The reality today is when I’m mixing a track I use compression on about 5-10% of tracks.
I tend to use compression in the same way a person might Febreeze™ their house after cleaning it. Febreeze™ is really just the icing on the cake, but only once you’ve cleaned everything is Febreeze™ actually worth it.
Otherwise you would have a house that looks like sh%t but smells like heaven.
So this is how I look at compression: Only after I’ve already cleaned everything up with EQ, do I then use compression to put down the finishing touches.
If you’re just learning compression and you don’t know when to use it, then don’t because I have a solution for that absurd catch 22.
Since we all need to learn compression at some point, I would suggest that you learn to familiarize and become more comfortable by using this simple approach.
All you’re going to do is pick two instruments in your song, one in the Front of your mix and the other in the Back.
The goal here is to use compression to more effectively keep the Back instrument comfortably tucked in the Back, and to make the Front instrument stay in the Front more consistently.
I call this Pocket Compression, because in the same way we use EQ’s to carve out frequency pockets for instruments in our mix, we can use Pocket Compression to create a musically pleasing boundary AROUND the frequency pockets we’ve carved with our EQ.
The reason creating this boundary is amazing is because even though we carve out a pocket with EQ, that instrument can still sometimes get excited and jump up in volume. And as it jumps up in volume it jump out of its pocket so to speak.
So you need something to make it sit down and stay in that comfy little pocket you carved out for it. This is where Pocket Compression comes in.
With Pocket Compression you’re forcing the instrument to sit in a pocket which has very distinct, time-regulated volume properties.
The ‘time-regulated volume properties’ are simply just your compressor settings and it’s the particular configuration of these settings which creates the characteristics of the Pocket you’re Compressing.
Having just 2 ‘Characteristic’ pockets in your mix which have two distinctly different time-regulated volume properties such as a background chord pocket and a lead pocket allows us to create a deliberate form of subtle, but powerful contrast in our mix that is truly professional sounding.
Pocket Compression really is the most powerful and intuitive approach to compressor use that I know of.
If you’re curious and want to learn more about Pocket Compression you can check out my in depth book on the topic @.