Some very interesting stuff here guys. Thanks for not treating your methods like cold war secrets! I don't use much SC so I would consider it a weakness. Would love to learn more about it so I can use it when needed. Keep the informative posts coming and thanks in advance

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Originally posted by Lolo What you guys refer to isn't sidechaining, it's called ducking. It's been existing for at least 20 years. All people including myself call it now SC, but it's not. The Sidechain means that the source feeding the effect on channel A is coming from channel B. Behringer were making those Intelligate units 15 years ago. This is what everyone was using to slice pads and long sounds. You know the rule with compression. Some of you noticed the effects when applying ducking on pads with vocals, which brings clarity. Also the pumping pad effect, but you don't need a compressor for that with 4/4 kicks, you can easily use an autopan or tremolo effect set to center position so both sides are in sync, you put a reverse sawtooth as the waveform synced to 1/4, and smooth it a little. You can try the basic uses: 1°)Send a channel A to an aux 1 with a reverb on it, put a compressor after the reverb, and set the sidechain to channel A. As heard in Benny B's and Rank 1 tracks 2°) Channel A is a vocal, copy it to channel B, save it as a separate file, reverse it, reverb it with 10 sec decay and 100% wet, bounce it, re-reverse it, and put it back on Ch B and remove all plugins, now compress channel B with Sidechain feed from CH A, and don't forget to replace the reversed region correctly. As heard in a zillion vocal trance records. 3°) Filter and Gate do sidechain too. Use a hihat pattern to feed those placed on a pad channel and enjoy the results. As heard in LSG, for example. Keep in mind that for the best results, the feeding material MUST be panned to CENTER and most preferably MONO, unless that's what you want. Some VI's also feature SC. Logic users, you can use Ultrabeat to slice and dice entire regions feeding Ultrabeat in time. ES2 makes it possible to route the sidechain signal to an osc parameter such as Pitch/Filter, whatever. These are some basic uses of SC. There are plenty more. See SC as an external modulation protocol, as E140 said. Sky is the limit. Example, copy your reverb aux to another one. decay to death, put a filter or a gate that gets fed dynamically by a 909 closed-open hat sequence with variable amplitude. Bounce that, and loop that.

Yea.. sidechaining once wasn't what it is commonly known as now, a musical effect. It was first invented for radio speech as an automated ducking of the music when the host was speaking (if I don't remember completely wrong...) And as we all know its still in use for that today..

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Also the pumping pad effect, but you don't need a compressor for that with 4/4 kicks, you can easily use an autopan or tremolo effect set to center position so both sides are in sync, you put a reverse sawtooth as the waveform synced to 1/4, and smooth it a little.

Thats a really good tip you had there actually.. Funny I've never thought of synced wah wah effects or similar in the context of sidechain substitution before.

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Originally posted by lenieNt Force Yea.. sidechaining once wasn't what it is commonly known as now, a musical effect. It was first invented for radio speech as an automated ducking of the music when the host was speaking (if I don't remember completely wrong...) And as we all know its still in use for that today.. Thats a really good tip you had there actually.. Funny I've never thought of synced wah wah effects or similar in the context of sidechain substitution before.

Good stuff, though I would use ducking to describe the effect used in voice overs and narrations where the vocals duck the music behind it so you can hear what they're saying. Technically speaking though he is correct. I would also like to mention this gentleman is reiterating what I mentioned in my post, where the effect is merely a practice in achieving mix clarity. Whereas the original topic does pertain to side chaining, the implications are vast so I do appreciate everyone's comments here because this is a very broad topic! Cheers.

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Originally posted by Tarpex Hm, bass highpassed at 250 might not be such a good idea. Most of the kick's energy in EDM comes really low, 55-75 hz with timbres much higher, that don't interfere that much. If you keep your low-end bass at around 80hz, and have a healthy sidechain, it should work pretty fine. Sometimes I layer 3 basslines, low end comes from 80-125 range, to add some low-colour there's another one playing 125-180 range and then the "main" bass going from 180 up, and the kick remains strong, aswell with the bass. Having your bass going from 250 up only will make a track really weak in its low end.

I do mean bass as in the bass instrument and *not* the bass from the kick drum. The kick drum does require very low frequencies of course.

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Originally posted by lenieNt Force My bet is when he says low cut he actually means low pass.. Lol... low cut bass at 250 and you wont have any bass left :P Probably the stupidest recommendation I've ever heard.. but like I said he probably means low pass.. if not he should do some more research on what bass is, where it's at in the freq spectrum :P

Yes, Low pass... I have heard of different producers cutting off low ends at certain points, ie., 125, 150, 250... what ever it takes to make sure you can mix it in with the kick.

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Originally posted by Evolve140 Good stuff, though I would use ducking to describe the effect used in voice overs and narrations where the vocals duck the music behind it so you can hear what they're saying. Technically speaking though he is correct. I would also like to mention this gentleman is reiterating what I mentioned in my post, where the effect is merely a practice in achieving mix clarity. Whereas the original topic does pertain to side chaining, the implications are vast so I do appreciate everyone's comments here because this is a very broad topic! Cheers.

Ye it's ducking, but thats where the concept of sidechain compression first was introduced.

This gentleman is Airwave btw

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Yes, Low pass... I have heard of different producers cutting off low ends at certain points, ie., 125, 150, 250... what ever it takes to make sure you can mix it in with the kick.

Yeap, but then you most probably will have a sub-bass under that.. Often you build up your lower end of many layers of bass working together right. With no bass instrument under 250hz it will usually sound very weak, and even weaker on bigger PA. If one wants to get the kick/balance right one should make a cut in the bass where the kick is most prominent (40-70hz). Rather a notch cut than high pass, so as to not lose the depth of the bass. And then you can just low-cut the whole mix at 30 hz afterwards.

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Originally posted by Evolve140 Yes, Low pass... I have heard of different producers cutting off low ends at certain points, ie., 125, 150, 250... what ever it takes to make sure you can mix it in with the kick.

Low pass doesn't cut off low end - it allows the low frequencies to pass through, meaning the high end is cut off.

A lot of trance songs have basses which have frequencies below those of the kick. You don't need to completely separate the bass and kick, frequency-wise. You can also do this with programming - for example, with an offbeat bass, it doesn't matter if the bass is as prominent at 65Hz as the kick - they don't play at the same time, so aren't competing for that space.