Side chaining/ducking

[NeoHippy]

i use sidechain compression in EDM tracks...to let the bass pump to the kick...or some kind of noise pumpishy things....

cheers

[RockRebel]

Originally Posted by NeoHippy

i use sidechain compression in EDM tracks...to let the bass pump to the kick...or some kind of noise pumpishy things....

cheers

Do you just play around with it until you feel that its right or do you start at a preset?

[jdsowa]

For the generic EDM pumping compression (Daft Punk "One More Time") sound you want to sidechain your musical riff/loop to an 'invisible' muted 4-on-the-floor kick drum track--not the actual kick drum that you use--so that it still pumps even when you momentarily pull the drums out of the track.

A common ducking trick is on vocal delay. You set it up so that, as long as the singer is still singing, the delay effect will be 'ducked' (significantly lowered in volume or made invisible) until the singer stops singing, at which point the echo will then appear for his last syllable or two. This clears up what otherwise might be a muddy build up of echoes.

Another side chain use is rhythmic gating like on Diana Ross "Upside Down". Rather than play a rhythmic keyboard riff, they just held a chord down, and let the rhythm be dictated by the on-and-off rhythm guitar part, which was activating the gate that was on the keyboard. You can also use snare hits to trigger the 'opening' up of room mics (Cyndi Lauper "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"), or to trigger a synth playing white noise (The Cars "Moving in Stereo").

[RockRebel]

Thanks for the tips. I will certainly try these ideas.

[Durt_Grizzly]

Just make sure your release time pumps the bass in tempo with the track... If you're doing 4-on-the-floor kind of stuff you're gonna want the bass, pads, or whatever you're SCing to pump on the up beats.

Also don't think that sidechaining is only for that "pumping" effect... Softly sidechaining synth chords to a melody/vocal work wonders in allowing more space for the elements you want the main focus to be on. You can side chain basically anything to anything. It's a great mixing tool

[NeoHippy]

Originally Posted by RockRebel

Do you just play around with it until you feel that its right or do you start at a preset?

I just listen to it and play arround. No preset..

cheers

[Manfrensengensen]

In live recordings where the drummer is singing I get too much snare from the vocal mic and if i turn down other drum mic's the cymbals drop out of the mix.

So I use a comp with no make up gain to duck the snare out of the vox track.
side chain off an overhead track and some freq adjustments on the side chain.

[DCT3]

Try side chaining your significant others voice to your level of annoyance, no make up gain, threshold set to -inf.

On a more serious note I like to side chain the bass (or even guitars sometimes) to the kick. I generally use pretty tame settings and only duck the bass or guitars just enough (in terms of both time and gain reduction) to let the kick shine through or give the groove an little more bounce. Side chaining the kick to duck guitars works well on HEAVY guitar riffs (modern metal sound) to accent certain parts of the riff and keeps you from slamming the limiter any harder than necessary. Sidechaining was one of those "Ah HA!" moments in mixing for me... SOOO many fun things you can do with it.