In this video, let's take a look at the different ways of sidechaining audio in Ableton Live.
Sidechaining let's you use the signal from one track to trigger an effect on another.
The most common use of this is Sidechain Compression,
the pumping sound you hear on countless pieces of electronic music.
But Live also has a number of other effects that can use sidechaining to achieve some interesting results.
Let's take a look at how to set up sidechaining and some ways we can use it in our music.
We start with a compressor, and this is the most common use of sidechaining.
Sidechaining works by taking an input from one track to adjust an effect on another.
Here I wanna set up a classic dance music-style sidechain compression
by having the level of these chords duck down every time the kick-drum hits.
To open the Sidechain section of a Live device that supports sidechaining
click the toggle to the right of the device activator.
First, we need to enable the sidechain. Then we want to select the track to receive the sidechain input from.
In this case the drum track. If the track you've selected contains a rack such as the Drum Rack
you can select individual chains from within that rack as the input for the sidechain.
You can select the chain before its effects, after its effects or after its mixer,
which will have an impact on the overall level coming into the sidechain.
Now we have some level coming into the compressor from the sidechain.
And you can see that this corresponds to the level of the kick-drum.
You can listen to the signal coming into the sidechain using the Sidechain Listen button.
And you can EQ the input of the sidechain to isolate certain frequencies, which is useful for instances
where you don't have access to individual chains.
For example, when the sidechaining input comes from an audio clip.
Now, if we start bringing down the compressor Threshold we should hear compression being applied
every time the kick-drum hits.
The lower the Threshold the more compression we get. You can also use the Ratio control
to affect how much compression is applied.
The Attack and Release control adjust the timing of the compression.
The Attack sets how long it takes for the compression to fade in
and the Release sets how long it takes for the compression to fade out.
You can set up sidechain compression in much the same way using Live's Glue Compressor.
If you find you are not getting enough of the effect even with the Threshold all the way down...
Use the Gain control to increase the level of the sidechain input.
Let's take a look at some of Live's other effects that can be used for sidechaining.
You can set up a sidechain in Live's Gate to open and close the gate based on the sidechain signal.
Here I want to use this to have the bass play only when the kick-drum hits.
This is a great technique to get a super tight kick and bass relationship. I enable the Gate.
I enable the sidechain, which I already set up to receive a signal from the kick-drum.
Now if I bring down the Threshold...
the Gate will only open when the level of the kick drum passes the threshold.
I can use the Gate's Attack, Hold and Release controls to adjust the timing of this.
Let's look at another device that has a sidechain input. The Auto Filter.
Here I already configured the sidechain.
With the sidechain set up we can use the envelope control
to adjust how much effect the sidechain signal has on the filter's frequency.
As usual, the Attack and Release controls adjust the timing of this.