Sidechain Compression Tutorial:
Mix tips, description and settings by Manuel Roessler. Visit our Fl Studio review for infos about its compression plugins.
Sidechain Compression is commonly used in mixing and mastering, its also called Upward compression and often used along with New York compression. It can be used for DeEssing, to separate Lead and Backingvocals, for Bass Ducking as well as to improve the balance between kicks and bass which are both in a similar frequency range and often interfere with each other.
In this Sidechain Compression Tutorial we are concentrating on Sidechaining Kick and Bass. This means the signal of a kick drum will be triggering the compressor used on a bass. Every time the kick hits, the bass will be compressed and lowered a little bit to make the kick cut through better and tighter during your beat mixing.
How to set it up in your Daw (For example in Pro Tools):
- Send the signal of your Kick track for example to Bus 1.
- Insert a compressor (which is capable of Side-Chaining) on your Bass track.
- Select Bus 1 on your Key Input. Enable the Side-Chain.
- Now use Ratio, Threshold, Release, Attack etc. to adjust your desired compression.
- Every time the Kick hits the Bass will be turned down/ compressed.
Compressor Settings:
As a starting point you could use a ratio between 4 and 10 depending on how much the bass should be ducked/ how much is actually wanted. The higher the ratio the more the bass will be ducked. Release between 10-50ms. Threshold about -5db depending too on how much compression is wanted.
These are easy to use starting points which need tweaking depending on the situation and on how much compression/ ducking is wanted. Use compression with care and always rely on your ears and feeling. Too much can ruin your mix.
