Why sidechaining

Sibilance is really noticeable somewhere between 4 and 7 kHz, but you can also use a de-esser or a makeshift, sidechained one to tame some of the harshness of a vocal track. Sometimes setting a de-esser somewhere between 1 and 2 kHz can mellow out a harsh voice.

If you find your vocals buried under a mountain of instruments, you might try sidechain compression to solve the problem.

For example, you might put a compressor on the guitars and keyboards, using the lead vocal track as the sidechain input. Every time the lead vocals play, the keyboards and guitars will duck into the mix, leaving space for the vocal. If you feel as though your kick drum is a little anemic, giving it a boost with a sine wave is a common technique. You start by setting up a sine wave generator on a new track.

Somewhere between 20 and 60 Hz is typical, but be weary of adding too much sub as you approach July 15, Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. If so, you may want to try using sidechaining. Sidechaining is a production technique used in a wide variety of music genres where an effect is activated by an audio track. The alternative source is set to a threshold, which when exceeded activates the effect. This is a free, stock plugin.

You can rest assured that any plugin for an effect capable of using a sidechain usually just gain reduction units will have the option, especially premium, paid options.

A VST that can have it will have it. It works the exact same way for hardware using a patch cable. The output of the sidechained unit jacks into the sidechain input on the main effects unit. It couldn't be easier to set up. Understanding it can be a tad confusing so let me give you a few more examples so it can congeal in your mind.

Let me share a handful of more examples of sidechaining in mixing. Most of them include ducking in some fashion, but that's only one use, albeit the most common. But they all involve getting more clarity out of your mix. Vocal Clarity - Radio DJ's use sidechaining to duck the background music any time they start to talk. It's used on live TV shows when the audience is clapping but the host begins to talk. The idea is to reduce the volume of ambient noises so the main focal point the vocals can be heard clearly.

This can be done with rhythm guitar or keyboards, too. It works just like the vocal example above and gives you a lot more headroom. EDM producers will use this method to make the bass "pump" to add a sense of breathing energy to a song. Make a De-Esser - There's no reason to do this now but before these existed de-essers were made by sidechaining a compressor to an equalizer to reduce a specific frequency band as laid out on the EQ.

You'd target the area of sibilance and plosives with the EQ and only those would be compressed. Lower the Snare in the Overheads - When miking drums with overheads, you'll often capture the snare too loudly. You can't avoid it, but you can do something about it in the mix using sidechaining. Sidechain the snare track to the overheads and you can reduce the volume of the snare in the overheads.

This will give you more clarity and a tighter stereo image for the snare. Add Depth to a Kick - Sometimes you get a kick drum that doesn't have enough power to it. You can use a sine wave generator to tune a deep frequency to your kick. Then to get the sine wave to only sound off when the kick occurs, you can apply a noise gate to the sine wave and sidechain it to the kick bus.

A compressor relies on the strength of the input signal to decide how much to reduce the level of material above the threshold. The solution is to use the sidechain input. This is the classic kick and bass sidechain effect that took over electronic music in the early 00s. Now the compressor is listening to the kick drum. Every time it hits, the compressor will reduce the gain of the bass or pad track with a satisfying whoosh.

If the threshold and ratio are set to extreme settings, it produces a pumping effect that enhances the rhythmic feel of a track. Noise gates are some of the most helpful tools in mixing. But just like compressors, changing the signal in the detector path with the sidechain input makes them even more useful.

When you use multiple microphones to record a drum set, some of the sound from the kit will bleed into the close mics on each drum.

This problem happens all the time when you record a bass drum with an inside and outside microphone.