Help for sidechaining technique

L

Luca970

New member
Hello everyone

I am having trouble with sidechaining in my ableton session for the new song i'm producing.
Perhaps my technique is not the good one. I would request your help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdjmd9J6cr0

In this song, you can hear when the kick comes in a 0:17 how all the song seems soo nicely groovin with the kick. I dont know how to explain that better but the whole song's really "moving" when the kick enters.

In my song, I usually sidechain my kick with the pad/synth (ableton compressor) with a low threshold, zero attack, 100ms release and varying ratio.

But somehow, there's absolutely no moving effect like in the song in the link, my pads/synth just turn "almost off" when the kick comes in and gradually come back shortly after it.

This is my actual result:

https://soundcloud.com/lukya/sidechain-test

I must be doing something wrong..?

Thanks so much for your help :)

Luca
 
Last edited:
Try lowering the ammount of compression applied and see what happens. Also mess up with attack and release settings. Eventually it'll work. And don't use anything just because it has an famous artist name attached to it. You have all the tools you need right in front of you.
 
That's because you probably have a too long release time, making it sound like you actually use some envelope attacktime in the synths rather than any sidechained compression. The attacktime is especially too long in context with the kick, because if you want to have a nice pumping effect, it must sound like the pads are ducking because of the kick, not that the kick hits and then the pads start to recover over time. So if you want such long release time, you better make your kick longer so that they cooperate better.
Either that or cut back the release time so it matches your shorter kick.
And yeah, no sidechained compression will instantly boost your track if you have a mediocre kick sound (yours are a bit weak, so spend some time on it and give it a lift).

Moving on, sometimes it may be a good solution to use more than one stage of sidechained compression. You can for instance have the longer release time with slightly less gain reduction, and then add another compression instance where you do a fast sidechained compression with almost maximum gain reduction.
This is especially good if you want the kick transient to come through fully, as you can add a second sidechain compression instance where you completely squeeze away the sound for a few milliseconds so you only hear the kick transient during that short time.

If you want to use real sidechained compression or a volume envelope plugin like the LFO tool etc is up to you, they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Real sidechained compression has the strength that the pumping effect will stop as soon as the triggerer stop, so it's no problem if you suddenly add an off beat kick by some reason, while you have much more fine control over the ducking shape with an envelope plugin.

An interesting thing that has yet to be covered in this topic is the fact that it's not only sidechained compression that makes that pumping feeling in the track you want to sound like, but it's also sweeping audio that gets louder a few milliseconds before the kick hits. This can be done in various ways, such as manually letting it sweep up using automation, or you can use an envelope plugin. You could also do this with sidechained compression, but that's a little bit trickier in this case.
 
^That, and also the kick level is pretty low - or maybe there's a ton of low-end that's inaudible on these basic Apple earbuds I'm using at work. The low level makes the ducking effect sound like a weak spot rather than contributing to the flow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top