Hey how's it going I'm Ben Lindell
and today I'm going to be showing you
how to use sidechain compression now I
found that there are two main uses for
sidechain compression first is as an
effect we have this extreme pumping and
offbeat feel that's really great to add
the pads or other since the second use
is actually to help clear up your mix
when you have two instruments that are
competing for the same space such as a
kick and a base you can use
side-chaining to attenuate one and let
the other one breathe so let's get
started the question that most people
have is what is sidechain compression
well simply put its where you trigger
the compressor on one track with the
signal from another track so often the
most confusing part is just setting it
up so I'm going to show you how to do
that on my first example so for my first
example I'm going to be using two tracks
the first is my kick drum track let me
play that for you
nice and steady just to
four-on-the-floor kick drum and I'm
going to be using my pad track let's
listen to that
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so that's long sustain'd really dreamy
sounding but i want to add some more
motion to it but I want my motion to be
related to my kick drum track so that's
where the sidechain compression comes
into play to do that I'm going to add a
compressor to my track I'm just going to
use the standard digi compressor the
first thing I need to do is I need to
set my sidechain to key input now what
this does is it tells my compressor to
use an external signal to trigger its
compression now I need to tell it where
to get that key signal from to do that
I'm going to set my key input over to
bus one which is going to carry my kick
drum signal and use that to trigger my
compressor accordingly I need to set up
a send on my kick drum track to bus one
so let's do that I'm going to option
click on a Mac or alt click on a PC to
set my fader to full volume and then set
my send to pre fader what this means is
that if I mute my kick drum track or
solo my pad track I won't lose the key
input to my compressor let's hear how
the pad sounds in solo with the
side-chaining turn on
you
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sounds a lot different doesn't it kind
of sounds like the kick drum is scooping
out sound from the pad track let's hear
how it sounds with the kick and the pad
together
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now the patter is filling in all the
spaces wherever there's not kick drum
let's say be that with no sidechain
compression without
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what
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one more time without
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with
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so instead of having a long sustain pad
track and now I have something that's
rhythmically interesting and meshes with
my kick drum as well so since I'm using
a compressor with lots of parameters
there's a lot of settings that you can
tweak to change the sound on my side
change
Pat let's play around a few of them
since the threshold is already set low
enough to be triggering my compressor
I'm going to leave that alone and play
with the ratio control instead now if I
bring this down to one to one the
compressor will have no effect on my pad
at all and as I bring it up you're going
to hear the kick drum digging deeper and
deeper into the Pat so let's listen to
the pad and solo and play around at the
ratio control a little bit
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so as you can hear as I increase the
ratio the compression becomes more and
more audible more and more pumping if
you will so now let's play around the
attack and release controls let's start
with the attack as short as possible and
as we're listening back I'll increase it
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so as you can hear when I have a short
attack the compressor is reacting really
quickly to the transient of the
kick-drum
giving our pad a very percussive and
sharp sound to it as I open the attack
up the compressor is waiting a little
bit longer after the transient from the
kick drum to start reacting that's
giving us a smoother sound next let's
play with a release knob now before I do
that I'm going to set the attack to a
short percussive setting I'm also going
to bring the release all the way down
and then increase it as I'm playing it
back
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you can hear huge differences with the
relief setting when it's too short it
sounds just like distortion and when
it's too long the compressor never has
any time to recover and you basically
have no effect
somewhere in the middle usually sounds
best but you're gonna have to tweak it
to your taste the tempo of the song and
also the groove that you want your
sidechain to have so let's find that
perfect spot listening to both our kick
drum and the pad
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so then that sounds pretty good I added
motion to my pad it also gave it a
groove that locks into my kick drum for
my next example I'm going to be side
training a bass track while still using
the kick drum as the key input right now
these two are kind of occupying the same
space and what I want to do is I want to
automatically turn the bass down
whenever there's a kick and then allow
the bass to speak up when there isn't a
kick drum so for the purposes of variety
I'm going to use the waves Renaissance
compressor this time the Renaissance
compressor will automatically start
triggering from a key input as soon as
you set it up so since I'm using my kick
drum again and I set it to bus one and
now I'm all set for side-chaining
so first I'm going to adjust the
threshold or ratio to get some
compression happening start down here
start with like a three to one or so
let's hear how this sounds
alright so it's definitely turning my
bass down but as you can see it's not
really recovering in time to hear the
notes in between the kick so to get more
of those I'm going to adjust the release
to be a little bit shorter let's see how
that sounds so you can hear that the
compressor is severely turning down the
bass whenever there's a kick drum but
allowing all the upbeat notes in between
the kick drums to really speak out so
now I want to play with the attack a
little bit now as you remember when we
were playing around the attack sitting
on the pad sidechain had a huge impact
on the percussiveness of the sound the
same is going to be true with my bass
sidechain if I lower the attack by
taking it all the way to the left it's
going to clamp down on the bass as soon
as it hears the transient from the kick
drum now if I let up on that a little
bit what it's going to do is it's
actually going to allow some transient
from the bass come through and create a
punchy ER track so let's play the bass
in solo so you can hear what I'm talking
about
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since you can hear when the attack is
really short
there's no transient to my base but as I
open it up a little bit there's going to
be a little bit of a punch to it as well
which I like so let's a be the side
training on my base with the kick drum
playing as well with without with
without so as you can hear the overall
effect is that the bass is much quieter
but this is exactly what I want I want
there to be less space whenever there's
a kick and then as soon as there isn't a
kick you can hear the bass full volume
again today I showed you two examples of
using sidechain compression the first
was creating a rhythmic pumping effect
on my pad
the second was ducking my bass behind my
kick drum because they were kind of
competing for space as you could hear
this effect range from being very subtle
to very extreme
so just like with any effect you got to
use it to taste well until next time
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