Mike Monday

Inspiration On Demand

What Everyone Should Know About Compression – # 8 of 100

The music production subject I’m asked most about is compression.

So here’s my number one piece of advice:

Stop using it.

Well at least stop compressing absolutely everything, it’s sucking the life out of your music.

Compression 101

Here’s Wikipedia on compression:

“In simple terms, a compressor is an automatic volume control. Using downward compression, loud sounds over a certain threshold are reduced in level while quiet sounds remain untreated. Upward compression involves making sounds below the threshold louder while the louder passages remain unchanged. Both reduce the dynamic range of an audio signal. This may be done for aesthetic reasons or to deal with technical limitations of audio equipment, which is seldom able to cope with the dynamic range the human ear can tolerate.”

So put even more simply:

  1. dynamic range refers to the difference between the loud and the soft bits
  2. compressors make the loud bits softer and the soft bits louder
  3. compressors reduce the dynamic range of whatever they are applied to

The secret no one tells you

Strictly speaking, if you mainly produce music in a computer (and at the time of writing most reading this will), you don’t need to use a compressor in most situations.

This is because the dynamic range of a VST plugin isn’t anywhere near as great as a vocalist or live instrument.

Plus you can control the volume of a programmed part in a myriad of other ways before you should reach for a compressor.

Dynamics = life

But doesn’t putting something through a compressor make it more powerful?

Well, for various complicated scientific reasons to do with the way the human ear perceives sound, it may appear to be louder, but whether it’s more powerful is debatable, especially if you’re compressing everything.

Dynamics give your music life. Differences in volume will make your music more subtle, expressive, and ultimately stand out. Isn’t that “more powerful”?

When to use compression

I’m not anti-compression persay. I’m just anti- “compressing everything at mixdown to within an inch of it’s life just because you think you should or because everyone else does”.

Compressors are a very necessary and useful tool in music production. But they are also the tool which is most overused and misunderstood.

But here’s some situations where you should consider getting your compressor out (or more likely loading it up).

1.* Live or analogue parts.*
If you’ve got a vocalist, live instrument or an analogue synths in a track, a compressor is often essential. Create contrast between compressed and uncompressed parts. Heavily compress a part or parts to make them stand out from the rest of the track which isn’t.
2. Sound design.
A compressor can be a useful tool for sculpting a sound.
Side-chain compression. Where you set the compressor to affect a part (like a pad), and another part (like a kick) determines when the compressor kicks in. This is how you get that (all too) popular “sucking” sound. It’s also often used to make vocals stand out without having to turn them up.
3. Parallel compression.
Where you send various parts to a compressor (usually at a high setting) and feed the resulting signal back into the mix. I often use this technique as you tend to get a much more “transparent” (ie you don’t notice it so much) result.

So before you reach for that compressor just think about it.

You might be using samples that are already compressed. The VST plugins you’re using may have compressors built in. When you master your track it will be compressed again. And if you get your music onto radio or in a club it will be compressed yet again.

So if you over-compress everything at mixdown stage too it’s going to sound awful.

Ok that’s my rant over. Just promise me you’ll stop it. 🙂

How to Dispel Fear with One Question

You’re at the end of the creative process. You’re about to complete.

But you can’t get to the finish line. You keep tweaking, perfecting and polishing. In fact if you’re honest with yourself, you’re thinking of scrapping it all and starting over.

Sound familiar? Well don’t worry, this happens to everyone.

Just stop and ask yourself one simple question:

If I finish this now and send it out into the world, what’s the worst that could happen?

The answer is probably:

Someone won’t like it.

Hmmm, but someone won’t like it whatever you make and however you feel about it.

And the negative repercussions of not finishing are much worse for you and your confidence than any amount of criticism.

So finish it. Send it out. Move on.

Because what’s the best that might happen?

Well you’re never going to know unless you finish it, are you?

2011 is the Year Of…

It’s been a long time since I’ve made New Years Resolutions. You shouldn’t either.

You’ll break them within a couple of weeks. And kicking off a year with broken promises to yourself gives your inner critic ammunition and will feed The Fear.

So this year I’m taking a leaf from Chris Guillebeau who gives each year a theme, and Chris Brogan who picks three words to focus on throughout the year.

These approaches appeal to me as when you’re not sure that what you’re doing is right, you can refer back to these words and themes.

2011 is my year of transformation. While I spent much of last year flying blind; not knowing where I was going or what I was doing, I’m now on a mission.

It involves working, thinking and acting in many ways that are unfamiliar to me and which I find hard. I think “transformation” just about covers it.

My three words for 2011 are:

  • Community – building a community of like minded people who I can help, and creating a situation where they (once I’ve worked out how to make the technical side of it work) can help each other. This also extends to the broader community. For instance I gave blood for the first time last year, and will continue to do that and find other ways to give what I can this year.
  • Passion – I’ve often “ended up” doing stuff, and “fallen into” projects. Many of these have been successful but I’ve never committed to anything with all of my being or for the long haul (i.e. my lifetime). This is because I’ve not summoned the courage to truly follow my passion. This changes now, even if it involves failure at first (or at second, at third, at fourth etc).
  • Practise – my playing, my performance, my writing and becoming a better individual. What’s hard about practise is that it is incremental and you don’t see the fruits of your labour straight away. You’re flying in the face of the 140 character “results today” society we live in. Without immediate tangible results it’s so hard to do it every day. But here’s the simple truth – the only way I’m ever going to pursue my passion is to practise.

What about you? What does your 2011 hold?

2010 – My Year in Review

Uber overlord of the blogosphere Seth Godin just published all he’s shipped in 2010, and asked us to publish a list of what we’ve got out the door this year:

“This might be a useful exercise. Doesn’t matter whether it was a hit or not, it just matters that you shipped it. Shipping something that scares you (and a lot of what follows did) is the entire point.”

Along with half the internet, I view Seth Godin as my personal guru; even though his blog is read my many thousands (maybe millions) of people, he has an uncanny ability to talk directly to me and inspires me multiple times per week.

So when he asks me to do something I do it. Here goes…

  • This website. I started working on version 1 of mikemonday.com in October 2009. That iteration didn’t do much that was useful, had an appalling design and hit the web in late January 2010. Since then I’ve done two major redesigns and numerous tweaks. I like it now.
  • 10 tracks 10 weeks. This was the ultimate exercise in “shipping”. And I did it. I wrote my third album one track a week for ten weeks. I rarely had time to “make sure” and try out much more than my first ideas. This scared me senseless. But doing this made me physically experience what I’d suspected. It’s way more important to get it done than make it perfect.
  • My favourite blog posts. It often takes me longer to press publish than to write a blog post. That’s because I’m scared. Sometimes I’ll wait for days after writing a piece; the longest was about three weeks. But almost without exception, the posts where I felt most fear became my favourite.
  • The Music Success In Nine Weeks blogging challenge. This blog series vanished from this site when I transferred my blog to another service and I haven’t got off my ass and put them back up. Suffice to say that I read and implemented the steps in Ariel Hyatt’s book and blogged about the experience. For someone used to only writing and performing music, marketing myself was hard but talking about it in public was much harder.
  • Other music. 2010 was the year where I moved from from releasing music on record labels to doing it myself, and there were some bits and pieces that went out through traditional labels. Looking back, there are some advantages to someone else releasing my music, but these are completely negated by how disconnected I am from my audience.
  • My first YouTube video. I meant to do more of these but only managed one. I *hate* watching and hearing myself speak but I’ll just have to get over it. I need to work on my delivery because video is the ideal way for me to talk about and play my music to you. Expect much more of it in 2011.
  • You lot. Until recently this site has been largely about me broadcasting and releasing my shizzle. But I’m shifting my focus to your shizzle. After I got over my internal resistance to writing it, I finally sent out my first mailout yesterday and got an overwhelming response. I’m in the middle of answering all your wonderful emails and they’re still arriving (keep them coming). So far I’ve received replies from UK, Iraq, Kazakhstan, all over the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Russia, Portugal and Spain. And after just one mailout, this is the part of my business that excites me the most. I now have a much clearer idea of what you need and want me to do. I just wish I’d overcome my fear earlier and got on with it.
  • The birth of Harry. Not a work thing, but my review of 2010 wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the little dude. Although it’s more accurate to say that Mrs. Monday did the “shipping” on this one (I guess I “shipped” 9 months earlier in 2009 – ahem), becoming a Dad is easily the most scary and wonderful event of my life.

So that’s me more or less done with 2010. If I was to sum it up in a word? Transition.

How was yours? What did you ship this year?

Oh and have a very Happy New Year…

Happy Holidays

One of the most thorny and guilt ridden issues for those who work for themselves is when to stop and have a break.

But this year my decision is much easier as I have a young son who’s about to have his first Christmas.

So I’m signing off for 2010. Here’s wishing you a very Happy Christmas and wonderful New Year!

I’ll be back, bright and early in the new decade on Monday 3rd January where I’ll continue my mission to help, motivate and inspire you to write, promote and release your music.

And I’ll let you know how you can win the opportunity to write a tune with me. Yes you! Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter to stay in the loop.