Side-Chaining drums to kick in trap music mix

StanleySteamer

New member
Hey guys as the title says, I am working on a few trap beats and I noticed whenever my snare/claps would collide with my kick I can't hear the kick anymore. I was thinking about side-chaining the snare/clap along with my kick the same way I side chain the 808 to my kick. I was wondering if anyone has ever used this tactic or heard of it and would they recommend it? I feel like whenever I listen to one of my favorite producers Murda Beatz drumlines, his kick always hits on a clap or a snare or a side-stick or bongo somewhere and you can still hear the kick solid when they clash together.

Any feedback always welcome and appreciated thanks alot!
 
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I too like to sidechain in most of my tracks. I actually learned how by watching someone demonstrate the process in Studio One 3. It's common with synth leads in dubstep. I think it's an under used effect that could save a lot of headroom and clear out some of the "mud" I hear in other beats. 808's are relatively more efficient to sidechain with kicks in my experience; I've never had the need to have the snare hit on the same beat as the kick but I imagine there's some sort of phase cancellation happening if you can't hear the kick anymore. Have you experimented with other types of kicks? I'd assume the lower frequencies mix well with the waveform of a high pitch snare. Some snares can peak a meter real quick so I'd watch the levels closely.
 
Hey thanks for the response guys! Yeah I have tried using different samples as far as snares and kicks and these 2 sound great together just when they hit together at the same time at the same spot it is super hard to hear the kick. If I use a side chain it helps but then when the kick isnt on it kinda makes it feel like the snare is low is certain spots and loud in another. I feel like alot of top engineers for the new trap beats coming out are side chaining their drums to the kick though. When they do something with both the kick and the clap or a kick and a snare its normally just that one spot when they overlap that the kick outshines it. Any others got any input on whether or not side chaining their claps/snares to the kick is a good move?
 
automate an EQ that cuts the lows of the snare that interfere with the kick and the highs of the kick that interfere with the snare...that way when they hit together you get the boom of the kick and the crack of the snare. there are also plugins now days that you can get, like wavesfactory trackspacer which you can do what I said above very quickly
 
I’m starting to side chain myself. I’ve been sleeping on it for awhile lol. Still a newbie with this technique so any more advice would be ??
 
In my personal opinion, I think people new to mixing (say less than at least a few years experience) reach for side-chaining to solve problems that are better solved with the fader. It's like a knee-jerk reaction or something. I think it's overused by amateurs and is one of the things that holds back their mixes. I think 90% of a good mix is simply putting the fader at the right spot. 5% is good EQ decisions. 4% is good compression decisions. And 1% is everything else, of which side-chaining is a tiny part of. So when trying to solve a problem of something not fitting in the mix, I think you should first address the fader and try and solve it there, then EQ, then dynamics, and then if you can't fix it with any of that stuff or a combination thereof, start resorting to all the little "tricks". I think there's an overemphasis on the cool tricks us mix engineers use. But the reality is that the cool stuff is such a tiny part of our mixes that have relatively little impact - it's the stuff where we are trying to squeeze an extra half a per cent of quality out of a mix trying to take it from a 99 to a 99.5, which is pointless when you are still struggling to get your mix just up to 80.

Sorry for the rant.
 
TBH you really shouldn't need to s/c the kick to the snare/clap as they hardly have any shared frequencies bar the mids.
 
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