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How to you handle sidechaining

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 6:54 pm
by martello
Sorry for stupid question but...

Lets say - I have two tracks, bass and kick, I insert sidechain compressor to bass channel and then set kick channel's send destination to this compressor. Well, as always. Everything woks fine. But when I'd like to hear (in the middle of the track for ex.) only my bassline without kick, then bass volume rises significantly. I think it is a normal behaviour and point of sidechaining but how to you handle it? I mean do you use automation to decrease bass volume while kick is not there or how....or am I totally missing something :?


Gr,
Martello

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:14 pm
by oblivious
i keep the kick in the track but mute the kicks channel, then i still get the input singnal.
im not sure if this works in all DAW's thought.

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:30 pm
by abZ
Oblivious wrote:i keep the kick in the track but mute the kicks channel, then i still get the input singnal.
im not sure if this works in all DAW's thought.
Yeah you can always duplicate the kick track and use the duplicate strictly for the key input. Lot's of variations of that. Another thing, what is wrong with letting the bass get louder? As heard in a lot of house tracks. I think it adds to the effect.

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:20 pm
by setspeed
i would suggest that either you have the compressor set to 'RMS' instead of 'peak', or your release is too long. or perhaps you need to tweak the makeup gain?

Re: How to you handle sidechaining

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:06 pm
by von
alvin18 wrote:Sorry for stupid question but...

Lets say - I have two tracks, bass and kick, I insert sidechain compressor to bass channel and then set kick channel's send destination to this compressor. Well, as always. Everything woks fine. But when I'd like to hear (in the middle of the track for ex.) only my bassline without kick, then bass volume rises significantly. I think it is a normal behaviour and point of sidechaining but how to you handle it? I mean do you use automation to decrease bass volume while kick is not there or how....or am I totally missing something :?


Gr,
Martello
I actually have this exact same dilemma :?

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:47 pm
by Sharmaji
duplicate track---> put the region on the new track, and disable the sidechain. boom.

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:55 pm
by martello
Thanks so far, lets see what I can do.

Buttons are waiting for me 8)

Another question - lets say, I want more, I want to send bass channel signal to control my synths using sidechaining. So kick "controls" bass, and bass "controls"synths or whatever. Is it OK? I just experimented and results are not very good but is it worth to continue experimenting, I mean is it some known trick or...just madness?


Gr,
Martello

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:38 pm
by setspeed
it's not clear what you mean by 'bass controls synths'.... do you mean that you want everything to sidechain off the kick? that should be easy, certainly in Logic you can just choose the channel that your synth is sidechaining off, and it doesn't matter if there's another channel which is also sidechaining off that thing.

if you mean can you sidechain your synths off your bass, then yes it's possible but i wouldn't have thought it was a particularly good idea!

my approach to compression is that it's a fairly complex tool, and you should think what you want to achieve with it, before you spend your time trying it out...


(and terekete's solution is nice and easy - that will be the quickest way to solve your problem!)

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:48 pm
by darkmatteruk
yea i followed a video tutorial on how to sidechain in reason a few months back and it gave me the same problem more or less, i think also if i had just the drums playing without the bass, they went from solid and loud to quite pathetic. hopefully will find the solution here

_____________
http://virb.com/darkmatteruk

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 1:48 am
by abZ
darkmatterUK wrote:yea i followed a video tutorial on how to sidechain in reason a few months back and it gave me the same problem more or less, i think also if i had just the drums playing without the bass, they went from solid and loud to quite pathetic. hopefully will find the solution here

_____________
http://virb.com/darkmatteruk
If you have it hooked up right it shouldn't affect the drums at all. The drums are just keying the compressor.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 1:46 pm
by james fox
rather than inserting the compressor on the bass channel, i find it is better to create a new audio track with the compressor on it, then send the audio through it and the key signal (usually the bass) to the sidechain input. much more flexible.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:49 pm
by darkmatteruk
abZ wrote:
darkmatterUK wrote:yea i followed a video tutorial on how to sidechain in reason a few months back and it gave me the same problem more or less, i think also if i had just the drums playing without the bass, they went from solid and loud to quite pathetic. hopefully will find the solution here

_____________
http://virb.com/darkmatteruk
If you have it hooked up right it shouldn't affect the drums at all. The drums are just keying the compressor.
ive just opened the file, and i obviously dont have it hooked up right. i followed the tutorial to the letter though.

so i just played it back, drums and bass together, sounding sweet, lose the bass and all of a sudden the drums lose clarity and pan over to left channel, cut the bass back in, soundin sweet again

___________
http://www.virb.com/darkmatterUK

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 7:00 pm
by abZ
darkmatterUK wrote:
abZ wrote:
darkmatterUK wrote:yea i followed a video tutorial on how to sidechain in reason a few months back and it gave me the same problem more or less, i think also if i had just the drums playing without the bass, they went from solid and loud to quite pathetic. hopefully will find the solution here

_____________
http://virb.com/darkmatteruk
If you have it hooked up right it shouldn't affect the drums at all. The drums are just keying the compressor.
ive just opened the file, and i obviously dont have it hooked up right. i followed the tutorial to the letter though.

so i just played it back, drums and bass together, sounding sweet, lose the bass and all of a sudden the drums lose clarity and pan over to left channel, cut the bass back in, soundin sweet again

___________
http://www.virb.com/darkmatterUK
If your using reason 4 you could send me the file and I'll take a peek. I didn't side chain much with Reason when I used it but I know how it works.

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 7:13 pm
by darkmatteruk
abZ wrote:
If your using reason 4 you could send me the file and I'll take a peek. I didn't side chain much with Reason when I used it but I know how it works.
yea im using R4, will pm you the link shortly

___________
http://www.virb.com/darkmatterUK