A compressor is a piece of audio recording equipment that

the dynamics of the signal that it is processing. Usually that means there's a threshold and once the signal gets louder than that

threshold, the compressor begins to squish the signal down just a little bit

evening out the sound. The compressor is also the thing on

your window AC that kicks on extremely loudly and if you ask me that second kind

of compressor could use a little of that first kind. And the Welcome to Strong Songs a Podcasts, about Music. I am your host Kirk, and as always I'm so glad that you

join me to talk about music that is super compressed, music that is not

compressed at all, and usually music with just the right amount of compression.

I've turned my window AC off while I record so that

compressor won't be bothering us as I answer your questions on this mailbag episode

so turn up the volume, find a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the show. Compression is definitely one of those very important and sort of elusive concepts when it comes to recording and signal processing.

It's certainly something that I have wrestled with a lot over

the years and I actually just got a Keeley compressor pedal for my electric guitar and a compressor

pedal on a guitar does the same thing as compression in the studio, though it has a kind of a more focused application.

In the studio, of course, compression just sort of evens things out, it brings the lows up a little bit and squishes down the highs. The vocal track that you

were listening to right now, me talking, that is compressed. I also do a little bit of

mastering compression on this podcast just to keep everything kind of listenable,

make it sound good whether you're

listening on headphones or in the car or on crappy little phone speakers or

whatever. On the guitar it has a little bit more of a specific application.

It's actually usually used to add sustain to the note, which means when you hit the string and are holding your finger down on the fret board, the note rings out a little bit longer because as it decays, the compressor kind of kicks in and raises the level and just gives you a nice longer note that can really work well with overdrive and distortion and it's especially useful on some single coil guitars or just guitars that have a little bit less sustain than other guitars.

So I've been having fun playing around with it.

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