How do I start a song quiet and then get loud?

Chicken Man

Chicken Man

Kick Henry Jackassowski
I know there was some trick to it but now that I need to do it I have no idea where I read it.

My situation--I'm recording a song that will start out just as guitar/vocal, but at the second verse, a full band will kick in. I want the guitar vocal to be loud and clear, but I want the entry of the band to have an impact, too.

This is for a friend's annual compilation album for our friend group, so it will be heard by 100+ people but isn't a professional affair. I'll be doing it in GarageBand in my basement.

If anyone can at least point me to the default compressor settings or whatever it is, I can fuss with it from there. Thank you in advance!
 
Listen to some Pixies songs.

In my mind, the quieter parts will be cleaner and the louder parts will be overdriven. With a traditional amp, you could set it right at the edge of breakup, where hard pick attack sends the amp into overdrive. You could try to set a compressor up as a limiter, to keep the attack under a certain threshold. Then, set an overdrive pedal to push the amp over the threshold into loud breakup tones.

Potentially, you could use the same strategy with a very clean amp. The compressor would limit the output to lower volume and the od would be set with drive low and volume higher than the compressor to make a volume contrast between the two pedals through the amp.
 
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To clarify, my particular scenario is starting with a singer-songwriter style, acoustic and vocal setting, them bringing in a full band. More like Free Bird than quietLOUDquiet.
 
Chicken Man said:
To clarify, my particular scenario is starting with a singer-songwriter style, acoustic and vocal setting, them bringing in a full band. More like Free Bird than quietLOUDquiet.
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You can use a compressor, a boost or even a low gain OD pedal as a limiter (set the gain low). Set the pedal to reduce volume at the start. This is sometimes referred to as underdrive. Then, turn off the pedal to get loud enough for the full band mix. You can actually do the same thing with a volume knob on your guitar. Turn the guitar volume down for the intro and back up for the full band mix.

The amp matters. The amp settings matter. If the amp is set on the edge of breakup, the louder part will have more overdrive. If you want the amp to stay clean the whole time, it needs to have enough clean headroom to stay clean when the guitar signal is turned up loud.
 
There are lots of ways to achieve this.

Obviously how you arrange the song matters. Adding more tracks/layers will saturate the track. Then you can automate the overall volume of the entire track, or preferably the master once you've bounced your final mix to a stereo track.

Then there's volume and perceived volume. Think of your track as a framed painting; you have left/right (panning), up/down (pitch) and some perception of depth (reverb and delay). The more canvas you occupy, the 'louder' the track will sound. Wide is 'louder', high pitch is 'louder', and reverberation is 'bigger' too, even if the DB output from your monitor is the same.

Adding master compression/limiter will saturate the track too, and if you're careful, a bit of clipping can make it both nicer and more aggressive. Use a bit of master EQ to remove excessive bass and treble. There are a number of loudness meter plugins out there you can use for measuring perceived loudness. Place your EQ just before the master compressor/limiter to adjust perceived loudness/clipping and the overall saturation of your track, and the loudness meter plugin last in the chain.

There's no right or wrong, it's just a matter of taste. A lot of music produced today varies very little in DB (so the average listener won't fiddle with the volume on their phone all the time), but a lot of tricks are used for creating an illusion of dynamics.
 
jelloman said:
I mix this way all the time for @Peen Simmons ...
To achieve what you're looking for it's all in the mixing...I can walk you through it, or I can do it for you...
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@jelloman does a great job with this sort of thing. I’m a sucker for ye olde “loud quiet loud.” Mixing is key, you can also do some things with the arrangements and recording to give yrself options to build the intensity/weight when you mix. Doubled parts, individual tonal choices that synch up nicely, little anticipatory swells, adding instrumentation. All of which makes mixing trickier—which is why @jelloman is good at what he does in that he can wrangle all these decisions/options.
 
With all due respect to everyone who's tried to decipher my intentions, Monson seems to be answering the question I intended to ask. I'm going to take a crack at that. I don't want too much variation in actual volume, because I didn't want the audience cranking the volume through the first verse and then getting shellacked when the band comes in. Framing it as a level of intimacy rather than decibels gives me a tree to bark up, at the very least.
 
Chicken Man said:
With all due respect to everyone who's tried to decipher my intentions, Monson seems to be answering the question I intended to ask. I'm going to take a crack at that. I don't want too much variation in actual volume, because I didn't want the audience cranking the volume through the first verse and then getting shellacked when the band comes in. Framing it as a level of intimacy rather than decibels gives me a tree to bark up, at the very least.
Click to expand...
I suck at reading a person's mind, but I can answer wrong all day to vague posts. Let's play this game again sometime. :baimun:

To be perfectly honest, even if you'd have included all the details, I probably would not have posted anything useful. It's in my nature to post pointless twaddle. :helper:
 
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