Logic Pro X - #64 - Mixing (part6): Compression for Guitar and Bass Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 64 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
we're going to talk about compressing
the guitar and bass in our session and
different ways to compress guitar based
on the type of playing is involved as
well as the overdrive setting or the
lack of overdrive one thing I just want
to mention real quick before I get into
this is that this video is in stereo now
in the prior five parts of this mixing
mini series for whatever reason there
was some weird a buss glitch that was
sending the audio from the session over
to the screen capture in multi mono
instead of in stereo so I apologize for
that and thank you youtube for pointing
that out several people messaged me and
and commented and said that hey I think
this videos in mono and sure enough you
guys are right so it was just a it was a
bus it was a weird bus glitch I'm not
sure why why it happened but I've
resolved the issue now so this will be
in stereo so just so you can hear some
of the stereo effects especially in the
guitar since we're working with guitar
today let me just play a bit of the
verse in the pre-chorus
so yeah that sounds a lot better and a
lot of people are probably wondering in
Episode one or the first part of the
mixing series I should say why when I
pan the guitars I wasn't you weren't
hearing any of the stereo effects and
that's why I was because of that weird
buss glitch so let's just solo out the
guitar that I'm just going to sell out
the rhythm guitar in the left channel
and just as a reminder that the guitar
on the left channel is almost the same
as in the right channel they're both
rhythm guitar parts I'm a compress just
the left and then I'll just copy the
setting over to the right with these
guitar parts were working with sort of
now I wouldn't call it heavy overdrive
but a bit of overdrive so it's certainly
not clean so there's a different way to
compress sort of over driven guitar
distorted guitar tones and versus you
know compressing say a clean guitar tone
for reggae or jazz or even sort of like
a bit of a crunch you know if you look
at if you look at the waveform here
you'll see that there's there's a lot of
sort of dips and peaks to it and that's
because the actual you know the actual
tone here is actually the clean signal
of the guitar because as I mentioned
earlier we're actually using a guitar
amp plugin so that's what's causing the
it's causing the overdrive if I were
actually to maybe take out a little
section here and actually render this to
audio I'm just going to press control B
to bounce in place you'll actually see
that the the waveform is far less far
less you know peaky you know then then
the other one there's far more uniform
and that's just due to all the fuzz from
the distortion any amped guitar sound is
going to be like that as well so with
heavy overdrive you're not really
dealing with transient heavy material
even if the original dry recording looks
like that so we don't really want to use
much of an attack time if any because
that's basically what that's going to do
is it's going to let a little bit of the
punch through just at certain spots but
not just I'm not on every note you'll
end up with these sort of pops in
guitar part where the where the attack
comes through and then quickly comes out
so I'm going to go ahead and throw the
the compressor on this guitar track here
by itself again sounds like this
so rather than adding punch to this like
we do at the drums I want to add heft to
it so I'm going to keep the attack time
all the way down I'm going to keep a
pull the release up toward the middle
here pull the ratio up a bit at least
for at least four to one maybe five or
six don't even pull the threshold down
and again I'm just in ie right here I'm
just going to press play an ear
yeah I'm just looking for a setting that
is going to give us heft but at the same
time isn't going to start to sound woofy
so let me go so let me go and pull the
the gain up and actually I turn the
limiter off because I'm not really going
to need it
the only problem I'm really running into
is the part where the guitars playing
sort of that dun dun dun dun the more
sort of punchy crunch part I really
could use a different attack and release
setting for that that part then were the
the heavy chords come in I'm gonna sort
of put this on like roughly in the 70s
the release time what I'll probably end
up doing later and we start talking
about automation is I'm going to come in
here and actually automate the attack
and release time just for that one spot
so I can get more of a punchy crunch on
the on the verse and then the pre-chorus
get more sort of the rich full hefty
sounding get to hard guitar parts so I'm
going to keep it there I'm going to keep
it on RMS not peak but one last thing I
am going to do is I'm going to come down
to my additional parameters here and
turn the hard output distortion on
without it it sounds like this
ah
yeah with that you can see we're getting
a bit more of a brighter sound out of it
um to hold option duplicate this over to
my right guitar let's suit both of these
sound like together now
what I did there as I pulled the release
all the way down it's just there's a
section in here you're gonna really
really hear it start ducking
I think it's on this note here
ha ha
they're still getting a little more a
bit more ducking like I said when we get
into we get into automation I'll
probably come back and stand automate
the release times for the for the verse
a bit differently than I do do the rest
I'm gonna go ahead and pull the knee up
a hair too now if we were compressing
say like clean guitar that's a little
more punchy maybe for reggae or jazz or
something like that where you want sort
of a bit of the punch of like clean to
get through or just maybe a little bit
of crunch you're going to want to make
sure you open up the attack time a bit
that's going to let some of the
transients through again the only reason
why we're not really playing with the
attack time here is it just we don't
need it there really is no transient
material to worry about here so I'm
pulling it all the way down
Oh
and actually I'm gonna do one more thing
I'm second-guessing myself here as will
you on the the compressor and the rhythm
guitar me to pull the ratio down a bit
I'm just getting some pumping in there
that I don't like some sort of wolfy
wolfy sounds pull the release up just a
hair let's copy that over I like it on
the leads but I'm not a big fan of I'm
not wasn't a big fan of it on the the
rhythm there
yeah that's a lot better
let's go to our base now bases basic can
be a little tricky because base
especially if you're doing di base it's
going to be really sort of dynamically
spread all over the place you're going
to really sort of tall peaks and really
low dips so usually with rock and roll
base I try to one of the very few
instruments I do this with but I try to
sort of flatten the base intentionally
and so with the base I'm going to go
with like a really really high ratio
like 20 to 1 I'm gonna let some of the
some of the attack through not not much
I just want to let a bit of the punch of
each note to come through pull the
release time to about the middle again
keep it on our m/s let's pull the
threshold way down because we really
want to flatten this and pull the gain
way up
here wanna when I pull the attack up you
get more of a sort of like a punch to it
I want some of that but not not that
much so I'm going to keep it about six
or seven milliseconds
now one thing the bass will really
benefit from is from the vintage VCA
circuit you can try the opto as well but
the vintage ones tend to colorize the
tone a bit more which is going to give
us a warmer sound a bit more of
mid-range that's one of sort of the key
the key things to bass guitars if you
really want to actually hear it in the
mix a bit and have it support the guitar
better you want to have some of the
mid-range come through not just the bass
come through so we could go into our EQ
as well and then boost some of these mid
low frequencies but we already have
something's going to kind of keep them
where they are
yeah it's even distorting a little bit
so it's giving we're getting a little
bit of overdrive from pulling that the
output Distortion putting that on hard
and then also pulling the gain up higher
and also using the the vintage VCA
circuit these are all good things for
bass you know I mean depending on the
amount of overdrive you want on it you
know you may have to add something else
in addition to this or use an amp and
you know intentionally distort the amp
but here this is really the sound I want
I want a bit more mid-range and that
sort of tube emulating distortion here
is pulling up some of the the mid low
range overtones are going to bring out
some some of the tone in the bass and
not so much of just the fundamental so
let's hear it all the guitar sound like
actually just turn everything on except
for vocals of course I'm still we're
still working with the rhythm section
here so let's just go back to our verse
you
you
whoops look this is what happens when
you try to when you try to run a session
while you're while you're also doing a
screen capture and also recording audio
let me make sure my make sure my buffer
size is turned all the way up I'm kind
of glad this happened because whoops um
the wrong preferences logic preferences
I'm kind of glad this happened
because yeah this this very well might
happen to you and and when you're mixing
you want to make sure the buffer size is
as high as possible it's going to keep
things like that from happening
frankly with everything I've got going
on I'm surprised surprised that didn't
happen earlier so so it's just wait for
this to load and then we'll give this
one more listen that guitar solo I'm
going to want to compress as well so I'm
just going to throw that same same
compression on the guitar solo let's
give this a listen here I'm sorry logic
I'm making you work too hard
yeah I really like the way that sounds
so I'm gonna stick with that now one of
the things I am going to do later and
we'll talk about this in the next video
is I'm going to start grouping
instruments together so all of my
guitars are and well my rhythm guitars
are going to go to an aux track the
leads are going to go to an aux track
all the drums are going to go to an
abstract so there's actually still an
additional level of compression and
limiting that I might throw on there
just to start fatten it up just a bit
more and sort of glue things together
but we'll talk about that in another
video so I may come back to these these
these tracks and maybe pull down the
compression amount a bit just because I
don't want to overdo it but I do sort of
want to glue them glue them together a
bit with some buss compression so all
right so that wraps up this video just
keep in mind that you can always
purchase this session if you want to
work along with me and I will post a
link to that in the video description
below
so once again I hope you enjoyed the
video and thanks for watching