Music Lesson: Enhancing Sound Using Compression and Effects

Okay, so now that I've got this sound in here, it's recorded pretty dry. It is a pretty, pretty dry sound.

Adding Compression and Gain

So I'm just going to ramp it up a little bit and give it some more oomph. I'm hearing it needs a little bit of compression and just overall gain on the signal.

• Using Logic's Compressor:

  • I've opened the compressor on the signal from the MiniBrute to give it a bit more oomph.
  • It's got to be quite a dry sound, so I'll try the studio effect to give it that extra kick and to bring up the lows a little more.

• Settings Overview:

  • Release is quite low, quite high threshold.
  • Bring the kick at the front down a little bit.
  • Lower the ratio and the attack, and adjust the threshold slightly.

Compression Adjustments

Yeah, I mean the ratio needs to kick in sooner. I wanted to compress it a little bit sooner to provide a bit more compression to it. Let's also stick a limiter on it too.

• Outcome:
  • You can hear a little more of its bass; it's been stretched out a bit by the compressor.

Stereoizing the Sound

What I would do next is stereoize it to give it a bit of width. I'm going to add a chorus plug-in here.

• Creative Sound Design:
  • This is all under the creative sound design decisions, not just mixing the levels and sounds together.
  • Let's call the chorus my "Micro Shift." It's going to widen the sound slightly, but I will turn it down a bit to keep it tighter.

EQ Adjustments

Next, I'm going to add an EQ to bring out the mid-section to high section brightness in the sound.

• Using Logic's Stock EQ:

  • I'm looking to access the highs, so this is my shelf EQ.
  • I'll pull up, turn down the Q a little, and sweep to find the resonant sound I want to enhance.

• Final Tweaks:

  • Just bring the overall accentuation up a little.
  • Okay, that's sounding good!

Adding Reverb for Body

Now, I'm going to stick it through a little bit of reverb to give it some extra body, some otherworldly body.

• Favorite Reverb:
  • A reverb I enjoy using very much is the Softube reverbs.
  • Let's listen to it as it is: turn the volume down a bit, bring it to 50%, and adjust the density and time down to give it just some body.

Clean Up

• Time Adjustment:
  • It was way too much time-wise; let's clean it up a bit.
  • Without/With Comparison:
    • This is without. There's wear.

I'm using a stereo reverb here because I've turned the signal into a stereo signal with the chorus. Otherwise, I would use a mono channel reverb.

• Reverb Outcome:
  • This now has depth and brightness pulled up from the EQ adjustments.

Contextual Listening

Let's have a listen to it in context with everything.

• Session Overview:
  • We spent 40 minutes finding a sound on an external synth and layering it to boost the intensity of the track.

Conclusion

To conclude, we've created a sound from the MiniBrute 2 to mix into our track and add another layer of intensity for this very specific genre and the needs of the track.

It's all about intensity in different sections. This section works very well.

• Next Steps:
  • We touched on audio comping; we'll do a bit more of that later.
  • We've subtly flexed the audio using Flex Audio very slightly. I haven't done anything radical yet, but Flex Audio can be used in a more radical way for sound design, which we'll explore in the next track.