Sidechain everything? Why/why not?

[Citizen]

I just recently watched a tutorial where the guy sent everything (except the kick and snare), through a sidechain compressor. He even sent all his return signals through it, which made a lot of sense, I guess.

Obviously this approach is always going to allow your kick and snare to punch through on a club based track ( he was making a deep, proggy house kinda thing).

My question is why wouldn't you always do this? I know part of it is personal preference, but it seems like a very logical way to ensure that your kick and snare are going to be punchy and unclouded by any reverb and delay in the track.

Even if it were only to be used subtlely, it just seems quite sensible to have your reverb/delay tails ducking your kicks and snares. Why would you NOT at least do this with just the returns?!

Secondly, is this approach really only suitable for pumping/hypnotic 4/4 electronic club styles - or can this approach be suitable for other genres?

[ze2be]

For your first question: Its a matter of taste. However it will make all your music sounding very samey dynamicaly speaking. It does not always work though. Lets say you have a lead you want to focus on that has some key pulses on the beat. You dont want to duck this one on the beat! Or lets say you have a jazz ride cymbal on the beat, it makes little point of ducking this one. Might as well lower its volume.

If you want to make house like old daft punk where everything is a slave to the kick, and the whole track ducks after it, then thats fine too. To me it often sounds booring and cheesy. If it is compressed to hard aswell, I cant even listen to it. However I use ducking a lot myself, but I try to do it as transparent as possible. There are some styles like tractor techno etc where its part of the whole style. Im fine with that.

For your second question: Yes you can apply it to other genres, however id guess it works best with sequenced arangements. An all acoustic recording can do it aswell, if you have the kick on a seperate channel, but its going to be a bit tricky to get it just right.

[mr.adl]

In one video Deadmau5 said he does not sidechain everything with the same settings. Instead he uses differen´t settings for each element and in that way everything pumps more organic / gives a much better groove.
I used to just copy the compressor over to all tracks, but now i rather listen to the stuff and set attack / release more individual. I also sidechain my returns, don´t see why you shouldn´t do that as otherwise stuff coming from there could mask the kickdrum.

[102455]

[sigh]

I remember the days when pumping was an unwanted side effect of using compression, and a sign that you were using too much.

Now it seems to have been turned completely on its head, and it's seen as "cool" and something to aim for!

[stevemac]

Kick and sub are the only elements that I 'hard' sidechain.

I sidechain tonnes of sounds together though, but using subtle compression settings. Therefore the track never looses it's character and lots of elements can interact together, without being a totally muddy mess.

[Tarekith]

Why not always do it? Because it's the flavor of the month production trick and I think soon is going to make tracks dated sounding ala T-Pain vocals. At least with how heavily it's being done now, used subtly it's a very useful tool.

The biggest issue I have with how popular this has become, is that a lot of people aren't really timing the attack and release of the comp to match the track tempo. Yes you get that pumping "sound" easily enough, but heard on decent monitors or a club and a lot of times it just makes the groove confusing instead of enhancing things.

Getting a really swinging and powerful effect this way takes a lot of time to set up properly, and most people trying it out don't do more than mess with threshold.

I actually had a client last year who did it backwards, everything was ducking his kick, but he insisted that was the proper way to side-chain and wanted me to master it as is.

[regretfullySaid]

Ducking the kick

Hey maybe the new style will be sidechain expansion

[102455]

Oh sorry, ducking the kick.

[pskept]

I remember the days when pumping was an unwanted side effect of using compression, and a sign that you were using too much.

Now it seems to have been turned completely on its head, and it's seen as "cool" and something to aim for!

kinda like feedback, distortion, detuning...

[Valiumdupeuple]

Ben Frost ?

[agent314]

[sigh]

I remember the days when pumping was an unwanted side effect of using compression, and a sign that you were using too much.

Now it seems to have been turned completely on its head, and it's seen as "cool" and something to aim for!

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
? Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary

[regretfullySaid]

Part II: Weird and ugly becomes popular then exploited then overused to where it becomes trivial and standard.

Remember when jeans with holes in them sold for hundreds of dollars?

[ikeaboy]

[sigh]

I remember the days when pumping was an unwanted side effect of using compression, and a sign that you were using too much.

Now it seems to have been turned completely on its head, and it's seen as "cool" and something to aim for!

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
? Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary

Excellent

[Steve Ballmer]

Try mucking about with multiband sidechaining. The future is now.

Also, who the fuck here doesn't LOVE Cini Minis???!

[regretfullySaid]

I'm surprised sidechain filtering as a mixing tool/effect hasn't become the new thing yet. more interesting imo.

Just use an auto-filter, make it a highpass, sidechain the kick to it and bus everything else to that track.
Now pay up, bitches!

I have not had Cini-Minis, are they like golden grahams with cinnamon?

How quickly do they get soggy?