Compression! and more.... RECORDING!

This week, there was no class Monday, so on Wednesday we covered a lot about compression. Compressors are used to smooth out the dynamic range of a performance, typically on instruments with a wide dynamic range like vocals, drums, and bass. These dynamic range processors can boost/attenuate volume indifferences within an audio signal. The benefits of using compression can include a smoother sounding and more consistent performance, which is much easier to listen to that something with too much dynamic range. It can make soft parts louder and loud parts softer. It changes the roominess of a sound, and changes the tone of the source. A compressor has a few parameters: The threshold is a user-defined setting measured in dB of how much audio is being affected. If there is a threshold of -15dB, any audio that is sounding above that threshold will be compressed, and the audio underneath it will remain unaffected by the compressor. Ratio is another aspect of a compressor. It defines the comparison of unaffected audio to compressed audio. A 3:1 ratio means that for every 3dB of audio over the set threshold, it will be heard at a volume of 1dB over the threshold. Any ratio over 10:1 is considered the use of a limiter. Attack time (in milliseconds) is the time it takes a compressor to react to the audio signal above the threshold. This setting can make the difference between a crack or thuck sound in a snare drum. A fast attack time creates a soft, pillowy drum sound. The release time is the time it takes a compressor to return the signal back to normal, or unaffected. Setting a longer release can bring up the quieter parts in the tail of an audio signal. The output of the compressor controls the audio level after compression.
This week in labs we did some more recording for the third song that I have composed for the group! Tuesday morning was recording drums for the first section of the song. We set up the usual, D112 on the kick, e22’s on snare top and bottom, MD 421’s for toms, and the 414’s as overheads. Tracking these drums was fun for me, because I wrote this song in mostly odd time signatures and the grooves turned out, well, pretty groovy! This took the whole lab because I wanted to make sure we had one of the best takes possible for that day, and we accomplished that. On Thursday morning, I brought in my MIDI controller again to track some more parts for the sections of the song. We hooked the keyboard up to a laptop that has Logic as the DAW, because I had found this really cool patch that I wanted to use for this song. The only thing is this patch has a delay, phaser, and I EQ’d it a little bit. This just means that I had to play tight, and with no punching in really! With fixed effects, there is no going in and removing them after it has been recorded, so it needed to be tight. With what little time I had before we were supposed to track, I stayed up late the previous night practicing the parts, and in turn the tracking went a lot smoother than I know it would have had I not sat down and worked on it. We got the first section done last week so we had to record the transition into the second section, the transition into the third section, and the entire third section. We set everything up the same way as last time, running out of the laptop into an interface, and then out of the interface into a guitar amp, and also into a R and L direct in. We used the 414 and the Royer 121 again, even though we knew we liked the way the Royer sounded by itself. After getting all that tracking done, we got the other room set up to record a real piano for the middle section of the song. We miked it with two 414’s, and it took one or two takes for me to nail the piano part. Onto the viola with what little time we had left! We quickly moved a 414 from the piano and set up a new audio track for viola. Taylor checked out sheet music I had created for him a few minutes before, and nailed the part in a couple of takes. That concluded the day.