Compression advice

[Benjamin GrierParticipant]

Hey everyone,

Im fairly new to mixing and while working on the "Needle And The Damage Done" session, I wanted to try and make room for both the bass and the Djembe Bottom. I used parallel compression for the Djembe with what i think is a fast attack and fast release (5.00&5.60) after reading about this technique and then i boosted about 3dB of 53Hz so the bass was more present. While I can hear them both now and definitely not competing as much, Im curious if I did something different they might sound even more independent from one another? They may not even need to, Im just not sure Im doing everything correctly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Elliott ClarkeParticipant]

Do you mean parallel, or side-chain compression? If you can side-chain the bass so that it "ducks" when the djembe plays, you will get better clarity for each of them.

Also try and 'give' frequencies to each instrument: (I haven't heard the source so don't automatically use these numbers - just an example);

Maybe the bass has 50-60hz, the djembe has 80-100Hz, the bass has 150Hz, the djembe has 2Khz, the bass has 1.5Khz - you cut the frequencies from one source to 'give space' for the other one.

Masking is one of the key things to be able to hear. If one instrument sounds great, *until* you add a second one, that's masking. Work out why it doesn't sound good, and EQ the offending source (NOT IN SOLO), while listening to the effect it has on the 'wanted' source. This is why 'pro' mixers use a lot less EQ (... beware of generalisations of course!) than amateurs.

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