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Help me out chums. I'm doing some reverb drenched stuff a la Verve "A Storm in Heaven", and I was reading up on the recording and production of the album. I can't tell how much compression was used, and I'm also having difficulty understanding the use of compression in psychedelic music in general. Nick Mccabe used a Boss Compressor, but i'm not sure if he used it on this album, or the albums that came after. I had a Dyna Comp for about a week and all I seemed to do with it was kill the dynamics of my guitar playing.

Anyway, here's an example...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtS_KMsSoDo

Is there a lot of compression goin' on here?

What are the benefits of compression?



Thanks!

Put it after reverb/delay and things sound all washy and overwhelming and cool?

i would venture to guess any compression was done by outboard boxes like an 1176 or LA2A during mixing. shoegaze entails so many pedals at high volumes the tube amps likely produces enough compression for tracking.

here's a good article on compression:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/classiccompressors.htm

Putting comp first in line squashes dynamics in generally boring ways. After dirt gets consistent volume but playing dynamics can do interesting things with the dirt. After 'verb or delay makes the tails swell louder, brings teh 'gaze.

cheesecats wrote:here's a good article on compression:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/classiccompressors.htm

Sound on Sound is always quality, but once in a while they print stuff that should be required reading for any self-proclaimed gear nerd. This is one of those articles; the ribbon mic shootout's awesome, too.