HOW TO COMPRESS VOCALS HOW TO
HOW TO COMPRESS VOCALS SERIAL

The drums are missing both punch and sustain.

You want to hear more of the decay and ring of the drums. You want to hear more вЂњthwackвЂќ on the front-end of the kick and snare. The approach youвЂ™ll need depends on what you want to add to your drums.ДЇirst, listen to your dry drum tracks and ask yourself - what are these drums missing? Choose one of the three options below. When youвЂ™re applying parallel compression to drums, there are three different approaches you can use. Used correctly, it can make your drum tracks sound larger than life. Parallel compression can add punch, energy, and density to drums. If youвЂ™re missing the quieter parts of the vocal, just turn the aux track up. You can now think of this aux track as a low-level detail fader for the vocal. You may have to turn down the original vocal track to compensate for the increased volume the parallel compression adds. Set the input of this aux track to an unused bus.ДЇinally, with all the tracks in your mix playing, adjust the level of the aux track until the vocal sounds balanced and natural in the mix.

HOW TO COMPRESS VOCALS HOW TO

HereвЂ™s how to pull this offвЂ¦ДЇirst, create a new aux track in your DAW and place it next to the vocal track. Parallel compression can help bring up this low-level detail, so you can hear all the subtle nuances that bring the vocal to life. When the vocalist trails off at the end of a phrase or dips into a lower register, the voice drops in volume and you lose these quieter parts in the mix. All youвЂ™re missing is a bit of the low-level detail. You can hear most of the words clearly, and there arenвЂ™t dramatic swings in level on the voice.

HOW TO COMPRESS VOCALS SERIAL

If you set the right fader level in the chorus, the vocal sounds too quiet in the verses.ДЇor vocal tracks like these, serial compression is usually the best solution.Д«ut sometimes, the vocal is already sitting evenly in the mix.

If you set the trackвЂ™s fader to the correct level in the verse, the vocal often gets way too loud in the chorus. With tracks like these, itвЂ™s often impossible to find a static fader position that works throughout the song. ThereвЂ™s a huge difference in level between the softest and loudest parts of the performance. How To Use Parallel Compression On Vocals Now that you know when to use parallel compression, letвЂ™s talk about how to use it in some common mixing scenarios. Otherwise, serial compression is my go-to choice. In short, whenever I like the way a track sounds but I just want to enhance it a bit, parallel compression is often a great solution. Since it usually sounds more transparent and natural than serial compression, it can enhance a track without dramatically changing the way the track sounds.

In this case, I find parallel compression to be much more useful. But sometimes, the track already sounds great, and you just want to subtly enhance it. But adding a compressor directly onto a track can often significantly change the way that track sounds. In most cases, serial compression works fine.

How to compress vocals