Hey guys! Will from EDM tips here. Today I'm going to show you my four techniques
for sidechain compression. Now these are the same techniques I've used to make
EDM which has topped the charts at Trackitdown, Beatport and Juno and also
to help produce a track that was nominated for the dance section of the
Grammys! So I'm going to show you these four techniques in Ableton Live but
they work in any single DAW and I'm also at the end going to show you which
one is my favorite and tell you exactly why. Thanks for subscribing don't forget
to download the free gifts below and let's hop into the DAW and get it done.
So technique one is the dedicated sidechain trigger track so we have our
baseline here and if we play it without kick drum we can hear that they clash
slightly and kind of mask each other so this is what happens when we put our
sidechain compression on so first I'll play it off and then I'll switch it on
so it just gives the kick-drum more space and the way we do it with the
dedicated sidechain trigger track is to program in a instrument and I prefer a
very short sharp tick like I use a rimshot actually so I will just show you
what that sounds like so what you do is you program in the pattern of the
sidechain trigger that you want usually it would be a 4/4 beat but if you're
doing a future bass track you'd usually program in your sidechain triggers to
hit at the same time that your kicks would so we create a MIDI channel we
routes the audio to sends only so we can't actually hear the sidechain so
let's look at it now we can't actually hear that rimshot but it's being sent
through the system so we can access it through the send controls so now if we
open up a compressor just a standard Ableton compressor on our bass track and
then open up this control here which is a sidechain control click it on input
from SC which is my sidechain track as you can see I've named it SC and now the
tick from this side chain track is going to compress the bassline so the way we
do that is take the threshold right down to 0 take the attack down as fast as it
will go and put the ratio right up and then we start working up that release
time until we get the pump in the correct rhythm that we want for the rest
of our track we can see the gain reduction here that's happening from the
tick on our side change channel and what we want is for this gain reduction to
get right up to zero between every pump otherwise the baseline or whichever
track with side training doesn't ever reach its full volume so unless the gain
reduction hits zero each time we're just reducing the volume of that track
like that's too much see and that's too little because the kick-drum doesn't
have time to breathe through
but here we can see the game reduction is reaching zero it sounds in rhythm
with our track Bosch that's done and if you want less or more sidechain effect
you can either use the dry/wet knob
all the ratio knob
because you might not want it to reach complete silence every time the kick
hits so that is technique one technique to is to trigger the sidechain
compression from the kick itself now some people prefer to do this because
they argue quite rightly that every kick has a different waveform so if you
trigger it from the kick itself rather than a tick which is what I was doing
then the sidechain compression is going to meld together and the shape is going
to be more harmonious but obviously kick drums are a lot longer than a very sharp
tick so the release time is going to end up being set a lot lower which is fine
if that's what you want so you can see the kick here is reducing the game for a
much longer period of time because our kick is a much longer signal than our
short rimshot
okay technique three is to use plugins like the x4 LFO tool or the Nicky Romero
I think it's called Kickstarter something like that I've put links to
them both below this video so how that works is instead of a compressor you've
actually just got a plug-in which is in effect a volume automation that is
synced to the tempo of your track so let's get that to a 4/4 beat make sure
that the volume is being automated rather than the panning or anything else
and then adjust the shape of the curve to your liking so this is on and off
and the fourth and final option is to do it manually by automating the level of
your track so we'll take the LFO tool off we've got a utility plug-in but
whichever door you're using will have a similar level plug-in level control and
then it's a case of actually doing it manually with the volume now it's
important not to do this with the fader control for the track but with a utility
plug-in or similar because then if you want to adjust the levels in the mix
you're gonna have to move all the automation on your level fader and we
don't want to be doing that because it's a massive pain now this gives you the
most control but it's very painstaking so I don't recommend it now my favorite
option out of all of those is number one which is to use a dedicated sidechain
track now this is because you don't have to follow the exact rhythm of your kick
mainly so if your kick has a little pattern at the end of a bar for instance
like this so it goes I don't want my sidechain trigger to follow that pattern
I want it to keep on the 4/4 beat so that is why having a separate sidechain
channel allows me to keep that 4/4 beat
even though the kick drum changes pattern see so my sidechain continues in
the same pattern the other bonus is that you can turn off the sidechain trigger
very easily just by deleting the sidechain track in a break for instance
if you don't want that pumping effect so let's have a listen to what I mean by
that
there no sidechain phone but when their feets come on faster I want it to hit
and then we've got that pump burning so that is why I prefer the separate
sidechain trigger track but again it's complete preference
it's just what works best for you so have a play experiment and find out what
you like best now the last option which is a manual automation like this is
really great when we're trying to get things as loud as possible when we're
creating our mix down for the final mastering stage now I'm not going to
cover that today but if you've taken my ultimate EDM mixing course then we cover
that in that course there are also another whole bunch of more advanced
sidechain tricks which we cover in that course which help you do things like
clear up room in the mix reduce mud and help things really cut through and gain
clarity in the mix so if you want to find out more about my course you can
check the link below this video so there you have it guys I hope you enjoyed this
video once again thanks for watching if you haven't already subscribe and hit
the notification bell and until next time Cheers and happy producing