How to Compress AMEN and Breakbeats

The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/stranjah11221
Amen Compression Cheatsheet
deviantaudio.ck.page/49e2e175d1
Learn more about the OG Jungle Vol. 1 SAMPLE PACK: → deviantaudio.com/og-jungle-vol-1
Follow Me:
Instagram → / stranjahbeatz
TikTok → / stranjahbeatz
All Social Links → linktr.ee/stranjah
Buy My Products:
All Products → deviantaudio.com/shop
Ableton Kits → deviantaudio.com/ableton
Preset Packs → deviantaudio.com/presets
Sample Packs → deviantaudio.com/samples
Shirts/Caps → www.stranjah.com/merchandise
Free Packs:
STRANJAH Sample Pack → bit.ly/2WPpyoj
STRANJAH Serum Preset Pack → bit.ly/3cFKLtg
STRANJAH Slicing Preset → bit.ly/3doS6ji
Favourite VST/Tools:
bit.ly/40rlt72
My go-to sample site is Splice
Get 2-weeks FREE → bit.ly/41f0wNI
My Skillshare Class 1 Month FREE → skl.sh/stranjah06221
Join my Discord → / discord

[@sramirez1906]

I needed this! Thanks.

[@robtronik]

great session. thank you!

[@Samuel-hp6op]

you described compressing very well in this video! I often have a hard time getting my head around how it works when people talk about it but how you described it together with the waveform view was very easy to follow

[@tangoteflon1050]

exactly man ,very helpful as all of his videos

[@kodex4490]

great vid !..very helpful...also thanks for making me aware of the smexoscope vst ...cant live without it now.

[@Kayford1979]

This was very helpful. I’ve been messing with compression for a while now but this taught me more in close to an hour than I’ve learned in years

[@arendbehiels7600]

great video man really helped me to understand the compressor better and compress breaks.❤‍🔥

[@afghamistam1860]

Stranjah oj helping out with my friggin fresh and my breaks thank you I'm listening to music but feel blest when you post. you tell me how to do the thing, but you are NOT thirsty and your voice reminds me so vividly of my old mentor. BIG YYYPYPPPPPPP ps. luvu stay up SH

[@adrouf1]

As usual - really good 👍

[@bornshamir7792]

Thanks bro!

[@br0k3nf1ng3rmusic]

Hey, I think you’re finding the FabFilter C2 more responsive because u have the Ableton compressor on RMS mode

[@k-hz2742]

My boi xxx

[@PlaylistProducertutorials]

Hey have you got a discord ? Thanks for all your videos

[@CtrlZMusic]

The knee how the signal is smoothly or not smoothly compressed

[@adrouf1]

Is there a cheat showing typical frequencies of all elements in a jungle dnb track?

[@TonyOldskool]

Awesome, btw do you have a service to check over other peoples Ableton project & pick out the nasties?

[@burn_after_reading]

Hi! Do you always use Rms instead of peak compression? If so what is the reason? Thanks for great vid!

[@Trentcast]

RMS is more consistent and reliable than peak

[@garbageland1]

@@Trentcast nah.. rms is averages, better for vocals or compressing over a longer amount of time. peak for quick acting compression, stop telling people stuff you dont understand

[@birdsiview6845]

MAKE A JUNGLE BREAK FROM SCRATCH, AND THEN DO ALL THE PRODUCTION TRICKS TO IT. Instead of working with an already mastered loop that’s already produced. Make a bowling pin snare from scratch using vital if it’s possible, I’m sure it is. That would be impressive!

[@RaveyDavey]

You can but the original Jungle, from the UK, was made with sampled drum breaks from records. So depends how authentic you want it to sound.

[@Bittamin]

@@RaveyDaveyyeah this is what everything boils down to with sampling workflow. I’ve made breaks from random drum loops that had no intentions of being turned into jungle when I found them, which is fun! It’s also fun to just have good source material to chop too 🎉

[@alphanumeric1529]

For any beginner producers, please don't watch this video, or at least, don't do anything Stranjah does in this video. It will hold you back for years if you adopt the techniques used in this video. Seriously. Everything is wrong in this video. This is a demonstration of the basic theory of compression, but the gain staging is all completely wrong, not stylistically wrong, but technically wrong, meaning actually, objectively wrong. If you do what he does, your production will struggle, and it may take you years to figure out what you're doing wrong (if you ever do) and why your tracks always sound bad and don't translate on larger or various sound systems. And still worse than the fail gain staging, the way he presents hard numbers, like "like set your threshold to -12db" NO NO NO! Referencing my prior point, your drum buss (drums) should be PEAKING at -12dbfs in production. If you actually gain stage properly, but use his hard numbers, your compressor won't be doing anything at all! ALSO, almost every compressor that has attack and release settings have different actual speeds for these settings, even if, for example, they say the attack is 10ms, that could actually be 2ms or 20ms, same for the release. And, again, every compressor has different actual times, so you'll never be achieving anything by using his hard numbers. Just look at FabFilter's information for an example of how the time numbers they display are not accurate for the actual times of those functions in the compressor, and further, each of their different models of compressors (clean, classic, opto, punch, etc.) have different actual times, or speeds, even though the knobs will display the same ms (millisecond) values. Which brings me to my final point on why all of the technical information presented here is not to be followed: Everything he does is set by visuals, he constantly says look at this peak, or set the threshold where the body of the break is, etc., etc., again and again, about everything. Now, visuals can be helpful for illustration purposes for people just learning these basic production principles, just so you can SEE what is going on, before you actually learn WHAT is going on, and the only way you're going to learn what is going on is by HEARING what is going on. This is my largest critique of the information presented in this video, all of the technical info is formulaic in nature, meaning he says set the threshold to -12db, set the attack to 50ms, set the release to 30ms. Doing exactly what he says will not produce the results you want, and won't even be consistently wrong with different breaks (or any other audio), or different compressors. At the very least, there is something to be said for being consistently wrong, because if you are CONSISTENTLY wrong, then you're pretty close to being consistently right, if you can just figure out what you're doing wrong, and then make changes so that you're doing it right, and if your techniques are consistent, you'll be consistently right. But the info here will not produce any kind of consistent results (wrong or right). What you need to learn, and what CAN be taught in instructional videos like this youtube video, or in real life/world learning settings is principles, theories, concepts. If you learn proper principles, you can apply those principles to the work that you are doing, which can be in any genre of music, and within any element of that genre, like bass, or drums, or leads, or atmospheres, and get consistent results, because principles are foundational concepts of how audio/sound/hearing actually work, and therefore are not specific to a particular drum break, or even a specific genre. I get heated about this because I learned formulas, like what is taught here, and not principles, and it held me back for years, like for way, way too long, for a decade or more. That is so much wasted time it makes me want to rip the skin off my face! Once I learned proper principles, either through me just actually figuring out how things work/sound, or from the gracious teachings of people who actually knew the fundamental principles of audio, my learning exploded, and I advanced SO quickly in production and mixing. It was all of the stuff that I learned that was wrong that held me back for so long. If I just figured it out for myself from the beginning, I would have figured everything out much quicker, or if I just learned proper principles from the beginning, I would have advanced so much faster. Production is very technical, and our world is VERY visual, it takes a long time to actually learn to hear what is happening when you manipulate audio (with compressors, eq's, the basic tools, and the more advanced tools). But that is what you have to do if you really want to learn how to produce and/or mix music. So, learning to set your threshold at -12db is useless, it is arbitrary. Learning to drop your threshold down into your audio, and hear what that threshold is doing to your audio at various depths, whether it be at -12db, or -24db, whether your audio is peaking at -12dbfs, or -24dbfs, or what ever it is, HEARING what is happening, to that specific piece of audio, and then more broadly what attributes that specific audio has, like does it have bright (high freq) high transients, or are the transients lower, and the audio itself has less high freqs., or anything in between, if you can hear how the compressor is acting, what it is actually doing to your audio as you drop the threshold, and how the character of your audio changes, does it get brighter, duller, etc., I mean we're talking about a compressor, right? But a compressor will change the tonal character of your audio like an eq, depending on how it is set. And then, learning how to hear where the compressor's threshold is, in the audio, then learning how the ratio effects the dynamic range AND the tonal range of your audio. And then after that, learning how the attack setting of one specific compressor (and later among all the different topologies of modeled compressors, fet, vca, opto, vari-mu based compressors,etc.) affects how the threshold impacts the audio, and what effect the ratio has.

[@alphanumeric1529]

I didn't intend to write this comment, but then I did, but I didn't intend to write at such length, and even now, I didn't intend to teach any of these highly lauded fundamental principles... But, quickly, if you want to learn how compression works, from the very beginning of your learning, set the ratio high, like 10:1, 20:1, not because that is the right setting, but because that will exaggerate how the compressor sounds, so it will be easier to just hear how the compressor is changing your audio. Also, set the knee to as hard as possible, if your compressor has a knee setting. Softening the Knee was designed/invented to mask or hide the sound of compression. So set it hard so it is easier to hear what is happening. And then later, when you actually have learned to hear, or are in the process of it, and you know, or are learning what you are actually doing, you can can determine how hard or soft of a knee you want. Sometimes we want to hear the sound, the effect of the compression, maybe on biting, hard hitting dnb drums, so its harder knee (or not, your choice, you are the creator), sometimes, maybe on voice, we don't want to hear the compressor grab so hard (or maybe we do, your choice once you know what you're doing), so you go to a softer knee. But for now, you're just developing the ability to hear what is happening. Don't make the mistake of thinking it is obvious. I've been producing for decades and I'm still hearing new things with the same and different compressors. For real. And that includes over a decade of not even really even hearing what was happening with compressors, and then later, why the things that I was beginning to hear, were happening, at a semi-technical level. Then think of the attack and release settings as either fast or slow, no specific numbers, and use their knobs as switches, with only two positions, setting them either relatively fast (not all the way fast, but most of the way fast) or relatively slow (not all the way slow, but most of the way slow), don't bother with the thousands of knob positions, or millions of combinations of knob positions, in between the extremes, again, we're trying to set the compressor with extreme settings, so it is easier to HEAR what the compressor is doing to your audio. Once you learn to hear what is happening to your audio, then you can SLOWLY open the pandora's box of the millions of possibilities created by combinations of just 4 knob positions. But that is for later. Continue with the lesson: And now, last, not first, but last (as opposed to what is shown in this video) drop your threshold into your audio, with the various settings mentioned, which have been reduced to only 4 possible settings. The ratio is fixed at a high value, maybe not the highest value, like infinity, but high, 10:1 or 20:1, and the Knee as hard as possible, if possible. Then the four possible combinations of the attack and release knobs: 1. Fast Attack, Fast Release. 2. Fast Attack, Slow Release. 3. Slow Attack, Fast Release. 4. Slow Attack, Slow Release. If you learn how THAT compressor sounds on THAT specific piece of audio as you drop the threshold with those four different settings, you will LEARN to HEAR what the compressor is doing. We're in a time of abundance, doubtlessly you have 20 vst compressors, lol, try them out doing the same thing with the same piece of audio. Or, if you're using Fab Filter's Pro-C compressor, for example, try all of the different compressor models (Clean, Classic, Opto, Punch, Vocal, Buss, Mastering, or whatever they are) while dropping the threshold with the four different combinations of attack and release settings, with the same piece of audio. You WILL learn to HEAR, which is of paramount importance to producing SOUND, or MUSIC, or AUDIO. Try to learn what original gear all of your different compressors are based upon, like what type of circuits they are modeled after, or are supposed to sound like. The different circuits have different sounds, as they work differently, have different speed ranges, have different curves in those speed ranges, and even all kinds of other little quirks that can make a small or very large difference to how they sound, and what they're capable of doing. Now, you'll learn to hear how they're all alike, how they all behave relatively similarly with those four different knob settings, but as you learn to hear better, you'll learn to hear how they're all different with the four different settings. This will lead you to many fundamental principles of audio or music production, that again, will apply to drum and bass, or orchestra, to a capella, rock, edm, whatever it is, or WILL BE.

[@alphanumeric1529]

Lol, just listen to the beginning of this video, the audio is blown out. Haha! If you can't even set your mic levels on your own video... are you really at a place where you can teach? I mean no offense, btw, but teaching is so important to our civilization, which is falling, and I wonder why? Anyway, all the best.

[@crashc420]

Thank you this comment just saved me 46 mins of my time

[@alyctro8158]

that's an already processed amen break, this is cheating.

[@IDmanjudah5442]

Mad! Big up! respect! knowledge! gratitude!