Transient shaping on guitar

Guitar sounds are very dynamic and often need heavy compression. Try using a transient shaper beforehand to bring down the highest peaks Earlier on in the article we discussed serial compression, a technique for reining in especially dynamic signals and bringing them under control using two stages of compression. The guitar is one such signal, springing between huge transient spikes and minor details, probably thanks to its sensitive magnetic pickups and the force that can be used to engage the strings to ring out. The technique is also relevant when the first, peak-scalping compressor is replaced with a transient shaper. There’s not loads of difference, but the way a transient shaper is designed allows it to clamp down on peaks in a slightly different way (that being its job), without the need for setting up lookahead in a limiter or compressor.

Here’s our raw guitar signal. It’s a very dynamic, transient piece of material. Often, amps can work to mitigate this, but we’re going to go a different route, taking down the spikes before they get too uppity and start ruining our recording.

We scalp off the topmost peaks using NI’s Transient Master plugin, radically reducing the Attack, activating Smoothing and actually bulking up the Sustain to match. This leads to a large reduction in the noise content of the signal, as compared to tonal audio.

After this, we can compress more heavily than we could before, bringing a higher ratio into play, which lets us hear the smaller details of the guitar recording. A very hard Knee setting ensures the lowest parts of the signal are compressed as much as the highest.