(side chained music playing)
You hear that every time the kick drum hits the pad sound gets softer but just
for a second then it comes back slowly. That's the result of sidechaining.
In today's 'Beat Break' I'm gonna explain sidechaining and show you how you can do
it in three minutes! So why sidechaining? Well you can use
sidechaining for a bunch of different things. But right now the most popular
are the pumping effect and getting bass out of the way of kick drums. I'll show
you both.
(Sanjay C music playing)
Sidechaining works really well on instruments like pads. This pad is coming
from Sonespheres 'Distance' which is by SoundIron - they have lots of atmospheric
pad type of sounds in there.
(Sanjay C playing music)
So first you need to load the compressor plugin on the track that needs that
effect. The next thing you need to do is turn on the sidechain feature in the
plugin. If you're an FL studio you have a similar function in your limiter /
compressor plugin in Logic you've got it in the compressor as well. in Ableton
you click the triangle button here then turn on sidechain then select which
track needs to help create that effect. it's typically the kick drum and I've
got the kick on a separate track here so I'm just going to select that. now let's
listen
(Sanjay C music playing)
so not much happening yet. well watch when I start adjusting the threshold. all
right we're already starting to hear it and now I'm gonna just the Release and
adjust the Attack and the Ratio. no matter what Compressor plugin you're
using you're gonna have these three controls. let's listen to it in the mix.
(sanjay c music playing)
now I apply the same sidechain compression on base here. let's listen to
it without the sidechaining on.
(Sanjay C music playing)
just turn the sidechain on and in the mix. so every time the kick drum hits
that's when it activates the compressor on the tracks that it's sidechain to. now
if you don't have a sidechain feature on your DAW's Compressor you can achieve it
by following these steps. I'm using Studio One by Presonus but it's gonna be
similar in other DAWs that don't have a sidechain feature. by the way Presonus
does have that sidechain feature built into its compressor but I'm just using
this as an example. alright so I've got two tracks here one as a pad and one as
a kick.
(Sanjay C music playing)
I'm going to add the sidechain effect to that pad. first thing you do is create a
bus. so I'm creating a bus channel in the mixer here then you're gonna route the
instrument that you want that sidechaining effect on to this bus. so
instead of going to the master you want to send it to this bus. on the bus we're
gonna add the compressor effect. next we need that kick drum to trigger this
compressor. here's the kick drum track. I'm not going to route the output of it.
I'm just gonna create a send and send that to the compressor in the bus. so now
you're all set up to set the sidechain effect.
(Sanjay C music playing)
that's it. and just to quickly go over the other instruments I used in this
track. first is a really nice key sound by Omnisphere. I'm using the preset
Frozen Piano Dreams. and it's just playing the chords of the track but
giving it that nice I don't know an eerie wide feel to it. the only other
things I have are this vox kind of sound. and this is also coming from Omnisphere.
this is coming from the preset Jazz Stacks Mixed Dahs (laugh).and I added
Echoboy Jr. to give it a delay. for all the drum sounds in this I've just used
samples that I've downloaded from Splice.com. I've got a couple risers in here.
one of the risers is from Native Instruments from Rise&Hit. the other one
is not really a riser but it's coming from Rev. I kind of used that as a
transition sound between the verse and chorus.
(Sanjay C music playing)
there's a nice little transition in there right? that's the Beat Break for
today. what would you like to see in future Sanjay C Beat Break ? comment below.
Keep Making The Music YOU Love! I'll see you guys later.