Thanks, Alex, great vid!!! Being -old- ahem , vintage, I bought the 3630 together with RA-100 and a pair of Monitor Ones (and later a pair of Monitor Twos) when they came out in the mid '90s because they were affordable. I never thought the 3630 sounds *that bad... I think too many people bash them just because they parrot what they see on the Internet, without ever having tried them. I think the only "bad" thing about them is the external power adapter instead of standard IEC plug. And of course, for Paft Dunk style stuff they are fab. That pair of distressors .... drooool!! :-D
The 3630 is the worst in the best way. Like those candy cigarettes you got at that gas station while at your moms friends house as a kid. Cheap, chalky, but ohh so cool. Seriously though, love that thing. Great video.
I used to love those candy cigarettes. Awful but they made me feel sophisticated. Little did I know what was in store for me when I took up real ones... “And curse Sir Walter Raleigh He was such a stupid git...”
This video is a great place to send someone who's never seen your channel before. I've seen a few of your videos now, but even I was astonished by how much cool old gear you have!
Fantastic video! I have known about compressors for two decades yet never understood what exactly they did until seeing your hands-on video. Thank you for the educational lesson!
Thank you _so_ much Alex, for showing me how certain dance tracks were created specifically with stage 3 of your setup. I always wondered how it was done.
This was a fun class, Alex! I love my Alesis ("ah-LEE-sys") 3630 too. Still saving up for a pair of EL8X, my very favorite comps, a necessity IMHO. Have a fantastic weekend! Happy music-making :)
Just got a chance to watch this. Wow... I had no idea what those Distressors were, but in that closing melody you got as close to Depeche Mode as I've ever heard. 😁One of my first purchases was the "Dirty 30" because I really wanted the effector capability used by the Beastie Boys to great extent. I'd watch another video just on the 3630 and its unique uses with various gear even modern gear might be interesting. 🎉 Excellent video again!
I've used the 3630 for so many years, in so many different ways and I love it. No such thing as bad gear in my book, only bad focus on creativity at times, which I'll be the first to admit to be guilty of. Sometimes. Anyways, great demo Alex and your "final revelation" was refreshingly different. ;-)
Cheers Espen. Yes, agree there's so much that can be done with affordable gear that a lot of hate is just lazy. Florian is doing a grand job with his "Bad Gear" show where he more often than not makes "bad" gear sound great. A lesson to us all as you say. As I type, West Brom have just equalised. 😀
@@AlexBallMusic I like that. Hate in general, in all its forms, really does seem often to come from a position of laziness. I still like this video a year later. More squish (and pedal) vids, I say!
I have the vesta fire compressor from the eighties . It’s a floor pedal model. It’s blue , It’s a nice compressor. It’s not too much but just enough , It has a noise gate.. . Don’t use it much. But still nice to have
Having just obtained a 3630 I was eager to incorporate it along with my ELX-8, DBX 266A and 166A . I was thinking I was over doing it with collecting compressors. I think differently now. I also got a Big Sky and a S2400 so I am thinking of the ways to get this party started. Thanks for unbeknownst validation! Peace
A lot of gear has landed in my lap over a 40+ year video and music production career. I've got a couple of JBL URIEI comp limiters that I have generally dedicated to final stage. Your video made me remember I also have an Alesis 3630 sitting in my rack as well. You've got me looking forward to some side chain fun! Thanks! Great video! Great detail on what's connected where!
The JBL UREI limiters- seem to recall those were the ones with loads of trimmers on the back? Think I've seen them in studios over the years. 3630 - yeah, dig it out and have some fun.
Ah right. I was thinking of these. reverb.com/uk/item/33095007-urei-jbl-7110-compressor-limiter-refurbished-recapped?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1a6EBhC0ARIsAOiTkrHhYRiWGSzB9dHwfTtDOIhCDUOasnFjC3oeeMC0JsCmZRilkzTwhjYaAtoyEALw_wcB
Compressors are so often misunderstood, thanks for taking a bit of time to talk about them! I'm very interested in the old Rockman Sustainor, a bit of vintage kit which I guess is a compressor, amp sim, and a bit of other stuff all in one. If you happen to know about these I'd love your take!
I'm, supper well done. I am a total amateur and just have the hardest time understanding compressors. This helped me out. I and going to try some of these with some soft compressors and synths just for practice.
Comps are non-linear processors as the input changes the output of the transfer function. They also affect the frequency domain, so they’re also EQs in a way. Vari Mu tube topologies (ala Altech, Fairchild, Manely, Phoenix etc) are slow, and push up the lows and saturate the tops via the tubes . FET (ala 1176, Brit mod etc) are super snappy and dark. Optos (ala LA2A) are slow due to the LEDs used to set the gain reduction circuit and are like wrapping a soft pillow over the sound (think Fleetwood Mac Rumours Vox tone). Dave Derr also designed the I/O section of the H3000, which has a lovely 12 bit DAC vibe different from the modern Eventides. Brit mod on my Distressors are kinda emulations of ‘all buttons in’ on my 1176s but not quiet as dark. The moral of this story is that even 1-2dB of GR is often used by mix engineers to add tonal characteristics as opposed to dynamic levelling. Stereo Brit Mod is great on the drum bus, and the Phoenix is great for big ass tubby tones on the mix bus, even when the meters are just tickling. Great vid. Please do some more FX stuff!
Thanks Alex, nice demo video, I've always wished to see the Vesta Fire on action ... especially sided with the Alesis... a sort of pumping /ducking war. I'Ve Heard that vesta fire 1986 was one of the first compressor ever allowing the sidechain thru its loop - in jack..I'm I wrong? .. It could had be the one that inspired the Alesis development team..
Fun fact: white noise channeled through a comp/gate and triggered by some repeating sound makes for some cool percussive sounds. Nice toonz as always, my man!
Yup, I have that Alesis Compressor. Picked it up several years ago from Guitar Center, used, for $39 which I thought was a very good price. Great video as always! I do not have the Distressor, of course, because they're about a grand used where I live. I'm saving up for... the plugin. LOL.
Thank you for this video. Seems to be part of sound design. Love the Stereo compression 😯🙌🏼 And side chain pumping Did you demonstrate mid side compression? MixbusTV showed an awesome drawmer 1176 Would love to learn more about sound processors 😃
Glad you enjoyed it. There wasn't any mid side compression in this instance. 1176 - would love a go on one of those. It's been years since I last used a real one.
@ghost mall : ) To keep the dynamics controlled. Very good to have when the youtuber doesn't. (Alex is usually not one of them though.) I also have it when watching movies and such to hear details better at low levels.
@@AlexBallMusic my old music tech tutor always referd to compression as a dark art he was in league with the devil insisting we must know how to convert binary to hexerdecimal .. So usefull i got into free partys and didnt finish (;=
Yes, ti was an officially interesting video! Also, it made me want to go dust off my poor forgotten dbx stereo compressor and run some nice modular patches through it. Thanks, Alex!
Yeah, I guess it's easy to ignore hardware and use plugins. I don't use my DBX very often for that reason. Mine is the 266XL. Which model have you got?
Mine is the 266. Got it dirt cheap ages ago shopping for a hardware reverb and it was sitting in the same rack. It has mainly served as bass drum compressor for me. Not the best but it packs a nice punch.
I own an Alesis 3630 comp, i bought it in the 90's and used it a lot with my Tascam 488 MK2 8 Track Portastudio, it worked well with tape based recording. I used to do the gating effect with a kick drum too, great fun with that little box 😎👌 I believe there are some mods you can do to it too, I was going to do them but it gets little use nowadays as the PC handles all that stuff now in Reaper DAW. Great video as usual sir. Nice to deviate away from synths for a while and explore classic FX units maybe, they all work hand in hand to me.
Been tempted to get a Portastudio, I started with tape recorders and then four tracks. Great fun. Mods - yeah there are, but I've not gone down that rabbit hole.
@@AlexBallMusic I started with an old Philips reel to reel with a "magic eye" level meter, I bought from a 2nd hand shop in 1978 with my paper round money, lol 😂 happy days, I learned a lot from that machine, buying reels from Comet, recording the charts on a Sunday, splicing, dubbing, tape speed relation, wow, flutter, computers just don't give you that education, unless you Google it of course lol. I used to use the sync track on my portastudio for syncing midi to my jsq60 sequencer that played my juno 60 too, your channel brings it all back to me. Cool stuff 😎👍
To make an analogy, Imagine packing a suitcase. There is a fixed volume of space inside of it, and no matter how much you pack into that space, it can't exceed it. Think of bass as pants, midrange as shirts, and treble as socks. Putting more pants in, means less room for socks and shirts. Even a little pants, takes up a lot of space much like even a little loud bass takes up all of the dynamic headroom in a track. Enter the compressor. A compressor is like your friend smooshing all of those loose clothes in and then sitting on top of the suitcase to hold it down while you zip it up. A compressor packs a little more signal into the available dynamic container that is your song, by smooshing different tracks together so there is less wasted space between them. It does this by making the soft parts louder, the louder parts softer, and if 2 tracks try to be loud at the same time, it quiets one, the other, or both so that they never exceed the amount of loudness/dynamicheadroom/luggage space available.
My old 3630 still gets occasional use. Pre-DAW, on one occasion I used it to automate the level of a very lumpy vocal by feeding the side-chain with a synth which was fed in-turn by sequenced MIDI Volume commands.
I spent all yesterday trying to come up with a pun-filled comment. Alas...nothing. Too much pressure. Couldn't squeeze one out. Great video, though. Ashamed to admit I had never really known what sidechaining was. Also - very creative use of compression. For me, it's always been just a tool for fattening the sound a bit, while avoiding distortion.
The pun King returns. Yeah, compression is largely functional, but it can be a big part of the sound if you want it to. Fun to play with from time to time.
Oh... I have had time to own and hate the 3630 twice, separated by two decades. I hope to avoid it in the future. But I must admit you made good use of it's quirkyness. 'Cause as a straight compressor I still consider it rubbish. :D
Wow, missed this video before as a non-synth one, but it appeard to be very inspirational. Please make more effect or studio hodgepodge videos some day, not only devoted them to some synth model:)
Nice! Need to explore compressors more now! 🙂 BTW, in your experience, do all stomp box phasers introduce that high pitch pink noise in the signal when using synths through them? I don't seem to experience that with guitar use, but that might just be the guitar amp "obscuring" that whoosh when in use there...
Part of that tune at the end sounded a bit like one of the tunes from JMJ's Zoolook album, also used as the intro tune to a game called 'Captain Blood'.
Yes, a compressor would normally level out a signal, but stick it somewhere else and there's all sorts of things you can do. Gating a signal with effects on it via the side chain is a lot of fun for slamming things in and out.
Thanks, Alex, great vid!!! Being -old- ahem , vintage, I bought the 3630 together with RA-100 and a pair of Monitor Ones (and later a pair of Monitor Twos) when they came out in the mid '90s because they were affordable. I never thought the 3630 sounds *that bad... I think too many people bash them just because they parrot what they see on the Internet, without ever having tried them. I think the only "bad" thing about them is the external power adapter instead of standard IEC plug. And of course, for Paft Dunk style stuff they are fab. That pair of distressors .... drooool!! :-D
I agree, the 3630 isn't as bad as was made out - it cost a lot less than an 1176! 😀
@@unclemick-synths That's comparing a FIAT 500 with a Jaguar! 😀 (edit - I own a FIAT 500L)
Cool. Synthmania in the house.
Thanks Paulo. Yep, I've definitely used worse compressors!
It was really easy to use and worked very effectively. Win-win.
@@SynthManiaDotCom great cars 👍
Phaser + Distressor 🤗 My friend, you are a man with incredible taste!
I bloody loves me a bit of phase I does.
now I get what Voyager's compression phaser rifles were about.
3:21 It genuinelly sounds like a lo-fi recording of a church choir singing gibberish. Really impressive stuff.
Yeah, was one of the most interesting things I came across through this experiment. The joys of exploring I guess.
The Bigsky is everything everybody talks it up about. Amazing pedal, same as the Timeline.
@@AlexBallMusic Hatsune Miku would be proud
That final example tune is banger!
The comb made an appearance to try and take advantage of the youtube comb filter algorithm.
More technical production stuff please!!!! Much appreciated and chuffed someone's being nice about my crappy but beloved 3630.
That end track will inhabit my head for a long time now.
The 3630 is the worst in the best way. Like those candy cigarettes you got at that gas station while at your moms friends house as a kid. Cheap, chalky, but ohh so cool. Seriously though, love that thing. Great video.
french house made it shine
"Le pump" as I call it.
I used to love those candy cigarettes. Awful but they made me feel sophisticated. Little did I know what was in store for me when I took up real ones...
“And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git...”
Amazing to hear how they all came together at the end - nothing short of a revelation. Wow!
Pieces of a puzzle. :)
Quite fun to experiment with things like this from time to time.
This video is a great place to send someone who's never seen your channel before. I've seen a few of your videos now, but even I was astonished by how much cool old gear you have!
Fantastic video! I have known about compressors for two decades yet never understood what exactly they did until seeing your hands-on video. Thank you for the educational lesson!
Just realized you’re up to 94k subs. Congratulations! I think there 6k when I stumbled across your work and that wasn’t terribly long ago
It's been a slow crawl, but might possibly hit 100k which would be nice.
Thanks for sticking around since the early days!
I love the little bits of humour mixed into your video, here.
Thanks for another great presentation, Alex.
Nicely done, the bouncing rhythmic choir was quite enjoyable to hear.
Thank you _so_ much Alex, for showing me how certain dance tracks were created specifically with stage 3 of your setup. I always wondered how it was done.
Yep, a great trick for giving that pump feel, but it also gives the kick and snare a big hole the slam into so it improves the mix too.
This was a fun class, Alex! I love my Alesis ("ah-LEE-sys") 3630 too. Still saving up for a pair of EL8X, my very favorite comps, a necessity IMHO. Have a fantastic weekend! Happy music-making :)
3:33 Synth Shanties With The Boys has begun
Haha, it is a bit. 🏴☠️🦜
Always dialing in the best tones, you'd make amazing sample packs
Thanks. Funny you should say that...
So much creativity! The end result sounds like a fusion of Art of Noise, Kraftwerk and Daft Punk
this is quite the magical journey! can't wait to make use of similar use of my compressors and effectors! thank you!!!
Just got a chance to watch this. Wow... I had no idea what those Distressors were, but in that closing melody you got as close to Depeche Mode as I've ever heard. 😁One of my first purchases was the "Dirty 30" because I really wanted the effector capability used by the Beastie Boys to great extent. I'd watch another video just on the 3630 and its unique uses with various gear even modern gear might be interesting. 🎉 Excellent video again!
This was brilliant! Parts of it reminded me of the series "Look Around You".
Love it! I am still relatively new to electronic music so I had no idea about the whole pumping technique with chords. Very cool.
Brilliant! You are very good at what you do. My brain doesn't work like yours, to come up with stuff like this. Awesome job.
That chorale reverb on the Big Sky with side chain sounds so awesome in the full mix!!!
Yeah, like a stuttery collection of monks.
Brilliant topic, interesting lessons and brilliant end track. Best wishes from Düsseldorf.
Very Kraftwerk like "Computerliebe" 😎👍😁✌️
The final song is a nice, well crafted hommage to Kraftwerk's "Computerliebe" - pure enjoyment!👍😎
Still using my 3630...over two decades now!
Every device should have a button labeled "British Mode".
Produces a cup of tea.
@@AlexBallMusic First nuke'm, then have that tea!
@@AlexBallMusic , just don't do a "How to video" on paying for said tea. That would be demonetised.
You're skating on dangerously compressed ice with that comb-presser joke. Greatest video ever about compressor effects though.
Wow, that outro track was one of your best ever I think - really nice work!
Thanks Eddy!
That one with the vocal big sky was really cool : )
I've used the 3630 for so many years, in so many different ways and I love it. No such thing as bad gear in my book, only bad focus on creativity at times, which I'll be the first to admit to be guilty of. Sometimes. Anyways, great demo Alex and your "final revelation" was refreshingly different. ;-)
Cheers Espen. Yes, agree there's so much that can be done with affordable gear that a lot of hate is just lazy. Florian is doing a grand job with his "Bad Gear" show where he more often than not makes "bad" gear sound great.
A lesson to us all as you say.
As I type, West Brom have just equalised. 😀
@@AlexBallMusic They sure did. :) Florian is great and I really enjoyed the SHS-10 he sent me. ;-)
@@AlexBallMusic I like that. Hate in general, in all its forms, really does seem often to come from a position of laziness. I still like this video a year later. More squish (and pedal) vids, I say!
Compressors do indeed go squish, but synthesisers also go brr.
I have the vesta fire compressor from the eighties . It’s a floor pedal model. It’s blue , It’s a nice compressor. It’s not too much but just enough , It has a noise gate.. . Don’t use it much. But still nice to have
The dirty six dirty!
Awesome video, makes me want to get a compressor! I especially loved the song at the end; very cool.
Having just obtained a 3630 I was eager to incorporate it along with my ELX-8, DBX 266A and 166A . I was thinking I was over doing it with collecting compressors. I think differently now. I also got a Big Sky and a S2400 so I am thinking of the ways to get this party started. Thanks for unbeknownst validation! Peace
A lot of gear has landed in my lap over a 40+ year video and music production career. I've got a couple of JBL URIEI comp limiters that I have generally dedicated to final stage. Your video made me remember I also have an Alesis 3630 sitting in my rack as well. You've got me looking forward to some side chain fun! Thanks! Great video! Great detail on what's connected where!
The JBL UREI limiters- seem to recall those were the ones with loads of trimmers on the back? Think I've seen them in studios over the years.
3630 - yeah, dig it out and have some fun.
@@AlexBallMusic Urei was high-end gear. Not any trim pots on the back, but a long row of open wiring screw terminals for the in/out/link connections.
Ah right. I was thinking of these.
reverb.com/uk/item/33095007-urei-jbl-7110-compressor-limiter-refurbished-recapped?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1a6EBhC0ARIsAOiTkrHhYRiWGSzB9dHwfTtDOIhCDUOasnFjC3oeeMC0JsCmZRilkzTwhjYaAtoyEALw_wcB
Great video! After years I’m still having problems hearing compression although I do understand them. So videos like these do help. Thanks!
Love it! Please do a video of phasers, chorus and flangers.
Thanks Alex, really great summary & demo!
Loved this video! Shared it with lots of friends who are jumping on the synth nerd train. Love your style!
Thanks!
Compressors are so often misunderstood, thanks for taking a bit of time to talk about them! I'm very interested in the old Rockman Sustainor, a bit of vintage kit which I guess is a compressor, amp sim, and a bit of other stuff all in one. If you happen to know about these I'd love your take!
I was checking out those Rockman units last year funnily enough, but didn't ever pick any up. Maybe I will at some point, they look intriguing.
This channel is F&^%ing AWESOME!
Excellent. Thanks for this Alex. Al.
Love using a compressor before a Mutron.
Cool tunes dude !! ; )
You’re gonna hit 100k soon!!
That was great! More of this please!
I'm, supper well done. I am a total amateur and just have the hardest time understanding compressors. This helped me out. I and going to try some of these with some soft compressors and synths just for practice.
Glad to hear it was if use. Yeah, you can do all of this with software.
7:11 'the raw signal' instandly makes me think of 'wishing' from a flock of seagulls...
I’m in the wrong line of work! You always have such interesting and informative videos Alex
Comps are non-linear processors as the input changes the output of the transfer function. They also affect the frequency domain, so they’re also EQs in a way. Vari Mu tube topologies (ala Altech, Fairchild, Manely, Phoenix etc) are slow, and push up the lows and saturate the tops via the tubes . FET (ala 1176, Brit mod etc) are super snappy and dark. Optos (ala LA2A) are slow due to the LEDs used to set the gain reduction circuit and are like wrapping a soft pillow over the sound (think Fleetwood Mac Rumours Vox tone). Dave Derr also designed the I/O section of the H3000, which has a lovely 12 bit DAC vibe different from the modern Eventides. Brit mod on my Distressors are kinda emulations of ‘all buttons in’ on my 1176s but not quiet as dark. The moral of this story is that even 1-2dB of GR is often used by mix engineers to add tonal characteristics as opposed to dynamic levelling. Stereo Brit Mod is great on the drum bus, and the Phoenix is great for big ass tubby tones on the mix bus, even when the meters are just tickling. Great vid. Please do some more FX stuff!
Thanks for the details! That's great.
I adore compressors as much as i adore my drum machines synths etc. thanks bro.
Loved this 👍👍👍
This is Great! Compressors are so often misunderstood and improperly and OVER used. Great edubikation if anything! 😉 specially sidechaining!
Yeah, so easy to overuse them and suck the life out of stuff.
I added your album to my works playlist. Just want you to know a random restaurant in New Zealand sometimes Jams your tunes.
Thank you, nice to know my music gets played upside down. :)
Very interesting take on compression.
Thanks Troy.
Thanks Alex, nice demo video, I've always wished to see the Vesta Fire on action ... especially sided with the Alesis... a sort of pumping /ducking war. I'Ve Heard that vesta fire 1986 was one of the first compressor ever allowing the sidechain thru its loop - in jack..I'm I wrong? .. It could had be the one that inspired the Alesis development team..
Great stuff as always! for those who want the "fancy" side chain. The mpressor is the best I've ever heard
Cheers Jamie, I'll have to check that one out!
Fun fact: white noise channeled through a comp/gate and triggered by some repeating sound makes for some cool percussive sounds. Nice toonz as always, my man!
Nice idea.
Where were you when we needed you in the 90s!?!!
If they invent time travel, you know what to do! 😂
Yup, I have that Alesis Compressor. Picked it up several years ago from Guitar Center, used, for $39 which I thought was a very good price. Great video as always! I do not have the Distressor, of course, because they're about a grand used where I live. I'm saving up for... the plugin. LOL.
$39 for some audio fun is very good.
Yeah the Distressors are more serious bits of kit.
Thank you for this video.
Seems to be part of sound design.
Love the Stereo compression 😯🙌🏼
And side chain pumping
Did you demonstrate mid side compression?
MixbusTV showed an awesome drawmer 1176
Would love to learn more about sound processors 😃
Glad you enjoyed it. There wasn't any mid side compression in this instance.
1176 - would love a go on one of those. It's been years since I last used a real one.
Surprised to see the Vesta Fire! Picked one up a while ago and had to repair it as well..
Note to myself: When listening to Alex' compressor example, disable my own compressor or I'll just keep wondering why I can't hear any difference : )
Haha! Yeah, that'll do it.
@ghost mall : ) To keep the dynamics controlled. Very good to have when the youtuber doesn't. (Alex is usually not one of them though.)
I also have it when watching movies and such to hear details better at low levels.
Remarkable that you COMPRESSED all that into 12 minutes!
😀
Sweet distressors
nice intro into the dark arts of compresion cheers
Ex-squish-iarmus
@@AlexBallMusic my old music tech tutor always referd to compression as a dark art he was in league with the devil insisting we must know how to convert binary to hexerdecimal .. So usefull i got into free partys and didnt finish (;=
Man, gobs of talent and toys!!
Cheers.
All Alex content is great content. Period. 👌🌟
Thanks!
As a firm ambassador of Dad jokes I rate your comb-joke 9/11.
Yes, ti was an officially interesting video! Also, it made me want to go dust off my poor forgotten dbx stereo compressor and run some nice modular patches through it. Thanks, Alex!
Yeah, I guess it's easy to ignore hardware and use plugins. I don't use my DBX very often for that reason.
Mine is the 266XL. Which model have you got?
Mine is the 266. Got it dirt cheap ages ago shopping for a hardware reverb and it was sitting in the same rack. It has mainly served as bass drum compressor for me. Not the best but it packs a nice punch.
I own an Alesis 3630 comp, i bought it in the 90's and used it a lot with my Tascam 488 MK2 8 Track Portastudio, it worked well with tape based recording. I used to do the gating effect with a kick drum too, great fun with that little box 😎👌 I believe there are some mods you can do to it too, I was going to do them but it gets little use nowadays as the PC handles all that stuff now in Reaper DAW. Great video as usual sir. Nice to deviate away from synths for a while and explore classic FX units maybe, they all work hand in hand to me.
Been tempted to get a Portastudio, I started with tape recorders and then four tracks. Great fun.
Mods - yeah there are, but I've not gone down that rabbit hole.
@@AlexBallMusic I started with an old Philips reel to reel with a "magic eye" level meter, I bought from a 2nd hand shop in 1978 with my paper round money, lol 😂 happy days, I learned a lot from that machine, buying reels from Comet, recording the charts on a Sunday, splicing, dubbing, tape speed relation, wow, flutter, computers just don't give you that education, unless you Google it of course lol. I used to use the sync track on my portastudio for syncing midi to my jsq60 sequencer that played my juno 60 too, your channel brings it all back to me. Cool stuff 😎👍
To make an analogy, Imagine packing a suitcase. There is a fixed volume of space inside of it, and no matter how much you pack into that space, it can't exceed it. Think of bass as pants, midrange as shirts, and treble as socks. Putting more pants in, means less room for socks and shirts. Even a little pants, takes up a lot of space much like even a little loud bass takes up all of the dynamic headroom in a track. Enter the compressor. A compressor is like your friend smooshing all of those loose clothes in and then sitting on top of the suitcase to hold it down while you zip it up. A compressor packs a little more signal into the available dynamic container that is your song, by smooshing different tracks together so there is less wasted space between them. It does this by making the soft parts louder, the louder parts softer, and if 2 tracks try to be loud at the same time, it quiets one, the other, or both so that they never exceed the amount of loudness/dynamicheadroom/luggage space available.
Nice. I always thought of it in terms of rubbish compactors like that scene from Star Wars. 🙂
Without sidechain and a kick drum, house music wouldn't have been the same.
My old 3630 still gets occasional use. Pre-DAW, on one occasion I used it to automate the level of a very lumpy vocal by feeding the side-chain with a synth which was fed in-turn by sequenced MIDI Volume commands.
That's a clever setup! I guess DAWs make that stuff seem superfluous but it's good to get away from the computer.
I still kinda want a 3630 xD But I don't really do outboard effects... so I have no idea where. But it's a legend :)
It's on my squish list!
great video and tune!
Thanks David.
I love all your videos, keep up the classiness :)
Thank you!
This is great
I spent all yesterday trying to come up with a pun-filled comment. Alas...nothing. Too much pressure. Couldn't squeeze one out. Great video, though. Ashamed to admit I had never really known what sidechaining was. Also - very creative use of compression. For me, it's always been just a tool for fattening the sound a bit, while avoiding distortion.
The pun King returns.
Yeah, compression is largely functional, but it can be a big part of the sound if you want it to. Fun to play with from time to time.
@@AlexBallMusic The Beatles prophesied about me - “Here comes the Pun King...”
Oh... I have had time to own and hate the 3630 twice, separated by two decades. I hope to avoid it in the future.
But I must admit you made good use of it's quirkyness. 'Cause as a straight compressor I still consider it rubbish. :D
Bravo 🙏
You should try and do a video of the synths that the chemical brothers used!
Compressed knowledge!
:)
If used correctly, compressors may also go cronch.
Had me at comb-presser.
I secretly say "comb pressor" every time and nobody notices.
Keeps me amused on the winter nights.
So good
Cheers.
I think if you made a video of a vibraslap it would make good viewing.
Doing a documentary on the history of the vibraslap funnily enough. Five hours long.
This reminds me of crystal castles, so awesome!
Nice. Thanks!
That was a pretty cool little tune at the end. After you recorded those parts, did you line all the stems up by ear?
Wow, missed this video before as a non-synth one, but it appeard to be very inspirational. Please make more effect or studio hodgepodge videos some day, not only devoted them to some synth model:)
Shpongle vibe here.
Distressors!!!!!🤘✨🔥
Yeah, they're cool.
Nice! Need to explore compressors more now! 🙂
BTW, in your experience, do all stomp box phasers introduce that high pitch pink noise in the signal when using synths through them? I don't seem to experience that with guitar use, but that might just be the guitar amp "obscuring" that whoosh when in use there...
man thats one of the highest like/dislike ratios ive seen.
nice videos alex
Part of that tune at the end sounded a bit like one of the tunes from JMJ's Zoolook album, also used as the intro tune to a game called 'Captain Blood'.
For some reason I never though to use a compressor after effect pedals.. was always one of the first things I used.
Yes, a compressor would normally level out a signal, but stick it somewhere else and there's all sorts of things you can do. Gating a signal with effects on it via the side chain is a lot of fun for slamming things in and out.