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Re: [microsound] usefulness of compressors/mastering in experimental music



Anthony Saunders;

>
> I've been reading about compression and mastering lately and everything
> is written from the perspective of pop, rock, or techno music. Can
> anyone point me at any documents that discuss mastering & compression
> with a less pop-centric perspective? Or failing that, recommend any
> really good discussions of this?

So far all comments have been on mastering and not on the creative use of
compression. I found that compressors, particualarly those equiped with side
chains are extremely usefull in making corrections to volume envelopes of
synthetic, algorithmic, sounds where normal envelopes are not involved in
how the sound is generated, particularly for realtime aplications. I fear
this is a underapreceated aspect of compression but it´s a very valid one.
Some of the techniques I use include delaying the side chain by some
relatively short amount of time, heavy eq on the side chain of sounds that
change pitch or harmonic content over their duration and mixing elements
into the sidechain that do not apear anywhere else. In modular synthesis I
think it´s very usefull to keep the (or a) compressor inside of the patch
itself instead of "over" it.

If there are good articles on these techniques I´m unaware of them. My chief
recomendation would be to think of compressors in terms of what they do and
what they can be used for instead of how they are most often used. A very
interesting exersise is building your own in some software language or
system so you can take controll of parameters normally not accessible or
included.

Applogies if this sounded trivial, it´s meant to encourage, not to be the
final word.

As a side note; the compressor module of the original Nord Modular has a bug
where it can "click" or "pop" the moment the limiter is turned on or off. If
you keep your signal floating around this tresshold rather pleasant lowfi
effects can be created. That does not answer any question here but I
couldn´t bring myself to neglect mentioning it, seeing as this list is suppo
sed to be about post-digital aesthetics and techniques.

Yours,
Kas.



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