Compressing Acoustic Guitars, and the dichotomy between what's said and what's done

Seafroggys

Seafroggys

Well-known member
This is more a minor rant, but there's also a small question here as well.

So I'm working on my concept album, and I'm mixing a few songs with acoustic guitar. I feel some of the songs call for compression. Yet I don't have much experience mixing acoustic guitar, so I like looking around online to see any starting points or general advice points. I swear on every thread on every forum I google, when this question is asked, the answer is overwhelmingly the same. "I don't compress acoustic guitar, I just volume automate." Like everyone on these forums thinks acoustic guitar is some holy sound that shouldn't be squashed. You don't really see this opinion on other instruments (except piano).

Yet, on countless recordings I've listened to with acoustic guitar, I can clearly hear that its been compressed. I know what a natural acoustic guitar sounds like, and I can clearly hear the compression. Sometimes its transparent, but its there. On virtually everything I listen to.

So how is this? How is everyone's advice to not compress acoustic guitar, yet its incredibly common in practice? People are wanting advice on something that's happening in the real world, and no one is giving them that advice! Same with piano too, maybe less often but I often hear compression on a lot of piano tracks, and so very few people actively say to compress piano.

Anyway, rant over. Yes, I know context is everything, song is everything, it varies, etc. But any general advice? Like 1176's, optos-style, etc? A lot of times I'm wanting the compression to
push the low mids and fill up the sound, like often happens when I throw an LA-2A on a vocal track. Because otherwise the acoustic guitar is all highs and lows (and I often EQ out the lows so its not so boomy).
 
Seafroggys said:
I swear on every thread on every forum I google, when this question is asked, the answer is overwhelmingly the same. "I don't compress acoustic guitar, I just volume automate."
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I've honestly never seen this advice. I HAVE seen plenty of suggestions to keep it transparent, though, and also have heard plenty of real-world examples where compression is audible. And, sometimes I kind of love the effect - there's one point in Ryan Adams' 'How Do You Keep Love Alive" where he really digs in at one point and you can hear what sounds like an opto compressor absolutely mashing down on the low end of his guitar... and I think it sounds effing GREAT. H

I think one of the more illuminating mixing experiences for me in the last several years which I think was a very, very good learning experiencing, was recording and mixing an americana/roots rock sort of project with my dad and uncle - both of them had really been instrumental in getting me into music, and then I was able to get them into recording, so it really felt like a full circle moment for me.

But, it was also a genre I didn't really do much. And I came at it with the expectations that, well, no huge electric guitars or massive bass or anything, so I'm probably going to want to be pretty minimal. And, since we all really liked the two albums, I found myself turning to Dylan's "Time out of Mind" and the Bootleg Series "Tell Tale Signs" as reference mixes, figuring that would help get me into that minimally-produced, true-to-life, almost documentary-like "live in the room" sound.

And, holy shit, once I started really digging in... Those two albums weren't even close to minimally mixed. in particular, the EQ was MUCH more heavy handed than I would have expected, as a casual listener. It really made me start to actively listen to the recording of those albums, and in turn made me much more aggressive with mixing choices than I was even in my own instrumental rock mixes where I'd have expected to be more aggressive than a Dylan album simply because of all the heavy electric guitars.

I've always had this attitude about "oh, once you have something tracked, preserve it as much as you can" and I guess there's a lot of good ways to make a record but I've been much more comfortable being much more aggressive with EQ and compression ever since. These days I've started applying some on tracking, and while I was definitely risking painting myself into a corner compressing acoustics while tracking and for a while there was a little worried maybe I'd overdone it, I'm far enough in now that even using amp VSTs as placeholders before eventually reamping my DI tracks, I do think the acoustics sound dynamically about right in the mix... though, no doubt, I'll probably be adding yet more compression to tighten them up a little further in the mix. 🤣
 
Oh yeah I've definitely seen that. A lot of advice is transparency or doing as minimally as possible, but you see legendary engineers on classic boards with 3-4 band EQ's per channel, regularly pushing those bands like +-10 dB like its an everyday occurrence.
 


I USE hardware compression going in, parallel compression on the acoustic buss, and light compression on the track at mixdown.

the hardware compression gives me color, and tames just the peaks, makes it much more mixable...
the parallel compression on the buss, lets me dial in the final level of compression, and is the most transparent.

the compression on the individual track, is what i use to get the acoustic to sit in the mix and play nicely.

you could try ONLY the parallel compression, where you can set it up either on the track level or across a buss, and mix in as much or little compression as you need, with total control over the original uncompressed track, with the compressed signal mixing in underneath it.
 
Seafroggys said:
Oh yeah I've definitely seen that. A lot of advice is transparency or doing as minimally as possible, but you see legendary engineers on classic boards with 3-4 band EQ's per channel, regularly pushing those bands like +-10 dB like its an everyday occurrence.
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TBH I'm guilty too - when people ask me how to mix, I say basically set levels and pan, then sit back and listen for problems, and then decide how to fix them.

And, this is sort of guilt by omission, but it SOUNDS like I'm describing a pretty hands-free process, and an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" sort of thing where you'd expect most of your tracks to have little to nothing on them. and that's really, really not the case - one of those problems you'll be fixing is there's likely a ton of headroom being eaten up by raw tracks that have a bunch of extraneous crap that needs to be removed with EQ. :lol:

It does vary genre by genre I suppose, but still... I think it's helpful to remember that 1-2db is bigger picture a nearly inaudible change. Yeah, nearly inaudible things stacked on top of each other can make audible improvements... but you canand sometimes shoudl also be a lot more heavy handed.:lol:
 
Maybe if you are using nylon strings, or you have very good control, but I don't see how most people would not have to use compression or fader riding. But I guess with some careful playing, you could get away with no compression, some fader tweaking.
 
I've recorded people who can barely play, and at the other end, a guy who refused the paint finish on his hand built guitar because he liked the tone at that point. Compression and EQ are not things that can have any kind of rule, because every player is different. They are simply tools to make the end product better, and can so easily be destructive. If you can hear compression - and remember many people simply cannot hear it at all - and don't like it, don't use it. Very simple. If I get a player who through habit or accident exceeds what many listeners won't like or be able to cope with, then compress a bit, but if the music needs ppp through to fff then don't.

I suspect that fader automation would actually be my preferred technique as while compression is a good tool for the accidental too loud pick, or hammer on, it's quite destructive on what else is there. where a phrase or section is too loud or too quiet, faders do it better.

Compression is my least used tool. I use it a bit on basses of all descriptions because they decay a bit too quickly, and a bit of compression, just keeps it there in the mix.
 
"I don't compress acoustic guitar, I just volume automate."

I've given similar advice before.
Not identical, but similar.

Quite often people jump to using a compressor to level out the overall volume of a track.
Verse is fine but chorus is too loud? Use a compressor.

That's not really what compressors are for, so I tell them to volume automate.

Compression is for transient shaping; accentuating or diminishing the initial transient.
You can use it to make something sound more, or less, attacking, or have more, or less, body (sustain/ring/whatever).
 
The only rule I have for Compression & EQ is whatever makes it sound best and brings out the style the artist or me is trying to achieve -
sometimes that’s limiting - sometime nothing at all - its all dependent.
 
Seafroggys said:
So how is this? How is everyone's advice to not compress acoustic guitar, yet its incredibly common in practice? People are wanting advice on something that's happening in the real world, and no one is giving them that advice! Same with piano too, maybe less often but I often hear compression on a lot of piano tracks, and so very few people actively say to compress piano.
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Well it really depends on what you are working with recording it. But you have to crank the gain then run it through a transparent limiter then into the interface. They don't want ordinary people to know how to do this because they think its either job security or competitive edge of some kind. This even goes past the engineers and into people who build inexpensive gear so you buy into the hobby more as they sell you mediocrity until you figure out you have to build an outboard signal chain. But there is a way to get it from the ground up. It just cost a lot.

This converter here has the assembly of the same outboard circuits put into one box. What I find interesting is the price for it is the same as the putting together the same thing in outboard gear. So no free lunch and have to pay the corporate gear world that much for the same results.
An example of just two channels condense what you spend the same much in outboard combining but this is two 1U units instead of a whole 10U rack for two channels :

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Steenamaroo said:
Quite often people jump to using a compressor to level out the overall volume of a track.
Verse is fine but chorus is too loud? Use a compressor.

That's not really what compressors are for, so I tell them to volume automate.
Click to expand...
I think this can be good advice, as long as it's also clear WHY the advice is being given. If not, you get, well, questions like the OP's, "why does everyone tell me to never use compression on an acoustic, but only use volume automation?"

This is obviously a much bigger thing than dynamic control on acoustics, lol. Everyone wants to know the what, when the why is far more important.
 
You can get away with a lot more assertive compression in a mix than you can on a solo guitar, and that's a context where you might need it more.
 
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