Welcome back to the Steve Stine Guitar podcast! In this episode, "How I Use Compression With My Guitar Tone," our host, the legendary Steve Stine, delves into the dynamic world of using compression to enhance your guitar sound. Whether you're wielding an electric or an acoustic, Steve's insights can transform the way you play. Discover how compression can even out the volume of your playing, creating a more consistent and controlled sound that's desirable in clean tones, and explore its effects on crunch and distortion channels too. Join us as Steve shares personal preferences, explains the versatility of compression in live and recording settings, and offers hints on its application for finger-picking techniques. Don't forget to hit subscribe to get your weekly dose of guitar wisdom from Steve Stine, and let us help you fine-tune your musical voyage one string at a time!.
Welcome back to the Steve Stine Guitar podcast! In this episode, "How I Use Compression With My Guitar Tone," our host, the legendary Steve Stine, delves into the dynamic world of using compression to enhance your guitar sound. Whether you're wielding an electric or an acoustic, Steve's insights can transform the way you play. Discover how compression can even out the volume of your playing, creating a more consistent and controlled sound that's desirable in clean tones, and explore its effects on crunch and distortion channels too. Join us as Steve shares personal preferences, explains the versatility of compression in live and recording settings, and offers hints on its application for finger-picking techniques. Don't forget to hit subscribe to get your weekly dose of guitar wisdom from Steve Stine, and let us help you fine-tune your musical voyage one string at a time!.
Hey, steve, here and in this video we're going to be talking about the importance of compression, especially when you're using clean tones or cleaner sounds, and this would certainly go with acoustic guitar as well, which is why you find people using them on acoustics. So, first of all, what is compression? Well, basically, what compression does is it tries to take the really low volumes or the really high volumes and it tries to kind of squeeze them together, so everything is kind of a similar volume. So the reason why I like compression I don't use compression a lot on my distorted tones, although many people do. There's a lot of, you know, like to my understanding, like George Lynch from Dokken was big into that. There's a lot of players that do that. Because I play a lot of hard rock stuff and things like that. I just I haven't really explored that, but where I do use it a lot is on my cleaner tones. So I thought that's what we would talk about today, just kind of show you how this works a little bit.
Speaker 1:
So let's say I was on a clean sound, okay, just like that, okay. So I'm going to start with the compression off and I'm just going to play a little bit. So let's say I was doing some strumming, and when I'm strumming I don't really need it, okay. So I'm not one to turn on compression and leave it all the time. But again you talk to somebody else and they would say that they turn it on and leave it on all the time. So everybody's different this way. But let's just keep going here. So as I'm playing, let's say I'm going to do some single note picking stuff, so I'm going to do something.
Speaker 1:
Now there's a lot of dynamic in there. The only thing is that it might feel like some of it is just too quiet. So if I turn on the compression, I have a pedal here. So if I turn on the compression, I have a pedal here. So if I turn on the compression, you're going to notice that it starts evening it out. Now I don't have the compression set so hard that everything sounds exactly equal, but what it does is it takes those quiet notes and it pushes them up. So here's with it off, here's with it on. So what it tends to do, in my mind anyway, is it makes it all a little bit easier because I don't have to utilize the dynamic as much.
Speaker 1:
The output, the volume, is being stabilized, a little more balanced and feels more balanced to me as well as a player. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to move to a crunch channel. So this is more of like a you know, whatever it might be Steve Ray Vaughn-ish kind of thing. I'm using my Synergy amp for this and I'm using the BEBB Friedman for this stuff. So this was the clean, and now I'm on what would be the the rock channel, although I have the distortion backed off. Now that's with the compression off and that would be perfectly fine with me. But I want to show you so I can get a little more relaxed in my playing, and it's going to push those notes up a little bit and then when I attack a bit more it's going to pull it back just a little bit. So again, it just makes it easier, especially I find when you know if I'm recording or if I'm playing live, it kind of just makes a nice balance.
Speaker 1:
And again, my compression isn't set so aggressively that there's no dynamic at all, although you can set it that way. I just like to have a little bit. And again, I'm not going to go into settings and things like that. We can talk more about that some other time, but I just want you to know the importance of it and when you would use it Now if I head over to the distortion channel. So now I'm using the Bogner Ubershaw module, which I absolutely love. Now I'm going to turn off the reverb here.
Speaker 1:
Now for something like that I don't really see a need for a compressor. But if I turn it on notice again it's going to kind of try and level that out, okay, and you might find that that really helps with your playing because you can relax a little bit. But again, that's a personal preference thing. I'm really not noticing that big of a difference because I'm I'm being more aggressive and it's it's more stable the way I'm playing, when I'm playing more of that kind of stuff anyway, but everybody's different. So I just wanted to show you kind of what it does and how I would use it Now if I was playing acoustic which I don't have with me right now.
Speaker 1:
But if I was playing acoustic it would be the same principle, like if I was doing some strumming and stuff, I probably wouldn't have it on, but if I was doing finger picking and stuff, it would be really nice to have on there. Very nice, as a matter of fact, to kind of stabilize the notes that I'm playing, in case you know, maybe as I'm picking I'm not getting enough of the stability between the finger strengths that I'm doing. It could stabilize that a lot and make it a little more even. So, anyway, hopefully that helps you a little bit. Take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon.