How much sidechain compression do you use?

I dunno anymore. It's everywhere, you hear people say it's used totally incorrectly but again, it's everywhere.

I find myself turning to it mainly for pads to give them that breathing sound. Do folks use it routinely on bass synths? I think i hear it on the bass on 4 bit 9d, which is currently the standard to which i hold i all music :)

I don't use it for kick+bass very often but for kick+noise or kick+pad. Or I like making a big turd of different percussions and massively overcompress it with very short release times, can sound interesting. But my tracks aren't good at all so I'm most certainly doing it wrong but who cares

Well, that totally depends on what I'm doing. There's no recipe for how or why or when to use side chain compression.

But yeah, if I'm making a tune that has a constant bassline going on then I'll side chain the bd to the bass to make the bd stand out and not drown in the bass.

I also use it on noise every now and then... but again, it totally depends on what I'm working on and whether I want to use it as an effect or if it's for mixing purposes.

Probably should do it but I never have. 

These days I'm more likely to use Reaper's built in modulation to sidechain a band or two of an EQ, or occasionally the master fader on a mixer channel, in places where I might have used sidechain compression.

So, like, in Squee's example, rather than putting a compressor on the bass and sidechaining the kick, I'd use an EQ with the kick sidechained to the gain of a notch or low shelf band (depends on the mix) inversely (i.e. the louder the kick is, the more the EQ band is pulled down) to cut out the frequencies that would interfere with the kick.  Achieves a similar thing as far as making space for the kick, but has a completely different sound than sidechain compression.

Never bothered. I usually adjust attack rates on whatever sounds I want to get that pumping effect. I almost never use compression anymore.

I'd be more likely to use sidechain EQ on a wide-band pad than something like bass, though.

Also yeah, adjusting attack rates on the sounds works really well, I do that on cymbals a lot when I use drum sounds, especially.  Modulating the attack time by velocity (so higher velocity = slower attack) makes it sound even more convincing, where the louder a sound is the more it compresses, but without any kind of smearing or distortion.

Mostly just on certain elements blending with drums. I like things to be punchy and gated so a nice lil comp sidechain can really put the POWWW in your boom-baps.

I will occasionally do a beat in halftime the. Do a decent attack and short release comp chained to a pad and chain it to a ghost-kick that makes a whole chord rhythmically duck out of the mix in a pleasing fashion is pretty fun to do

I use it often on my monomachine, by running everything I want sidechained through an effects track (usually the compressor) and then assigning a kick drum track to also trig the effects track, which has a one-shot LFO assigned to track volume. Works nicely when running things through an external reverb and back into the inputs, thus sidechaining the reverb, Autechre style :D

In other things, not so much. I've played around with having the kick similarly trigger a volume envelope for pads in Renoise, it works quite well. I haven't done much that resembles true sidechaining though, only triggering a fixed envelope.

Use it a lot for noise/pad layers, but always side chained to a pattern that is muted so it's not completely obvious it's coming from the kick or whatever.

It'sa difficult thing to get right without killing a track. I got a bit bogged down with sidechaining loads of similar frequency sounds, sometime making a pigs ear of the whole thing. These days I'll only use it if I want that effect or if something's beign drowned out in a mix. I reckon subtractive EQ and panning things works way better for separating sounds. Also trying to use a bit more syncopation with basslines and kicks etc these days too.

sounds like using to add a rhythm/breathing to a pad is where most people are. i never fully understood the rationale for using it with bass- for straight 4 on the floor i suppose it's worthwhile to separate bass and kick, but for anything funky, you want at least partial matching for kick and bass, right?

the velocity->attack sounds like a good trick. going to try it out.

what's a track that uses it effectively? as i said, i think 4 bit 9d api is the gold standard these days, and i think it has a fair amount on it, but i could be wrong. (may just be detailed dynamic compression on bass synth)

I use it much more subtle than most. i.e. sometimes using the signal to make rhythm parts with the melody out of the drums.

It's way too overused with the bass kick and low pass filter. There are lots of other directions that an artist can use signal following outside of those two things.

Excessive sidechaining from the kick onto almost everything else in the track is something I hear way too often in electronic music these days, particularly stuff that's coming from the whole post-vaporwave scene, to the extent that I've stopped using it as an effect all together because I'm so sick of hearing it. I've used it to add texture to pads before - rather than just a straight kick to punch holes in the pad I've thrown in a (ghosted) break instead which gives the pad a crumbly texture I quite like.

all of it

  On 12/3/2016 at 2:59 PM, MIXL2 said:

all of it

You beat me to it

*backflips away in shame*

I still use it but I've been writing music for a while that rhythmically doesn't need sidenchaining. Rarely have a kick and bass sound in the same spot.

I use it for the bass and the kick drum, but it's not for the pumping effect, just to tighten up the lower end a little.

If the composition is correct, then it sounds really good, but if you're using it because you can't mix, or haven't thought things out in advance, then it then it sounds pretty bad.

my favorite use of sidechain compression

^pretty sure that's a "ghost kick"

  On 11/29/2016 at 10:56 PM, Audioblysk said:

Do a decent attack and short release comp chained to a pad and chain it to a ghost-kick that makes a whole chord rhythmically duck out of the mix in a pleasing fashion is pretty fun to do

It's a somewhat different sound, but these days I'm ore likely to use a gate that lets you flip how it responds to the trigger input so that it closes above the threshold and opens below it instead of normal operation (or in Reaper, just modulate the channel fader with the sidechain signal and set the modulation amount to a negative value).  Instead of sounding like the kick (or whatever) is squashing the pad down into the mix it's more like the pad is being pushed backward, away from the listener by the kick and then springing back to its original position, which is a cool sound in its own way.  I haven't tried it but modulating the distance fader in TDR Proximity instead of the channel fader would really sound like it was moving forward and backward in the soundstage.

EDIT: I could have just said "ducking" and left it at that, I guess, since that's exactly what I described.

  On 12/20/2016 at 8:02 PM, Danny O Flannagin said:

^pretty sure that's a "ghost kick"

the history of that track is pretty simple in my mind. he put a 4/4 kick down as a place holder, then got a cool arp going and sidechained the kick into the arp, then muted the kick track and thought "this is a next lvl actress track"

Id rather edit

a bit here and there. i don't typically go for lot's of pumping groove but sometimes it works out that way.. i'm generally trying to use it in a transparent way.  

never used it, dunno how or why i would want to tbh