Ableton Forum

Hi everyone, I've been teaching myself ableton for about a year now and know most of the program quite well but while I was taking a break from production a few weeks ago (not by choice I should add) I had an idea but haven't really been able to put it into action as I imagined it.

I want to have a return track that just has reverb/ compressor, but then I want to sidechain the compressor to a source that you can't hear but has zero attack/ release. So essentially you would have a quite reverby sound but which you can cut chunks out of the reverb by playing some silent note potentially creating rhythm out of the silence (if this makes sense...)
I tried using just white noise which comes in and out instantaneously (at least when I can hear it) but the sidechain function still measures some kind of decay and the reverb comes back in gradually when I want it to go in and out instantly (or as close as possible).
I've tried using gates and stuff like that to make cut outs etc more instantaneous but hasnt worked.
Any ideas?

Another way of doing this would be to have the reverb on an audio track with the return routed to it post fx. Mute the return. Set the audio track monitoring to on. Create clips with envelopes that switched the track on and off, or took the track volume up and down.

You can also do this using abletons Gate effect. Put Gate on the return channel, click the arrow next to the on/off button so the sidechain option becomes visible, turn sidechain on, select the input track that you want to use for the sidechaining and there you go! You can also select 'flip' for the opposite effect, could be fun too.