Make your own compressor!

You know how sometimes you’ll have one stupid word in a phrase that just kind of pokes out? But then when you try volume-graphing it down, it sounds weird and unnatural and too quiet?

Something I like to do in those situations is to draw a little two-ramp down-and-back-up volume automation that mimics the action of a compressor. Down at a certain rate and depth, and then back up.

Moving the middle automation point left to right controls the balance between the “attack” and “release” of what we’re doing to that one word, and then the depth of that same middle point is effectively the ratio — lower is steeper / a deeper cut.

Like this:

See what I mean? That pokey word is a little lower overall, and then also it has that little “compressor-action” down-and-up automation. Slightly quicker attack than release; I played with it until it sounded perfectly natural.

Sometimes you gotta brute-force it — jamie