

If the song is sad, surely it will have an opposite characteristic. They should pound in the chest of the listener. If the song is an EDM, you obviously want the drums to be punchy and aggressive. The priority of mixing and compression in particular is to bring out the purpose of the song. This will open possibilities for you to make moves to serve the essence of the song. Your job as a mix engineer or even if you are mixing your own music, is to internalize the essence of this song first. It may be generating energy, happiness, sadness, nostalgia etc.

It will be then more artful than being simply mechanical. This will make you to mix your music more purposefully and in a decided direction than just mixing it for the sake of mixing!

Learning to hear the compression or the effects of it will train your mind to take decisions about what you want to do with the sound in question. It can make it more aggressive and bright with stronger settings and vice versa. A more punchy and strong sound will be perceived to be closer.Ī more subtle and soft sound will be perceived to be far, if you listen it in context of the whole mix.Ĭompression also colors the sound. You can send your instruments far or closer even with compression. It can also be used to create depth in the mix between instruments. It’s very important because through compression various characteristics can be achieved in the mix.Ĭompression can make the sounds more punchy or more sustained or have both in a balance as per your need. Now you need to back off a little and train your ears gradually to get more and more sensitive when the settings are applied in lesser and lesser amounts. To hear the compression, you need to exaggerate the settings first and then listen and memorize the results. How to hear compressionīesides all the compression process that you might wanna do on your drums or whatever, how well can you hear the effect of compression? Focused! Hard Hitting! High Quality! Dirt cheap price! 1. Let’s see each on in detail.īefore we move further, let me introduce you to our –Ĭheck out a sample pack made for every producer. These are the important points to consider while working on your drums. Other important settings – threshold, ratio and knee.In this article, we’ll cover following topics important for drum compression – The compressor also affects the musicality of the elements which makes drum compression an important skill to get the hang of. You can either make your drums softer or make them more punchy with compression. The general way of working is to compress the individual drum sounds first and then compressing the whole drum track to hold everything together. Compressing single drum sounds or the whole drum track that depends on upon the requirement of your music. If there were no drums, the impact that any song makes wouldn’t have been present in it.ĭrum Compression is essential part of mixing.

Drums are the driving elements of your song.
