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How to compress hi-hats?? PLZ HELP
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subconsciousmind
SCM
Started Topics :
37
Posts :
1033
Posted : Jun 5, 2007 14:28
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different approaches for different source material...
sure.
let me describe my approach.
If I have any kind of percussion sample, hiHat, snare, bongos what ever, they often take a lot of space in the mix, when they have a lot of "body".
So I use a compressor with an attack time between 5ms and 50ms to let the attack of the sound come through, but not the body. the body which comes after some time between 5-50ms depending the sound I compress with something around 1:4, depending the sound and threshold.
This gives the percussive sound a clear hit (you recognize the sound by the first ms anyways) but compresses, turns down, the body, which gives more room in the mix.
That way I can create really punchy percussion that sounds crisp and clear but doesn't mess up my mix.
Of course you can process your samples with volume envelopes in your sampler.. thats about the same, theoreticaly. I just like the characteristic of some compressors more.
I sometimes do that on EVERY percussion I use, and the overall sounds really much better to me. But as always that is a matter of what you want.
I like percussion which are well audible in the mix, punch clear, but still are subtle and not dominant, rather in the background.
If you are after dominant percussions compressing will possibly not help.
If you use samples that are right for you, sound well, maybe are compressed already or just recorded or synthesized so that they fit there is no need for compression.
  Most of my music for you to download at:
http://www.subconsciousmind.ch |
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_Crispy_
Flip-Flop
Started Topics :
0
Posts :
35
Posted : Jun 9, 2007 21:03
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I tend to get the mix of all the percusion sounding right using velocities and mixing all the different elements properly. i rarely apply compression to seperate channels, but then i also very rarely have more than one percussive sound on each track, therefor if the mix of them all is right, you wouldnt need to compress the differnt tracks (obviously there are exceptions).
once im happy with the mix of the percussion, ill send the hihats to one buss and claps, snares (non shiney percusion) to another. then often apply a small amount of nice compression on both channels to gel them together. aiming to apply as little as possible as ive hopefully got the levels of them all perfect already.
To reiterate what subconsciousmind said in his last sentence...
If the sounds you choose for your percusion are the right ones and the mix of the percusion is tight you wont need too much compression
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