memes_33 wrote:.
think about it- you've got the kick going into the sidechain input on your bass compressor- this temporarily attenuates (or "ducks") the bass signal whenever the kick hits- you are actually creating a dynamic change in the bass track. if you compress the bass signal after the fact, you are compressing the very dynamic changes you have created with your sidechain effect. so by adding a compressor after a side-chained bass track, you are working against yourself.
So should one not use compression on the master channel if the individual tracks are compressed, OR should I not compress the individual tracks and try ducking on the master? What have you guys experienced that works well?
One thing that has come to mind is ducking in a different way. For example using M4L to sort of cheat ducking using the gain on the Bass track instead of a compressors side chain. Anyone tried this?
evon wrote:.
One trick in getting seperation is delaying one of the tracks by a few milliseconds. Of couse, as you mentioned the most popoular is ducking with the sidechain compressor. You can also put a kick side chain on the master channel to give a more pulsating rythm (not neccessarily a pumping effect.
Not sure I completely understand what you are saying here, could you elaborate?
Somewhat off of the original post, I am really interested in finding a means to utilize these techniques for live performance with a wide range of music or texture of sound, but mainly electronic style stuff. However when performing music, or rehearsing and creating at practice, there is a lot of variation in Bass and drum textures. Hence the issue of getting good compression/ducking etc. If I were just mixing down a tune or DJing, this would be easier to achieve seeing that much of the sound was already dialed in and did not change much. For example, if I cue up a CR78 kick with a PWM bass sound for one song, but the next tune has a real full, deep, punchy, kick and a Sine SUB bass, these things are way different from each other. I am hoping to make such variations, but still keep the punch in my kick and richness in bass.
I almost always loose the kick in the richness of bass due to performing and not paying much mind to over all sound. I will get lost in say, how cool the synth is sounding, and I will have a tendency to turn it up while mashing keys. Not to mention the sound is usually loud at a band practice. Taking the music from my bedroom and monitors, to practice on the PA is also a process.
