Velocity Compression

Limiting velocities can get recorded parts under control while producing a more seamless sound

Velocity is a control we take for granted these days, partly because it has always felt natural to have a playing surface which offers ‘touch control’ to provide the capability of more musical playing. Just as an acoustic piano allows you to control dynamics depending on the strength of a key stroke, so MIDI keyboards which offer velocity sensitivity (as most now do) let you enhance your performances considerably. However, it’s possible to get too much of even the best things and velocity ranges which are too diverse can be a problem. You can lose notes which are too quiet, while ones which are too exuberant poke out and make their presence felt in more ways than you’d like. Velocity compression can right these wrongs.

In this first step, the pluck sound is ‘as played’. This means that the velocities are too diverse with some notes too quiet and some too loud. As velocity is also routed to the filter to control brightness, this problem is particularly noticeable.

We introduce automation to get velocities more under control. We set a low Threshold and a high Ratio before automating the Make-Up dial to ‘ride’ both the volume and the filter cutoff of the sound via velocity. The result is much more musical than our...

We use Logic Pro’s Velocity Processor to ‘compress’ the MIDI data. We set Threshold to the point above which MIDI values will be processed. Ratio determines how much upper velocities will be pulled back, while Make Up turns the new velocity range up...