This week Sonic Academy welcomes back LA based 2Scoops for a brand new set of Tech Tips in Ableton.
Prepare yourself for some sick 808’s, overdriven Hardstyle kicks, and dope drop synthesis all using ANA 2, Kick 2 but predominantly Ableton’s stock audio effects to achieve the end result.
Checking out some overlooked effects such as Ableton’s Phaser and Frequency Shifter, 2Scoops designs some ‘out there’ effects that’ll get you up to speed with the trap / dubstep hybrid genre that’s become so lit in the LA club scene today.
We also look at using synthesisers for percussion, vocal chop drops, granular stretching, sidechaining and unconventional mastering techniques.
There can be many reasons for this, like the other compressor type and specs, how it reacts and affects the sound ( a FET compressor reacts different than a VAC, Optical, Tube or Diode compressor ), each type usually has it’s own purpose and which one you use depends of the source material ( is it drums, vocals, guitars…etc ) as well as the music genre & tempo, or what you’re trying to do ( are you trying to glue an entire bus or full mix, or just to even one audio channel…etc. ).
Especially when it comes to 3rd party plugins and hardware units replicas, compressors have different attack, release and ratios settings and even their own sound coloration, saturation.
Then another common case to use multiple compressors on the same source is to lift the weight of one compressor and spread the compression between multiple compressors ( so instead of using only one compressor with a higher threshold and ratio than will need to work quite hard and might squash your audio source, you’ll spread the compression between two compressors, have them both doing a little, which can brings a much more transparent and musical result in the end ). This can also be done with other effects like limiters ( which is quite common too ).
You can also have combination like an EQ followed by a compressor, then followed by another EQ and another Compressor or vice-versa ( Comp 1st and EQ after ), but what only matters in the end is how it sounds right ? The final listener don’t care at all about what and how many you’ve used to process your sound, they just listen to a piece of music, like it or not, keep interest for it or not, but no one cares how it was engineered, so learn the rules and break the rules, be creative, what matters it’s how it sounds in the end.
