On our tour through Latin America, we stopped at the Sandia Sound Studios in Cancun and met with Latin Grammy Award winner Gael Hedding, who is not only famous for his work with Britney Spears and countless other famous artists, but also a teacher at Berklee.

He will give you some tips on Parallel Compression and show you, how to make a drum bus pump., without losing dynamic.

Parallel Compression

Quick recap:

You use parallel compression, when you don´t want to lose the dynamics or the transients of a track completely, but need some compression and just more punch. This technique is mostly used on drums.

Tip 1: grouping

Group all your drum tracks to a bus and apply your favorite compressor to the group channel. Now you can go a little more crazy on the compressor than usual, because you still keep the original as the main source of sound and just mix in the compressed one to a certain degree.

Tip 2: start here

A good ratio to start would be 2:1 or 4:1. The bigger difference is the release time, which should be pretty high - let´s say you start around 600ms.

Of course, if you solo the compressed track, it will sound way overdone, but that way you get the best out of both tracks: punch and dynamic!

Tip 3: attack, attack

Since we don´t have to care about the transients that much, we can adjust a very fast attack. That way the results gets even more aggressive.

Tip 4: level

Now comes the most important part - finding the right level! It is kind of like the balance between a proper meal and the amount of drinks you can take on a Friday night. A little bit too much of either one and you don´t go out or you go home way too soon.

Decrease the level of the original and start increasing the compressed track. You will instantly notice, at which position that effect you wish for, is right.

Don´t forget: the original is your main channel!

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Hit Gael up!

https://www.facebook.com/sandiasound

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Sound Design, How to create unique sounds, Learn Music Production, Improve Productivity, How to overcome Writers Block, Songwriting, How to write Songs, Arrangement, Arranging Songs