Tutorial - how to sidechain in FLSTUDIO

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-- Tutorial - how to sidechain in FLSTUDIO

Posted by tylerc on Feb-08-2005 08:17:

Tutorial - how to sidechain in FLSTUDIO

I've been messing around with this tonight, and I know a lot of people wonder how you do it, so I'll try to fill ya in. Many people say it can't be done without some special plugins, and others try to do it with the compressor, but it's quite simple to do using the Peak Controller. This is specifically for ducking, a particular type of sidechaining. I don't know much about sidechain compressors and what they are capable of, but I think ducking is the most common use.

Here's a simple step by step guide.

-put your kick on fx1
-underneath all your fx (eq, compression, etc) select the peak controller
-turn the volume on the peak controller all the way up and lift the little parabola thing up all the way
-make sure to uncheck the 'mute' box. if you don't do this you won't hear your kick
-add your bass, using long notes, as if it were a pad.
-right click the volume knob of the bass and select 'link to controller...'
-under 'internal controller' select the one that says 'peak + lfo'
*HERE'S THE TRICK*
-click the arrow to the left of 'mapping forumla' and select 'invert'. if you leave it on default the bass will get loud when the kick hits and drop out when the kick stops, which is the opposite of what you want.
-it may seem a little out of sync, so adjust it with the 'smoothing/time' knob. you won't hear the results until you hit the 'accept' button

That should do it.

There are a lot of ways you can adjust how the bass reacts to the conroller. The way I have described will make the bass volume go from 0%->100%, so the bass will turn on and off, if you want to have the bass do more of a fade in fade out then heres what you do: Create a copy of your kick drum, and give it its own fx bank. Put the peak controller on this bank instead of the original kick. Now make sure you leave the 'mute' box checked so it doesn't interfere with the original kick. Now turn the volume down on the kick until the bass sounds right. As you adjust the volume it will affect the timing, so go back and mess with the 'smoothing/time' setting again.

Here is an mp3 that shows what I've done, just using a default fruity kick and the 3osc (sorry for the crapp sounds). The first bit is without the peak controller on. The second is the first method I described and the last bit is with the adjustment I mentioned. [EXAMPLE MP3]

Hope this helps. If you need more help let me know.

tc

Posted by DJ Twenty on Feb-08-2005 09:15:

Quality tutorial mate, thanks!

Posted by DJ-Kreing^^ on Feb-08-2005 09:32:

Hey, thanks a lot man! That tutorial is very very useful to those who have problems sorting out their mixes.

Posted by nec on Feb-08-2005 13:39:

Thanks man.

Posted by DickieThijssen on Feb-08-2005 15:07:

hey this is nice to know!! i however doubt if i will ever want to use it as there are many easier ways to bass-duck (manual velocity drawing)... Anyhow, thanks very much, always nice to learn new things

Posted by J.L. on Feb-08-2005 16:15:

i've done this method before.. and once you get it once.. you'll find it much easier than manually drawing the velocity...

there are other ways i would do this however... which basically means i linked something else to the peak controller

try:
1) Filter cutoff
2) Compressor threshold
3) Compressor Ratio
4) Flanger Wet knob
5) Parametric EQ gain below 500 hz

There are many interesting things you can do with this neat nifty idea that if you just take aside a couple minutes to experiment with you'll come out with some neat sounds.

good tutorial tylerc

Posted by Cor2701 on Feb-09-2005 18:32:

Hey man,

Great tutorial, I listen to your samples and you hear a lot of difference between the first sample without sidechain and the second with sidechain. Only the 3rth sample ,okey there is a difference with the 1st but not a lot in my opinion.

Thanks for the tutorial i finally get the sidechain part.

Posted by krivi on Feb-09-2005 22:15:

good tips here

Posted by dkode on Feb-10-2005 01:32:

nice tut,

kudos.

Posted by unleashed_gino1 on Feb-10-2005 04:26:

hey i dunt get this side chaining stuff does this lower the high beats and make the low beats higher - sometihn like compression???
\

Posted by BshidoHEAT on Feb-10-2005 05:39:

coolio

Posted by tylerc on Mar-03-2005 22:08:

I've had some requests to post up the .flp file I used for this, so here it is:

Download

Posted by The Drow on Mar-04-2005 13:59:

thanks... great thing.
but what does sidechaining mean?
The sample you provided sounded like you added attack to the sound...
Like Scot Project's basses.

Posted by DJ Dinz on Mar-04-2005 16:40:

THIS IS WHAT I AM DIE TRYING!!! THANKS!!!!

Btw does this thing same as... Rank 1 - at beat dot com
you know the saw sound that sound like fading in on the middle???

Thanks man

Posted by tripudio on Mar-05-2005 02:29:

Here's my example of sidechaining, instead of sidechaining on the off beat bass, I did it on the rolling bassline.

basssidechain.mp3

Posted by 4am on Mar-10-2005 20:34:

It's better to place a compressor on the Bass FX and link the volume knob next to the compressor's fx slot to the peak controller and then mess with the compressor settigs. This is a more natural sound and is the correct way to do it (traditionally).