Getting your kicks to really punch through the mix

[decklyn]

Wow I just realized that the holy grail to getting your kicks to cut through the mix is to sidechain pretty much every non-percussive item with the kick as the source.
It sounds like the kick gets loud. I can see that a lot of well produced material is doing this in dubstep. Probably a bit extremem in the example attached - Wearing phones atm but I think it sounds pretty good. I'll need to turn on the monitors when wifey wakes up. I just switched to Ableton so side chaining is a shit tonne easier now than in Cubase SX3.
This was something I talked to XI about but I hadn't had a chance to try it. I actually moved the kick back in the mix a bit after side-chaining everything.
Soundcloud
What do you think? How do you use side-chaining in your productions?

[narrator]

That or find out where the kick punches through and put a little notch on the most dominant sound eg. Bass or whatever..

[abZ]

A lot of people here are going to tell you that you don't need to sidechain and you don't but I love it. I sometimes side chain the kick to the whole mix. Why stop at non-percussion? I chain up high hats and shit all the time. Surprised you are just learning this tbh.

[decklyn]

A lot of people here are going to tell you that you don't need to sidechain and you don't but I love it. I sometimes side chain the kick to the whole mix. Why stop at non-percussion? I chain up high hats and shit all the time. Surprised you are just learning this tbh.

Yeah no doubt eh. It's just so much easier to side chain in ableton so I can experiment with it without spending hours and hours on routing lol
I was always one of the guys saying you don't need to sidechain

[jsills]

A lot of people here are going to tell you that you don't need to sidechain and you don't but I love it. I sometimes side chain the kick to the whole mix. Why stop at non-percussion? I chain up high hats and shit all the time. Surprised you are just learning this tbh.

Yeah no doubt eh. It's just so much easier to side chain in ableton so I can experiment with it without spending hours and hours on routing lol

Abz chaining the hats, esp to cut through pads and synths is a great trick. ableton is the shit...

[decklyn]

A lot of people here are going to tell you that you don't need to sidechain and you don't but I love it. I sometimes side chain the kick to the whole mix. Why stop at non-percussion? I chain up high hats and shit all the time. Surprised you are just learning this tbh.

Yeah no doubt eh. It's just so much easier to side chain in ableton so I can experiment with it without spending hours and hours on routing lol

Abz chaining the hats, esp to cut through pads and synths is a great trick. ableton is the shit...

Awesome I'll give that a whirl.

[abZ]

A lot of people here are going to tell you that you don't need to sidechain and you don't but I love it. I sometimes side chain the kick to the whole mix. Why stop at non-percussion? I chain up high hats and shit all the time. Surprised you are just learning this tbh.

Yeah no doubt eh. It's just so much easier to side chain in ableton so I can experiment with it without spending hours and hours on routing lol
I was always one of the guys saying you don't need to sidechain

Yep I am Ableton too. The thing is with the side-chain/no-sidechain argument, either way there is compromise. The art of compromising is what production is all about but there seems to me to be this tendency with non-sidechained track for the kicks to be kinda weak because instead of chaining they are high passing kicks and taking the meat of out em.

[abZ]

Oh and don't be afraid to side-chain the snare the same way especially if you have a heavy snare. I like to chain the kick and snare each to different elements to get that pushing and pulling going even more and more complex.

[decklyn]

Oh and don't be afraid to side-chain the snare the same way especially if you have a heavy snare. I like to chain the kick and snare each to different elements to get that pushing and pulling going even more and more complex.

Awesome Thanks a lot man. really appreciate the feedback. Gives me some stuff to try - that always gets me writing more tunes.

[abZ]

Oh and don't be afraid to side-chain the snare the same way especially if you have a heavy snare. I like to chain the kick and snare each to different elements to get that pushing and pulling going even more and more complex.

Awesome Thanks a lot man. really appreciate the feedback. Gives me some stuff to try - that always gets me writing more tunes.

Yeah I mean sometimes I even side chain my whole drum track with the bassline. That's the fun part about it, there are a lot of interesting things you can do with it. You can also sidechain just as easilly with the Gate in Ableton and that can be fun too. Try sidechaining the gate with percussion to a pad sound for instance.

[freakah]

I tend to sidechain both my kick and snare to get a -3db reduction on everythin else when they hit...

Its barely noticeable, but A-B comparison and it gets the punch in!!

[abZ]

I tend to sidechain both my kick and snare to get a -3db reduction on everythin else when they hit...

Its barely noticeable, but A-B comparison and it gets the punch in!!

Absolutely it's probably best when done transparently but it's nice exaggerated sometimes as well.

[freakah]

I tend to sidechain both my kick and snare to get a -3db reduction on everythin else when they hit...

Its barely noticeable, but A-B comparison and it gets the punch in!!

Absolutely it's probably best when done transparently but it's nice exaggerated sometimes as well.

Totally, I find -3 is the magic number for me and it being transparent!!

But it can be nice to have pads heavily sidechained to the kick, I did it once with a lead just to give it some movement and life, all depends what effect you want

[HighBot]

In FL studio I used to sidechain a band on an EQ that the kick/snare peaks at, so every time the kick/snare hits it notches the target. This is great for keeping the fullness in your target sound but creating space when the kick needs to hit, as opposed to sidechaining the entire volume of the target.
I have yet to find out how to do this in Ableton Live, other than manually automating which is very tedious - So if anybody knows please let me know!

On another note,
That tune in your signature is immense abZ

[WingWeaver]

In Reason I split my drums into, Bass /Kick, Snare, and Percussion.

I then, EQ the kick and compress
I then, reverb and compress the snare
I then Reverb the percussion

Adding the proper reverb to the snare and percussion sharpens there sound and adds some fullness.


Anyway

The stronger you want your kick the more bass and mid high (a little for mid high, maybe 0.5dB) you turn up. I dont know what software you use, but i can get a pretty powerful kick without doing anything fancy

[Matthew-B]

That or find out where the kick punches through and put a little notch on the most dominant sound eg. Bass or whatever..

Good idea, but sometimes when you add notch filter to bass, pad etc it sounds much worse than without notch. So I add notch filter like you, but turn it off, and when kick is kicking, notch is turned on for the moment. Same with fat snares.

Edit: It's very similar to HighBot technique.

[abZ]

In FL studio I used to sidechain a band on an EQ that the kick/snare peaks at, so every time the kick/snare hits it notches the target. This is great for keeping the fullness in your target sound but creating space when the kick needs to hit, as opposed to sidechaining the entire volume of the target.
I have yet to find out how to do this in Ableton Live, other than manually automating which is very tedious - So if anybody knows please let me know!

On another note,
That tune in your signature is immense abZ

Thanks. It is kinda fucked that FL has that kind of capability. That is the one thing I am jealous about as an Ableton user.

[abZ]

In Reason I split my drums into, Bass /Kick, Snare, and Percussion.

I then, EQ the kick and compress
I then, reverb and compress the snare
I then Reverb the percussion

Adding the proper reverb to the snare and percussion sharpens there sound and adds some fullness.


Anyway

The stronger you want your kick the more bass and mid high (a little for mid high, maybe 0.5dB) you turn up. I dont know what software you use, but i can get a pretty powerful kick without doing anything fancy

You reminded me of something else I like to do which is put a sidechained comp on the end of a send effect chain. Usually one that is reverb dominated and chain it to the kick or whatever and then you can get the verb but then it ducks with the main hits to clean tighten things back up, best of both worlds.

[Matthew-B]

Thanks. It is kinda fucked that FL has that kind of capability. That is the one thing I am jealous about as an Ableton user.

You can do it in Ableton, but its not as simple as in FL. Just split your frequencies with MulitBand and add compressor only on that frequency that you want : ).

[HighBot]

Thanks. It is kinda fucked that FL has that kind of capability. That is the one thing I am jealous about as an Ableton user.

I know, being able to link the peak controller to any automatable parameter has amazing creative opportunities.
I've switched to Ableton regardlessly though, and that's the only thing I'm missing! Don't want to get into a DAW debate but I personally am getting a much cleaner sound from Live, really loving all the other stuff it has to offer.

Hopefully they'll implement something similar some time!