Tricks For Your Tracks

NC Piedmont Triad Edition

A Publication of The Community Arts Cafe, Inc.

Tricks for your Tracks is a column for the project studio musician & engineer that offers tips designed to help make your studio a better & more fun place to create music.

One trend in mixing that is becoming more prevalent is the tendency to overcompress individual tracks & the final mix. Clients often demand the overuse of compression. The reasoning is that the song will be louder & therefore will stand out when broadcast. This attitude is now to the point that if you put the waveform of the mix on your video monitor, many songs appear as a solid block of sound. The problem is that there are no dynamics to the track, & it quickly becomes fatiguing & annoying to listen to. In addition, many radio stations add their own compression further compounding the problem.

When mixing, using your ears to determine how far to push the compressor is ok, but also using your eyes to watch the stereo meters & waveform can be helpful too. If the meters & waveform are showing little deflection from the peak, it may be time to lower the compression level & overall volume.

Pull out some of your favorite tracks from other artists & listen to them & to the amount of dynamic varience. Then, run those songs through the console & computer & note how the stereo meters & waveforms are responding.

For questions, comments & inquiries, contact Bil Jenko: biljenko@email.com