Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

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penguinpajamas
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:43 pm

Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by penguinpajamas » Wed Jan 21, 2015 10:41 pm

Hey guys! So occasionally I find myself with the desire to sidechain compress a track using both the kick drum and the snare drum. Unfortunately, you can only choose one track for the input to the sidechain compression, which leads me to wonder what the best way to accomplish this would be. I've tried two compressors in series, one sidechained to the kick and the other sidechained to the snare but it seems like that runs the risk of compressing a signal that's already being compressed.

My best idea would be to send the kick and snare to run through a serparate audio track and then sidechain to that track.

Any insights?

Thanks!

Da hand
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Re: Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by Da hand » Wed Jan 21, 2015 11:23 pm

My best idea would be to send the kick and snare to run through a serparate audio track and then sidechain to that track.
You can do that or group the tracks together and pick that group as your sidechain source.

But.... I generally make sidechain sources be their own separate tracks in my project (and leave them muted) that way I can use them when I want separately from the real sources and combine them as I want and it doesn't interfere with the routing I have for my playing tracks. For example in your case I would duplicated the kick and snare tracks (call them for example side-kick and side-snare), group them together (call it for example side-kicksnare group), mute the group and use that as your soundchain source. That way your real kick and snare can be grouped to other things if need be, for example an entire drum group.

Pitch Black
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Re: Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by Pitch Black » Thu Jan 22, 2015 2:32 am

^^Wot Da Hand said.

Having "clones" of your sidechain triggers opens up the possibility of doing gate and eq things on the triggers that may sound stupid if heard in the mix, but let you finetune the results of the sidechain effect.
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Steve Glen
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Location: Edmonton Alberta

Re: Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by Steve Glen » Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:19 am

Have you thought about using the Gate device? Becuase you are just lowering the volume, a series signal path is effective.

To use the Gate as sidechain, use the Invert button and use a dB reduction in the 3-15 range.

Steve Glen
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Re: Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by Steve Glen » Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:38 am

For the house/disco stuff that I've been doing lately, SC comp from both kick and snare is used to let the drums punch through the synths, and a pumping SC is used later on/not at all/gain automation via Utility and clip envelopes. So speaking in terms of kick snare, the SC is responding to a narrow/moderate band of attack from these drums, set by the Compressor's SC settings. And in this genre, the snare slightly follows the kick so the series compressors don't have too much of a problem, in my opinion.

Even better, use a multiband like Fabfilter pro MB to duck the masking frequencies post drumbuss FX. Your bass, mids and highs are gonna have each different SC needs depending on the mix. I think a70-30 mix of gain reduction and compression does the job nicely.

dewaldo
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Re: Sidechain Compression with Kick AND Snare

Post by dewaldo » Thu Jan 22, 2015 6:47 am

Send your kick and snare to a return within your drum rack (i.e., something simple like utility or a blank audio effect rack), mute the output of the return (click the little speaker icon), set the sidechain input to the return, Post FX (not post mixer since that is muted)

i like to do this in combination with an SPL transient designer on the return with sustain down and attack up, in order to get a snappy sidechain key that lasts only for the duration of the initial transient

hope this helps

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