10 Mixing tips in 10 Days: Day Five - Parallel Compression

So far in the 10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days series we have looked at side chaining, slap back delay, automation, and reference mixing. Today we're going to look at a tool that will help you liven up tracks and add some power to your song. We're going to look at Parallel Compression.

Mixing Tip:

Use parallel compression to liven up your tracks. 

Parallel compression is one of those techniques that you get addicted to. Once you use it you wonder how you ever lived without it. So what is parallel compression? Basically, it's adding a parallel track (same audio signal) with heavy compression and using the fader to dial in the compression. Let's take drums for example. You would route all of your drums to a drum buss. Then you would have another bus next to that one with the same input so it's receiving all the drum tracks as well. (In Pro Tools, you can duplicate the bus by right clicking on it and click "duplicate.") 

At this point you should have two identical drum busses. On one of the busses, you are going to want to put a compressor and heavily compress it. I mean squash it so it sounds over the top compressed. Then pull the fader all the way down so you don't hear it. Now, you're going to use the fader to dial in the compression with your original bus. You should notice that your drums will start to liven up. This works especially well for MIDI drums. 

Here's a video tutorial I did on parallel compression with drums that will walk you through this process. 

Parallel compression can be used on more than drums. I recommend trying it on everything. While you should definitely be careful not to do over do it, it can help breathe life into some dead tracks when done correctly.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.


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