VIDEO: Compression for more gain 2

Great videos, Danny! I can't see me breaking that sound out at my church gig this weekend - but I *so* want to! :) Hope you do decide to do a similar video from a bluesy/single-coil perspective. I'm sure it would be incredible.

Peace, brother!
 
Hey Danny. Dig the Haas vid so much. I love that wide sound, and am always playing around with my delays in this same way. I'm mostly a live player, and I'm in a single guitar band, so I'm always chasing the widest, fattest tone I get get live, since I'm in a 3 piece band.

Question: do you try to emulate that live? Most sound guys frown at this stuff, but I've found that if I use Haas delay live, it has no real negative consequence for people who stand on the side or in front of one PA main, but if you are standing in the middle of the room, and hear both sides, you get that wide stereo effect live and it sounds great. What is your live approach?
 
Danny Danzi said:
A few guys in the Ax8 forum brought up an old video I did on getting more gain out of your Axe-Fx using the compressor so I posted another video along the lines of the last compression video, but with a few more cool things. I didn't realize how similar it was to the other video I did on compression, so I'm sorry if some of it seems to repeat itself. Some cool stuff in there though if you have a spare 20+ minutes. Worst case scenario, you can have a laugh at my accent and silliness. :)

Click to expand...

Pretty cool stuff. Your chops are killer!
 
∞Fractals said:
So, now the inevitable ... would you ever do another compression vid for "cleans"? Perhaps not your bag, but between your willingness to make a video, and it's on the AxeFX, I'd appreciate the lesson. You can see the demand here for your mad skilz ... ;)

And, if not Danny, anyone who understand the FAS products to offer their experience, is always highly welcome to share.
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Yeah, I could do one, but to be honest, in those it's about being clean, not really getting sustain. So in a clean scenario, you would use the compressor to "compress" so the sound stays nice and tight instead of pushing it the way I was. More along the lines of my rhythm sound compression, but you'd increase the threshold to taste. The ratio tells the threshold how to behave, so if you increase that to a larger number than you saw me using, adding more threshold (higher number in the negatives) will make the compressor clamp down harder at a faster rate.

For example, my rhythm tone compression has a ratio of 4:1. If you lower that number to 2:1, the threshold will behave a bit softer. Meaning, it will not compress as hard if you move it to say....-55. If you increase the ratio to 6:1 or higher, the threshold will clamp down quicker and you'll notice it working faster while messing with the threshold. That same -55 with a 6:1 ratio, will really compress to the point of maybe a pumping sound...which you don't want.

You need to find a happy medium really. Leaving release to "auto" works for most applications unless you are going for something specific. Your main places to work would be:

Attack: This tells the compressor how fast to literally start to work. The faster the attack time, the faster the comp reacts. The longer the attack time, the more relaxed the comp engages. Because I use 4.5 ms doesn't mean that will work for you. Your attack setting depends on how you execute your parts, how hard you pick, what your eq is set for, and the sound you choose. Quick example....ever hear a guy play a bass guitar with a pick to where it makes that real percussive popping sound? Not popping in a good way...it almost sounds like he's beating the heck out of it and it sounds bad.

If you use a faster attack time on something like that, the compressor will smooth out his percussive, ugly pick attacks because with a higher ratio and threshold, we'd be smoothing out his transient ugliness. LOL! This same thing applies to how you attack your guitar. If you're an aggressive player, you may need the comp to kick a bit faster so 4.5 ms may not be enough. You have to see how you play and then gauge how the compressor reacts to you. I'm actually a light player, so I can get away with 4.5 ms and above. BUT....if I finger pick something and want it to stand out a bit, I might be setting my attack at 2 or 2.5 ms. It depends on what I play, how I play and the sound I use.

Threshold: This controls how much of the compression effect you hear. So this is the main daddy that literally lets you hear more or less of the effect.

Ratio: This tells the threshold how hard to hit. The lower the number, the more you can turn up the threshold and not hear much of a difference. The higher the number, the more you will hear the compression effect when you turn up the threshold. A -40 threshold will sound much different with a 2:1 ratio than it will using a 7:1.

Remember, and this is important. For most guitar tones, we don't want to really hear much compression unless you are using it as a special effect. All the ways I showed in my videos were for gain boosts. But my rhythm tone compression was literally showing you how it can "tighten" the sound. This is what you want on your clean sounds. Just a little tightening so that the notes are a bit more consistent. Ever play a guitar and record it, and notice some notes ring out louder than others?

Same with bass....ever hear the low notes lash out and the higher notes seem to be lower in volume? The fix is compression. We don't want things so even we lose dynamics, but we want a little consistency across the board. That's what you want here. Not too much, not too little. Unfortunately, it's one of the hardest effects to use because the rule of thumb is "if you can hear it, you're using too much."

"Ok, so how do I use it if I'm not supposed to hear it, Danny?"

When you hear all your notes to where they have consistency without any pumping artifacts that just make what you're playing sound unnatural, you are using compression the right way in THIS particular example. You'll also notice what you play sounds and feels smoother when you play. Legato is easier with a nice, compressed clean sound. Just try not to over-do it. Hope this helps a bit. :)
 
Pinkycramps said:
Hey Danny. Dig the Haas vid so much. I love that wide sound, and am always playing around with my delays in this same way. I'm mostly a live player, and I'm in a single guitar band, so I'm always chasing the widest, fattest tone I get get live, since I'm in a 3 piece band.

Question: do you try to emulate that live? Most sound guys frown at this stuff, but I've found that if I use Haas delay live, it has no real negative consequence for people who stand on the side or in front of one PA main, but if you are standing in the middle of the room, and hear both sides, you get that wide stereo effect live and it sounds great. What is your live approach?
Click to expand...

Glad ya liked it, thanks! Answer to your question...

Wide can be the death of you live the same as it can be in a studio environment. The wider you go, the more disconnected from the mix you can be. And being live, if you play in stereo, only you can hear that. Your soundman is most likely running a mono rig. So that means....yep, your big wide sound is phased through the mains. Even if you had a stereo mains mix at the board, people on one side of the room will hear one side, the other people...the other. So running in stereo is really a waste of time unless you are really doing it right.

For example, when I tour overseas, we use major concert systems for our back line. They got like 97 trillion gigawats of power or some crap...lol...all the dudes running the monitors and mains wear headsets to communicate....it's sickness man! When I play those shows, yeah, I go stereo and even use a cool little rack by Behringer called Edison. When you put it last in line as your final effect, it makes all the stereo effects before it sound insane. It's like a stereo imager that just enhances anything you have going on in stereo. So in situations like that, yeah I'll use the HAAS effect or maybe a light chorus and then the Edison brings it to life. I usually have 4-25 way greenback cabs with me and a few cabs on each side as side fills or monitors or whatever. I'm easy with stuff like that. I wish I could use in-ear monitors...but they annoy me.

So we talked about live....in the studio, if you go for these super wide sounds, you are literally disconnecting your guitar from the mix. The same with drums that pan all over the place and have wideners on them. There's nothing worse than a freaking crash cymbal panned 100% left and toms that pan so hard, they walk over top of the wall of guitars. I just hate anything that sounds wide unless there is a reason or special effect purpose.

You will notice that if you don't use the wide stuff both live and in the studio, you will hit so much harder with your stuff. I'm serious man...try it. Ever hear something completely mono that just sounds great? One a mix of something coming out of one speaker that makes you shake your head? Chances are, that mix is not using super wide pans or any stereo enhancement type gizmos. If you have a nice spread that doesn't go crazy to the point of phasing and use effects sparingly, you will always have more impact in your sounds as well as in your mix for both live and the studio...I promise you.

See man, the problem with this stuff is...people confuse wide with "big". There is a difference. Something wide is just....something wide. The sound doesn't grow...it just spreads. AND....this sound really only makes us go crazy for it in headphones. In a real situation, it's just bad if you're not careful. Big has to do with eq and sound delivery. That's what makes a sound large. The sound size itself...not how wide it goes or how much cool chorus we can add...or how the delay may be set up to do the HAAS thing. We need the sound itself to stand tall on its own without anything.

A trebly tone is going to remain trebly even if we HAAS it or use a widener, ya know? We've done nothing to the actual sound to make it grow. We made it spread. Now, if you decrease that treble to where it doesn't sound like a little bee buzzing around, add some good mids, make sure the right low end is there and the bad low end is removed, you are literally growing the sound in both size and volume because now, you can literally make it louder when things are set as they should be. The same with a really loud mix in the studio. You have to mix for loud...and to do that, you have to have all the frequencies just right. The better things coexist together, the more fidelity you get so you can turn things up. Same with your guitar tone. When it's eq'd just right, it just gets better. :) Keep some of this in mind the next time you mess around. See if it helps any.
 
Downtown2112 said:
Great videos, Danny! I can't see me breaking that sound out at my church gig this weekend - but I *so* want to! :) Hope you do decide to do a similar video from a bluesy/single-coil perspective. I'm sure it would be incredible.

Peace, brother!
Click to expand...

Thanks! A word of advice man.....no rock in church EVER! Quick story for you...

So I get asked to play some guitar in my church years ago because one of the guys went away for a while or something. I figured cool...this will be fun. I show up with my acoustic and really have a nice time. They were a great band and the singers were awesome. So the next week, I decide to go early so I could set up and wanted to record myself in church before anyone got there. The acoustics in my church are off the hook man!

So I go in, set up, start to warm up a bit and run my little recorder. I play back a little and love the sound of it. I play a bunch of little songs of my own and then decide to play Ozzy's Diary of a Madman. I absolutely love the acoustic guitar parts in that song! I'm playing it...and it sounds beautiful! My guitar is filling up the church and I'm getting chills from it....and then everything went black.

I didn't know what happened, but when I came to my senses, 4 people were looking down at me saying "you ok....you ok...here, let us help you". I sit up and say "what happened?" The leader of the band says "the cello must have fallen over and hit you pretty hard, you were out cold when we got here!" LOL!!

There was a beautiful cello next to where I was playing. I never in a million years thought it would have fallen on me. When I got home that day, I listened back to the little recording I made. In the middle of me playing Diary, you here this bang followed by UH and then you hear several thuds and my guitar playing an open chord. LOL! I guess God wasn't crazy about that song....but honest I was playing it good! I would have thought even He would have enjoyed that! ;)

Yeah you know it's funny, I can use just about any amp with that cab IR that I used in the vid. I was asking guitarmike (I think it was him) what amp he was using that was making his fret noise come out more, but he never told me. I can just switch to the more blues oriented amps and they all sound great without me doing much of anything. The only things I usually touch are low cut, high boost or add a bit more drive. I don't touch anything else and the blues type amps sound killer to me. So I mean I could do a vid on that, but I'd not know what to show you other than "hey, listen to this amp...now listen to this one.." and just go through them to show you how the blues or light/hard rock type amps sound.

Peace to you too!
 
This is great, thanks for taking the time with the videos and the explanations, gonna give this a blast over the weekend.
 
Danny Danzi said:
Thanks! A word of advice man.....no rock in church EVER! Quick story for you...

So I get asked to play some guitar in my church years ago because one of the guys went away for a while or something. I figured cool...this will be fun. I show up with my acoustic and really have a nice time. They were a great band and the singers were awesome. So the next week, I decide to go early so I could set up and wanted to record myself in church before anyone got there. The acoustics in my church are off the hook man!

So I go in, set up, start to warm up a bit and run my little recorder. I play back a little and love the sound of it. I play a bunch of little songs of my own and then decide to play Ozzy's Diary of a Madman. I absolutely love the acoustic guitar parts in that song! I'm playing it...and it sounds beautiful! My guitar is filling up the church and I'm getting chills from it....and then everything went black.

I didn't know what happened, but when I came to my senses, 4 people were looking down at me saying "you ok....you ok...here, let us help you". I sit up and say "what happened?" The leader of the band says "the cello must have fallen over and hit you pretty hard, you were out cold when we got here!" LOL!!

There was a beautiful cello next to where I was playing. I never in a million years thought it would have fallen on me. When I got home that day, I listened back to the little recording I made. In the middle of me playing Diary, you here this bang followed by UH and then you hear several thuds and my guitar playing an open chord. LOL! I guess God wasn't crazy about that song....but honest I was playing it good! I would have thought even He would have enjoyed that! ;)

Yeah you know it's funny, I can use just about any amp with that cab IR that I used in the vid. I was asking guitarmike (I think it was him) what amp he was using that was making his fret noise come out more, but he never told me. I can just switch to the more blues oriented amps and they all sound great without me doing much of anything. The only things I usually touch are low cut, high boost or add a bit more drive. I don't touch anything else and the blues type amps sound killer to me. So I mean I could do a vid on that, but I'd not know what to show you other than "hey, listen to this amp...now listen to this one.." and just go through them to show you how the blues or light/hard rock type amps sound.

Peace to you too!
Click to expand...

Made my day this story! Thanks Danny!

And absolutely love the quality and info from your videos, priceless advice! Thank you again for putting in the time and effort for the rest of us here!
 
Danny Danzi said:
LOL! I'll wind up sharing the thing at some point....I guess I'm just embarrassed and sort of have a complex about turning over my naked tones.
Click to expand...

What would be REALLY cool is if you could just share that IR you have made. That would be VERY appreciated if you're cool with it!
 
Danny Danzi said:
Glad ya liked it, thanks! Answer to your question...

Wide can be the death of you live the same as it can be in a studio environment. The wider you go, the more disconnected from the mix you can be. And being live, if you play in stereo, only you can hear that. Your soundman is most likely running a mono rig. So that means....yep, your big wide sound is phased through the mains. Even if you had a stereo mains mix at the board, people on one side of the room will hear one side, the other people...the other. So running in stereo is really a waste of time unless you are really doing it right.

For example, when I tour overseas, we use major concert systems for our back line. They got like 97 trillion gigawats of power or some crap...lol...all the dudes running the monitors and mains wear headsets to communicate....it's sickness man! When I play those shows, yeah, I go stereo and even use a cool little rack by Behringer called Edison. When you put it last in line as your final effect, it makes all the stereo effects before it sound insane. It's like a stereo imager that just enhances anything you have going on in stereo. So in situations like that, yeah I'll use the HAAS effect or maybe a light chorus and then the Edison brings it to life. I usually have 4-25 way greenback cabs with me and a few cabs on each side as side fills or monitors or whatever. I'm easy with stuff like that. I wish I could use in-ear monitors...but they annoy me.

So we talked about live....in the studio, if you go for these super wide sounds, you are literally disconnecting your guitar from the mix. The same with drums that pan all over the place and have wideners on them. There's nothing worse than a freaking crash cymbal panned 100% left and toms that pan so hard, they walk over top of the wall of guitars. I just hate anything that sounds wide unless there is a reason or special effect purpose.

You will notice that if you don't use the wide stuff both live and in the studio, you will hit so much harder with your stuff. I'm serious man...try it. Ever hear something completely mono that just sounds great? One a mix of something coming out of one speaker that makes you shake your head? Chances are, that mix is not using super wide pans or any stereo enhancement type gizmos. If you have a nice spread that doesn't go crazy to the point of phasing and use effects sparingly, you will always have more impact in your sounds as well as in your mix for both live and the studio...I promise you.

See man, the problem with this stuff is...people confuse wide with "big". There is a difference. Something wide is just....something wide. The sound doesn't grow...it just spreads. AND....this sound really only makes us go crazy for it in headphones. In a real situation, it's just bad if you're not careful. Big has to do with eq and sound delivery. That's what makes a sound large. The sound size itself...not how wide it goes or how much cool chorus we can add...or how the delay may be set up to do the HAAS thing. We need the sound itself to stand tall on its own without anything.

A trebly tone is going to remain trebly even if we HAAS it or use a widener, ya know? We've done nothing to the actual sound to make it grow. We made it spread. Now, if you decrease that treble to where it doesn't sound like a little bee buzzing around, add some good mids, make sure the right low end is there and the bad low end is removed, you are literally growing the sound in both size and volume because now, you can literally make it louder when things are set as they should be. The same with a really loud mix in the studio. You have to mix for loud...and to do that, you have to have all the frequencies just right. The better things coexist together, the more fidelity you get so you can turn things up. Same with your guitar tone. When it's eq'd just right, it just gets better. :) Keep some of this in mind the next time you mess around. See if it helps any.
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Well, yes you are right and I agree with you. In my band, we have our own system and sound guy to run it, and he does run stereo. Our rooms are not giant, and in most cases are smaller clubs or something like a wedding or a corporate party. If we are doing something funk or straight rock like a 70's disco song, Chilli Peppers or something like The Killers or AC/DC or whatever... then I'm 100% with you. I keep it pretty basic and "narrow" and even dry for probably 90% of what I do.

But I do play a number of songs where there is something to be gained for the audience from that special effect. More ambient spacey sounds for an extended intro, or something like a U2 or Pink Floyd or whatever. I have gone out onto the floor, and it makes a big difference in the feel of some material when you have that width, or the effect of 2 guitars going on, or some ping pong or whatever. As a 3 piece, tightness, sonic control, and shape are everything to us.

Have you ever seen Kings X live? Man, Ty Tabor runs this insane W/D/W guitar rig, and his sound is just massive like nothing I have ever heard. It's literally one of the best things I've ever heard in my life (it was at a small club in Sacramento that I saw them, years ago, and it left me with an impression that will never die. I was totally sober too for the record.) I've seen the same thing with other local artists like Mike Gregory (an ex Nashville studio guy I used to know who is a MONSTER player) and Frank Hannon (Tesla guitar player, local Sac guy who does whup-ass 70's rock cover gigs with his side project.) Those guys all run stereo setups, and I'm telling you, their's is the sound I chase.

I'm a huge Satriani Fan. I've seen him in area's (Concord Pavilion, Arco Arena) and at medium clubs like The Filmore and Casino's in Reno. I've even seen him at Guitar Center doing a clinic. He runs a stereo rig, but it's not wide. It's right down the center and in your face, like you speak of. I think it can be done both ways. I do think getting the sound right in a big stereo field can be much harder to accomplish, and there is a ton of merit to what you are talking about. But when I have heard it done right... to me there is nothing like it. Material choice is a huge factor I think.

I am curious to check out that Edison device... you caught my interest with that.
 
Thank for sharing D!!
If you wouldn't mind I'd love to check out how you set a few of your chorus, and reverb.

And let's hear some of those chops bro...I've heard you killing it a million times back in the day. Wanna hear if you still got it ;)
 
Toight tone! Digging. I've always been a bit scared of jacking the level up on the compression or drive blocks. I always thought it would fuck with my 'unity' system I have going on haha
 
Danny Danzi said:
A few guys in the Ax8 forum brought up an old video I did on getting more gain out of your Axe-Fx using the compressor so I posted another video along the lines of the last compression video, but with a few more cool things. I didn't realize how similar it was to the other video I did on compression, so I'm sorry if some of it seems to repeat itself. Some cool stuff in there though if you have a spare 20+ minutes. Worst case scenario, you can have a laugh at my accent and silliness. :)

Click to expand...

Hi Danny, thanks again for one of the most informative videos I have ever seen on the AxeFx. I have a question for you about some of the tricks you show on your videos, I've watched all of them. Specifically, compression with gain (like on this video), and also the very subtle Reverb block that you use. Do you use these two techniques (tricks) on your live patches? I am very specially curious about that reverb block as set on your Cab Block settings video.
 
Heavyplayer said:
Thank for sharing D!!
If you wouldn't mind I'd love to check out how you set a few of your chorus, and reverb.

And let's hear some of those chops bro...I've heard you killing it a million times back in the day. Wanna hear if you still got it ;)
Click to expand...

Lol I just saw this! Yeah I'll do some chorus and verb stuff next.

Haha yeah, I like to think I still got it. I just use it a bit more sparingly and don't play many guitar instrumentals anymore. I'll post a few ripping things in the future. :)
 
Suni said:
Hi Danny, thanks again for one of the most informative videos I have ever seen on the AxeFx. I have a question for you about some of the tricks you show on your videos, I've watched all of them. Specifically, compression with gain (like on this video), and also the very subtle Reverb block that you use. Do you use these two techniques (tricks) on your live patches? I am very specially curious about that reverb block as set on your Cab Block settings video.
Click to expand...

Quite a few have asked about that reverb block so we'll definitely do something on that. I do use it for live also, but the level of it is lower. The compression thing is used live too, but less output because my cabs are 25 greenbacks, which do not need lots of gain because they break up a little faster

The only effects I crank live are the van Halen effects because no soundman can get those right and control them anyway. I'll see what I can do for you. Glad the video helped you!
 
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