Sidechaining in Ambient music

Hello everybody. Im working on my first album which i would classify as ambient/ experimental/ modern classical, I like my sounds from noise, field recordings, werid lo fi bassy sounds, drones, atmospheres, piano and other orchestral/folk instruments.

 

Now, why im saying all that. The thing is, these last 5 years that ive been composing music on pc, i got carried away by my passion to just express myself thru sound and music, so i mostly worked on combination of sounds and paid very little attention to the mixing aspect. The bad thing in the story is, that my current work musically speaking might not be bad, but as far as the quality of sound, a total disaster. especially where various lo-fi sounds meet eacher, like deep pads on the lower octavs blending with a field recording of an airplain taking off, where i want to keep the subby frequencies. or other sounds on higher friequencies, like an harp sounds blending with cello or viola. The "masking" issue is awful as it ruins all the beautiful atmosphere im trying to achieve. Ive been trying to fight this problem with EQing and panorama, sometimes it works, but most of the times for me it dsnt.

 

And here comes the "sidechaining", which i practically have almost zero experience with. I just leaned how to sidechain kick and bass when doing readings about mixing, and never used it again, as i had this stupid idea that 'sidechaning' in electronica is used mostly in techno/house music which i almost havent looked into yet, to solve the kick-bass issue. I dont know why i couldnt have thought of using this technique with ambient sounds also. I asked a producer to take a look at my projects and help me solve the mixing problems. After checking my projects in Cubase, he adviced me that using sidechaining will solve a lot of my problems, that all my sounds are going to sound clean and clear without having to lower the gain level of the sounds. im making various experiments to learn how to use this technique, but im having a lot of trouble due to my poor knowledge of compression/limiting and sidechaning. i constantly have these questions like should make this pad control the other pad, or vice versa, or should this cello control the violins etc, i dont even know if i have a correct approach on this matter and if my way of thinking is correct or wrong.

 

If you make experimental/ambient music and use this effect in your tracks, i would highly appreciate your experience on the subject. sorry if all this sounds stupid to you, im really trying to learn. what kind of sounds do u like to sidechain in your ambient works? any info on the way your prefer to work with your sounds, would be an enormous help for me. thanx in advance

Sidechaining is something I have done pretty extensively on ambient/drone projects. I used it mainly to manage the textural beds together enabling things to shine through at certain moments and then disappear the next. If done correctly it can really add a lot to your mix. I would say that in your case it is definitely worth trying it out, I am pretty sure that even if it doesn't work with the material you currently have it will have a positive affect on your future productions.

 

When it comes to deciding which part controls another, you'll have to think about how you want the sounds to interact with each other.

http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Category_0_Freeware/ Check out the free Peak Meter by BlueCat Audio and http://thepiz.org/plugins/?p=AudioToCC AudioToCC by pizz. They can record the volume curve of an input into an automation envelope (a blank automation curve which fallows the volume) then you can copy that automation envelope over to perhaps the volume of another instrument but invert it (if your daw can invert envelopes) so that if volume on track A increases then volume on track B decreases, and you could set the upper and lower limits. You could think of some great ways to use this like when the volume increases on one track the hi pass increases on another one so that the bass frequencies don't mix at high volumes.

That audio to CC thing sounds like it would be pretty useful in some situations. Looking in to it.

thank you

is there a particularly good compressor in the vst/au realm for side chaining? The one that comes with cubase is not satisfying.

  On 1/27/2012 at 11:59 PM, Awepittance said:

is there a particularly good compressor in the vst/au realm for side chaining? The one that comes with cubase is not satisfying.

 

(free) Compressive http://martineastwood.com/wordpress/?page_id=153

 

(pay) Deft Compressor http://www.voxengo.com/product/deftcompressor/

Im not fucked reading all that shit.

 

sidechaining in ambient = good, if done right.

 

Look, I fucking love sidechaining if it is done well. Makes me jizz my pants. When its shit, it just pisses me off.

As a rule, try sidechaining elements that are more isolated, to compress things that are more continuous (like pads, strings and ambiences). This should help blend some conflicting/masking frequencies better. Judge for yourself whether you want a deliberately audible effect or if you're just looking to improve the mixing. Also, if you're feeling creative, try throwing a percussive loop in your mix, mute it, but use it to sidechain a pad or a texture - that way you get rhythmic volume curves for otherwise static continuous sounds.

 

I do my sidechaining with Reaper's compressor - dead easy to use

  On 1/28/2012 at 10:08 AM, kokeboka said:

Also, if you're feeling creative, try throwing a percussive loop in your mix, mute it, but use it to sidechain a pad or a texture - that way you get rhythmic volume curves for otherwise static continuous sounds.

 

going to try this out today, sounds awesome and simple :) thank you my friend and thanks to all the people who have taken interest in my post and replied.

Because of this thread I finally figured out how to use the default Reaper compressor for sidechaining, it's pretty easy. The song I started last night would not work nearly as well without sidechaining, got really loud pads that need to be in your grill but they were clouding up the drums, sidechained the drums on them and ohh my god, it now the track can breathe were before it sounded suffocated. So useful for mixing and sounds really nice too. It seems to make things sound more alive. I'm going to be using sidechaining quite a bit now, not just for the hell of it but because it's probably the biggest thing a lot of my productions have been missing to get the right sound.

a lot of nice ideas in this thread. because of it i checked out a bunch of 3rd party plugins in cubase that aren't compressors looking for the same 'side chain enable' button i see when i load a compressor, for instance using a side chain into a gate is nice,

Sidechain into a gate? Would be interesting to open the gate to let out the pad or whatever when a muted ghost beat hits etc...What non-compression VSTs are you referring to that let you sidechain?

this is getting more and more interesting

  On 2/9/2012 at 6:21 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

Sidechain into a gate? Would be interesting to open the gate to let out the pad or whatever when a muted ghost beat hits etc...What non-compression VSTs are you referring to that let you sidechain?

 

im going to make a little list, havent tried that many yet but i've had some good results so far. Too bad not every plugin has a side-chain > X knob feature, would be great

so far it seems like all the Waves plugins have side chaining ability, i havent tried any reverbs or eqs yet as im not sure how those would incorporate it if at all.