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Mixing Vocals with Compressor - Part 2

Lesson 19 from: Music Production in Logic Pro X: Vocal Mixing Essentials

Tomas George

Mixing Vocals with Compressor - Part 2

Lesson 19 from: Music Production in Logic Pro X: Vocal Mixing Essentials

Tomas George

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Lesson Info

19. Mixing Vocals with Compressor - Part 2

<b>In this lesson, we will explain how to use the Attack and Release setting in Logic Pro&#8217;s Compressor.</b>

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Introduction and Welcome to this Class

00:52
2

Project Organization

09:47
3

Faders and Panning

11:13
4

Flex Pitch - Vocals

05:18
5

Flex Time - Vocals

03:05
6

Editing Studio Drums

09:29
7

Song Mix Deconstruct - Mixing Drum Kit Designer

08:04
8

Mixing Files

01:50

Lesson Info

Mixing Vocals with Compressor - Part 2

Hi. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to use attack and release in compression when compressing vocals to help them fit in the mix. Ok. So let's have a look at what we've got so far. The moments of fear. Ok. So you can see the gain reduction needle um responding to the signal that's coming in. It's definitely taming the dynamics of the vocal there, but it's gonna be quite difficult for us to hear any differences when we change the attack and release at these very gentle settings. So what I'm gonna do is make a really, really aggressive setting so that we can just hear the compressor working. So I'm gonna turn up the ratio to about to 1. So anything above the threshold gets really aggressively turned down, I'm gonna dial down the threshold a little bit and let's see what that sounds like. Feast of to starving. So as you could quite clearly hear there, it was aggressively turning down the signal, it was actually hurting the way that the vocal sits in the mix. But obviously we're usi...

ng that to demonstrate attack and release. So first of all, I'm gonna turn off the auto release for now and I'm going to make changes in the attack and release times so that we can quite clearly hear how they affect the way the compression behaves. So first of all, I'm actually going to turn them both down. Oh, the why? Let's have a listen face. So what I can hear is actually quite a bit of pump as the compressor kind of backs off as the gain reduction goes back to zero. I can feel a swell or a sort of pump in the signal as it sort of returns back to its normal loudness. So let's see what it sounds like when we increase the release time. So let's try 100 milliseconds. Let's see if that either helps or hurts the kind of situation with that pumping face. For me that's helping actually, because it's not returning to zero gain reduction too quickly for that sort of pumping or that swelling to happen. So that's where the release can actually help you. If the release is too fast, it will cause such artifacts. But if the release is too slow, that's not a good thing either because it will just take too long to return to zero. And it could basically mean that the signal was pushed too far down for too long to be helpful in a mixed situation. But at 100 we're quite good where we are. Let's see how the attack time affects what we're hearing. OK. So because the attack time is basically instant or near instant, it's compressing everything. So the moment Peter says a word or even says the consonant in the word that he's singing it, it's just flat. It's not, there's no sort of dynamic inside the vocal performance. The Ts and the PS don't pop through as crisp as they should. Obviously, this is a very aggressive setting. So that's where a slower attack time can actually help us. It can allow those consonants to pass through because the attack time is how quickly it goes from zero to full compression. After the signal has passed through the threshold, the attack time is not so much how quickly the compressor reacts. It doesn't wait to apply compression. It's just how quickly it goes from zero to full compression and full compression is dependent on how loud the signal is going in where the threshold is and what the ratio is. So if the attack time at 50 milliseconds, it goes from 0 to 2 decibels of game reduction over 50 milliseconds. So having a slower than instant attack time allows those transients in the vocal or perhaps in drums or something like that allows them to pass through and then let the body of the note be reduced as opposed to the transient of it. So let's turn up the attack time and see how that affects face. Thompson start. OK. So when I increase it to about 92 milliseconds there. You could quite clearly hear the consonants of the vocal performance, the PS and the Ts and yeses and stuff like that. They pop through and then the compressor kind of turn down the body of the note, which is sometimes very, very useful. It's quite frequent in vocal processing that you're gonna want an attack time. That isn't instant for those reasons. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

7._Mixing_Files.zip
17._Part_2_Audio_-_Downloadable_Project.zip

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Student Work

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