Pay attention next time you hear a cheesy EDM banger and you’ll hear a lot of this used in the lead ups to drops. What else can we do?Ī really great feature is that the kick drum – or whatever drum you’ve chosen to trigger the sidechain – doesn’t have to be activated to affect the bassline’s signal, it can be turned off so we have a pumping bassline without actually hearing the kick drum. Experimentation is key here, the results depends on tempo and your own taste. Attack is how long the signal takes to be affected and Release how long it takes to recover once the bass drum’s hit has passed. Ratio affects the amounts the bassline’s signal is reduced each time the drum hits, wind it up for a more extreme effect. There’s some other important settings we can tinker with at this point too – Ratio, Attack and Release. For most applications -inf dB is way too extreme, so wind that threshold back up until it sounds good to you. Now you should have some extreme ducking and be able to see how the signal is being affected. Grab the threshold control and wind it all the way back to -inf dB. Still sound the same? That’s because we haven’t actually told the compressor to do anything with the bass drum’s signal yet.Ĭlick on the activity view of the compressor so we have visual feedback of this next step. Another drop down menu appears below that – select your kick drum. Now drop a default compressor onto your bass line’s track.Ĭlicking the arrow next to the title of the module opens up the compressor’s sidechain functionality – click on the sidechain button and select your drum rack from the drop down menu below it. Set yourself up with a basic beat and bassline, ensuring the bassline plays over the top of your kicks. I’m using Ableton Live today obviously the exact step by step method behind sidechaining differs slightly from DAW to DAW, however the main steps should be quite similar. Get that bass line ducking around the kick Read more features, columns and interviews here.
The method behind this is called sidechaining and uses an audio signal to trigger a change in another module – most commonly a compressor. One of the most distinctive characteristics of modern electronic music is the rhythmic pumping, most often a lead and/or bass line ducking in and out around a thumping bass drum. Utilising their in built compressor plugin.
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