also make the original hardware.

However, there's lots of versions

available from different plugging

companies for this. And we're using this

because we do want more control over the

attack and release and ratio, in fact, on

this occasion. So it's going through to

that bus where we have this compressor.

I'm going to put it in solo and we're

going to hear it in a moment. But before

let's have a look at the settings I have

set up here. First of all, the ratio.

Remember, this is how much we're going to

compress the signal once we go above the

threshold. I've put it at twenty to one.

That's the highest setting, meaning it's

really going to turn the volume of things

it detects down much lower than, you

know, say a four to one ratio. OK, so

that's the first thing we're going to go

for and ratio. The next thing we're going

to do is have a really fast attack time.

And that's one of the reasons why this

particular compressor, eleven seventy six

is useful because it has really fast

attack times. So I'm actually going to

put it up nearly full. Now, do note with

the attack control on this compressor,

fast means we have the knob all the way

up to full. OK, and slow means it's all

the way down. That's in reverse to many

other compressor plug ins or even

hardware that you will see. So it's very

fast. The attack times on this compressor

go from twenty to one hundred

microseconds. So it's kind of fast.

Whatever you do. So I'm choosing that

very fast time. So it really immediately

grabs any transients. OK, the next

setting, which is the release time, I

also have set up very fast and again,

fast on with this knob means all the way

up full. OK, that's the fastest time.

This goes from fifty to a hundred

milliseconds in terms of timing for

release. OK, I'm not going to put it all

the way up to the top. I just back off a

little bit from the fastest setting. So

what's going to be happening here is it's

grabbing transients very, very quickly.

It's turning things down by a lot and

then it's releasing pretty quickly as

well. So it's only grabbing the transient

and everything else is kind of left

alone. That means that when we use our

makeup gain and turn everything back up

again, the quieter parts of the

performance will be much louder. OK, and

the louder parts will be much quieter,

kind of evening the whole thing out quite

a lot into a kind of a sausage if you

like. Now, if I play this by itself in

solo, it sounds pretty awful. Have a

listen.(...) Because I've given all you

want. You've taken all you can. I take it

on the chin. In fact, those quiet parts

are so much louder that we can even hear

all the breaths and things. OK, you may

not want it quite that extreme. I don't

mind it.(...) But yet by itself, it

doesn't sound good. OK,(...) but the

point of parallel compression is the

parallel part. It's going to be running

in parallel with the original signal. OK,

so let's on solo it so that we can hear

both parts. And what I would then do is

turn the fader for this parallel

compression all the way down to zero and

then I'll just introduce it. So I'm going

to be hearing the original vocal and then

I'll introduce this. Because I've given

all you want. You've taken all you can. I

take it on the chin. I'll be your fool.

You'll never really know how far it is to

go until you're there and we are through.

And you will have noticed there that I

kind of push the fader up and then I

almost went too far with it. OK, I got it

to the point where I thought it's way too

obvious what's happening. OK, and I don't

want to hear that. And then I backed off

from there. That's just the way that I

like to do it. And I may fiddle with it

for a bit longer than that before I set

it on a level which I like. I also may

sometimes automate that fader throughout

the course of a song. That's parallel

compression. Pretty easy to do if you

just follow those steps. And then

finally, so by combining everything that

we've learned so far, we can actually use

another type of compression which is

super useful for vocals and that's serial

compression. This is where we use two

compressors one after the other, each of

them for a slightly different task. Let's

say we've been using an L A2 compressor

as we did earlier right at the beginning.

And we're getting a nice natural

compression with say three, four, five

decibels of gain reduction. OK,(...)

that's fine for most of the track. But

then occasionally there's a super sharp

sudden transient in the vocal, which is

much louder. And we end up with say 10 or

12 decibels of compression. Yeah, what's

going to happen then because of the

relatively slow release time of an L A2A

is we're going to sort of hear it

suddenly go much quieter and then

gradually the vocal will come up. And you

can end up with a very unnatural almost

like pumping effect to the vocal. This is

where serial compression can come in.

I've got that L A2A applied here, but

just before it you can see here in the

chain I have an 1176 again. This is going

to play the role of reducing those much

louder peaks that we will be hearing in

the performance.(...) Very similar

settings to what we had with parallel

compression, but slightly different.

First of all, we don't have the 20 to 1

ratio. You can use something much more

like this 12 to 1 ratio that I've got set

up here. Still using a fast attack to

make sure we grab those transients. We're

also using a pretty fast release time so

we don't grab anything more than just

those outstanding kind of peaks if you

like.(...) Now what I've done is I've set

this up so that this is reducing those

transients by around about three or four

decibels or so. So not quite the same as

we had earlier. We were doing a massive

gain reduction with the parallel

compression. Now remember with an 1176

there isn't a threshold control. Instead

we use the input gain, okay, which is

over here on the left.(...) And then we

have to counteract that by using the

output gain. Yeah, so just remember that

there's no threshold control. You'll see

that when I play this vocal that we are

getting something like three or four

decibels of gain reduction. And you'll

notice that a lot of the time there is no

gain reduction. There's no compression.

It's only happening with those transients

and it's sort of fairly quickly on and

then off again. Have another look. Well

have a listen. But if you can't hear

what's going on, have a look at the

needle there. It's almost got a kind of a

sporadic look to it. So it's controlling

those transients before we go into our

1176 so that things never get too far out

of control. And the sorry, I should say

the LA2A before we go into the LA2A and

the LA2A is just doing that more gentle

natural compression. Now many of you will

want to be doing some really natural

sounding pitch correction on your vocals.

And I reckon by far the best tool for

that is Melodyne. But when you first get

Melodyne, it may be a little bit tricky

to figure out. That's why I made this

video right here to fast track you to

using what I reckon is one

of the best tools out there.