help wanted: compression on drums

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hi_Flyer
  • Start date Start date
H

Hi_Flyer

New member
I'm looking for advice, tips, whatever, on attack/release time on drums. I'm getting a handle on setting ratio and threshold, and I can hear the compression working. However I'm still having trouble with the attack/release settings. I just don't get it. yet.

So what exactly should I be listening for? I think I'm closer to understanding what I should be listening for on the attack, more so than the release. I know for drums, quick attack time is a rule of thumb. I should be letting the initial transient through, then comping the decay, right? I imagine the release should be quick as well, I just can't really hear it until its TOO QUICK and its distorting. What is happening there?

How is it different if the track that I'm compressing is a snare, kick, or overhead track? what is the deal with cymbals? the decay of a cymbal can be pretty long, more like a sustained, ringing chord or something like that.

keep in mind that I'm not looking for a cookie-cutter answer, so please try to refrain from the "use your ears" and "there is no right answer" kinda replies... but any help is appreciated. thanks.
 
What you're listening for is the amount of the initial stick hit / slap on the skin ... versus the ensuing "body," or tone of the drum, versus the ensuing decay or room ambience (reverb).

As soon as you start to lose the initial transient of the stick hit is when you know the attack time is too low and you should probably start increasing it. When it starts sounding too unnatural for you ... like a drum machine or a gun shot, etc. ... is when you should start increasing the release time, lowering the ratio, increasing the attack, or all the above.

But what you're looking for, basically, is greater power and punch ... with a strong initial attack, and a healthy decay that can range anywhere from "present" to "bombastic," depending on the style of the music and artistic intent.
 
Very good! :)

There's been a lot of muck flying back and forth on this board lately regarding the use of compressors. I feel obligated to say, high_flyer, that your question is the first question I have seen on this board in a long time regarding this topic that is a great question that makes sense and is asking for a good and realistic explanation. This is not a "cookie cutter" question. Kudos!

Chessrock's response is an excellent response to an excellent question. I can't improve much on what he said at this point, but I can fill in a tiny bit of color commentary, maybe...

Chess is right that for the most part, one is usually loooking for "power punch" when adjusting attack. The idea is if you slow the attack on the compressor, more of the initial hit comes through un-compressed, and therefore "harder or sharper". Depending on the music style and desired effect, the initial attack can be smoothed and mellowed a bit my increasing the attack. Decay is, in a way, a mirror image of attack. When you hit a drum (or a cymbal, or anything else, FTM) there is a natural decay time to the sound. By increasing/slowing the decay tame setting on the comp, you are in essence increasing the amount of time that the compressor does it's thing. This has the effect of smoothing the decay of the instrument. It's slope of volume decay is more gradual, and the drum stays louder longer. This can add "fullness" to the sound. Reducing the comp decay time will reduce the length of this effect and make the drum sound "sharper" instead of "fuller".

You know when you've done too much or too little of either of these settings when you start hearing what are typically called "pumping" or "breathing". These effects are basically unnatural-sounding envelopes of the recorded sound; they are artificial-sounding artifacts of a mis-set compressor.

Go for whatever effect you're looking for withn those parameters. It's OK to hear the compression, but it's usually not OK to hear the compressor, if you get what I mean there.

HTH,

G.
 
thanks guys, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for...
 
If I may add to this. I'm in no way an expert, but a trick that has helped me with setting the attack and release times is this:

Start by setting the attack to the minimum and release to the maximum, threshold to something ridiculously low (like -50dB) for example, and crank up the compression ratio to as high as your compressor will allow. At this point, you should pretty much hear a ghostly image of the original. Now, start increasing the attack. You'll start hearing the initial transient coming through. Increase it to the point so that you hear as much of the attack as you like (or all of it). Next, start decreasing the release time to the point where the compressor has enough time to recover before the next hit. You can either leave it like this, or slightly increase it, so that there is still some compression going on before the next hit arrives. This might make it sound more natural, yet impart a certain dynamic groove and bounce. Now, adjust threshold and ratio to more sensible settings, again using your ears as a guide as you did in the first two steps.

A couple of other points, based more on the kind of stuff that I do than for general practice. I do noise/powernoise/elektro/DnB crossover stuff, and sometimes more 4/4 somewhat dancy nonsense. But it's all electronic. As such, somtimes I want to have weighty kicks that dominate. In order to do this, I need them to have more body, so I will set the compressor to the quickest attack setting it can handle, thus chopping off the transient. This allows me to increase the overall level of the kick a lot more than I'd be able to had I left the transient alone. However, then I'll send all the drums to the same bus and compress there, with slower attack, thus also getting punch and groove.

BTW how's Pittsburgh? I used to fly there often, kinda miss it, specially Primanti Bros sandwitches, Yuengling and driving on the roads that resemble more to spaghetti :)
 
A bunch of great posts about this. I wrote something about compression a while back that basically says the same theing as the above post!

One key thing to remember:

FORGET THE METERS. Use your ears. A compressor will still impart its time constant even if the meter can not keep up. Meters lie, but ESPECIALLY with compressors.

DOnt forget that even when the compressor is in mid cycle, it will still impart the attack time on your incoming signal.

Get rid of cymbal doom in the room mic with a SUPER late attack, super slow release (at the expense of explosive ambience).

"seek out" the kick beater without eq with time constants.

I am a compressor junkie. i could go on forever about this....
 
thanks for replies, definitely some good stuff. I spent some time on this stuff today....

Joel, one of the things I noticed was some low-end kick drum flabbiness/boominess in a drum sub-mix that got worse as I increased release time, is this what you're talking about when you said: "'seek out' the kick beater without eq with time constants". In my experimenting today, I found that decreasing the release seemed bring out the beater "smack".

noisewreck- Pgh is, eh... The weather is lousy this time of year, but its football season and the Steelers look good.
 
you want to lower the attack time until the kick drum starts to dissapear. then raise the attack time back until the kick is full again.

you want to raise the release time to where the cymbals aren't "swooshing". the release time also will have to do with the tempo of the song. so every new song = new settings.

this is the basic idea and can be applied to different stuff....you'll get it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top