Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside the Recording Studio. I am Jody Whitesides and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom. How are you today, Chris? Hello Jody, I'm doing good. How are you? I'm still alive, so I'm good. Good. That's a bonus. Yes, it is. Alright, well there you go. Excellent. Every day you're getting up above sunshine and six feet of dirt, you're doing all right. Yeah. We are going to chat about sidechaining. What are we talking about today, sir?
What is side chaining then? Uh-huh. I think the easiest way to look at side chaining is when we're using either a frequency or another track Uh-huh. I would say that you could go a step further. to trigger a compressor on yet another track. So in other words no but that's the It's not always just about compressors. It's very common with compressors, but it's not always with compressors. where else would you use it if it's not on a compressor? Noise gate.
That's true. That's still a sort of like dynamic function, I think. You're using something to kind of trigger. Sure, I don't know of any compressor that will actually turn the sound off when you Well, I guess I'm being liberal with my definitions here in that it's, you know, trigger it, but sure. Yes, you are. with dynamic processing, whether that's a gate or just a compressor. So yeah, but that's very true. Hmm. Yes, we can.
We can use it with gates and that type of stuff as well. So, but what do you think is the most The most common. common thing that when we're talking about side chaining. Yeah, the most common I'm going to go out on a limb, application because I know what... Okay. and I'm going to say that usually it's done with a kick drum. I don't think you're out on the limb at all. I think that's exactly what people If I'm thinking EDM.
( audio cuts out) think about when you use the kick to trigger a compressor on the bass so that it actually ducks away a little bit as they're hitting. So I think that... or even on another bus return where you've got a whole lot of the rest of the music going Yeah, yeah. and the kick is just causing it to just pulling the whole mix out just by the kick. But that that's a whole other thing. So let's talk about this or I say it's the kick that triggering a compressor to manipulate
another instrument. That's one usage right there that comes to the top of my head. Let's ramble on about that. Yeah, let's the bass and the kick tend to live in the same frequency range. That's all for today, and I'll see you next time. Right. So the way I look at it is that if you want the kick to be really prominent and not have the (silence) bass clouded up a little bit or muddied up, the bass is sustaining more than it has just a (silence) (silence)
transient on the kick. So to make the transient of the kick be more prominent than the bass, (silence) (silence) you have it trigger the sidechain on the compressor so that it quickly turns down the volume, if you will, on the bass guitar. (silence) (silence) Because it's such a transient instrument, it won't be necessarily noticeable as long as you set it upright, (silence) that the bass is actually lowered for that fraction of a second.
Sure. Let's take it a step further than just the bass guitar. It could be bass sense or any bass line for that matter. Yeah, any bass heavy frequency instrument, right? Why would we want to do that? Well, again, just to make that kick really, Yeah. really prominent in the mix. You mentioned EDM or any kind of like dance music. Very prominent there, right? Where you want that, just really kick in the chest, right? Boom, boom, boom, yep.
Right, well, let's actually describe That's the most common thing, but I don't think it's necessarily, I think you do yourself a disservice by thinking about that's the only application, right? - Right. Sure. how this actually gets done. You've got your kick track. Yup. You've got your bass track, [silence] or tracks if there's more than one. You throw your compressor plugin that has the ability to do side chaining. And this is in DAW format.
if you wanna do this in analog world, it gets a bit more complicated. However, that being said, you put your compressor plugin on your base track and then most compressors, or at least most DAWs, that allow for side chaining because there is one that still doesn't do it. [LAUGHS] Excuse me, what did I just say? [Silence] You set the side chain input to the kick track, which will then trigger the compressor.
And depending on the compressor settings that you give it, it will cause the compressor to either elevate the value of the bass or remove the value of the bass as you were saying, volumetically speaking for the amount of time that the kick is there and triggering that compressor. I'm going to do a couple of things. - Right, when I say having your settings correct, the important parameter to play with there on that compressor, I think, is the release time.
So if you have too long of a release, it might duct up bass for too long and it making it too prominent. Now, in effect, a lot of the EDM and the downscats used to do that, they would set that to a rhythmic value of the song, right? So if you wanted that a little bit more [BLANK_AUDIO] of a pumping kind of effect, you'd have to play with that.
We've already talked about how to set, either you do it by ear, but how to set like millisecond values Right, in a very different episode, so go look it up. to rhythmic values as well. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. Not every compressor is able to do side chaining as well. This is true. So it's one of those things that you have to make sure >> Sure.
that the compressor that you're using, I would venture to say that unless you're using Luna, the standard compressors that come with your DAW are in most cases able to do that. [silence] So that's an important thing and of course with these compressors we don't necessarily have to worry about if this is an analog emulation of anything. We just want that to be a quick ducking of the signal so your standard DAW compressor will do the job just fine.
don't necessarily need to worry about any kind of coloration of that. Right. So Well, you could, but why would you? Because you're already trying to do something that isn't natural anyway. Yeah, essentially, it's meant for this as we're describing this first example to sculpt it's not, "Oh, I wish I could do this, I could do this." But in this usage that we're talking about here, that's not necessarily, at least not in my opinion. There you go.
the bass out of the way so that the kick gets a very prominent value at its time of use. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So, but the one that I probably use more than any other form of sidechaining is on delay What's another use here, sir? Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. returns. So let's say for example, I have a lead vocal or a melodic line, like a guitar line or something, [ Silence ] that I want a heavy echo on, a heavy delay. If that is constant as you're playing or singing, it can just get a wash.
It just kind of tramples over itself. So I would often use the lead vocal in this case, I'll use that case, as a side chain input on the compressor on the return of the delay. [ Silence ] So now what then would happen as the singer is singing, it ducks the delay out of the way a little bit to the value that I choose. And then when the line is done, the delay and the echo raises up to the high level that I want. So that's a kind of, yeah, volume level, yeah. level. Uh huh.
And you go, "Well, why don't you just automate that?" Well, yeah, you could. But this is, to me, a little bit more of a natural way of doing it, because then you don't have to worry about so many little vocal or so many automation rights on the delay. So that's probably the most common way that I use it. What about you? What do you do? I have done this, as you've described, with lead vocals, where you've got a delay line Mm-hmm. >> Right.
of some sort that supposed to tuck in behind the lead and you don't want your lead to be like suddenly Right. engulfed in the delay. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. And in order to get that lead vocal out of the way, use a little side chain on the delay bus and duck it out when the lead vocals actually singing and then it comes up when it's not. That's a good way to do it. And I've done that. I've done the same thing for lead guitar lines and solos and stuff.
Like if the guitar is playing a solo and the delay is becoming too obnoxious Yeah. for the rest of the solo, even though it adds a nice ambiance to the rest of the track. While the guitar is actually playing the notes, I don't necessarily want it to be stuck all over with the delays coming back at it. So I will use a side chain compression to pull that out of the way a little bit. That's another way to do it.
Same idea though, where you've got a delay on a bus return [ and you put a compressor after the delay and you set the input of that delay to the item that you're trying to duck it from. Right. I've actually done a similar thing with backing vocals as well. (mumbles) So you ran them all to a bus. I was recently working on a track where there was a lot of dense, dense vocals going on at the same time as the lead vocal. So it was a very, very heavy vocal track.
And to make sure that they weren't fighting too much, I used the same technique on the backing vocals where I... Yeah. You stuck a compressor on that bus and then you did the side chain input to the lead vocal is what you're saying. Correct. Wow. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. I think you just blew some minds. Oh, I hope not. Right.
I mean, it's just, I can't pat myself on the back 'cause I didn't invent all this kind of stuff, but it was a way to just make room for the lead vocal a little bit more. And it's not a massive ducking that's happening there, Gotcha. but just a couple of dB will allow the lead vocal Well, I've got a question for you. to be as prominent as I wanted to while still having the background vocals there 'cause they were also an integral part of it.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'd like to say yes or no, but to be honest, I don't remember. I'd When you first learned the idea of side chaining, did you suddenly start doing it all the time? Sure, of course. probably, like everything else, is I tried it everywhere, right? And it's, "Oh, this is the coolest things in sliced bread," right? I got to do it everywhere. No, I don't, I
don't do it a lot outside of the sort of cases that I just described. It's not No, and even now I'm thinking of a recent mix that, man, maybe I should have thought something that I do on every mix even. So it was not one of those things that was done in abundance that I can recall. What about you? Is that something that kind of hit you like a ton of bricks and this is what it's all about type of thing? No? Yeah. about adding some side chain to it, but I didn't. Oh, well.
And with that, we're going to take a word from our sponsors. [ Pause ] And we're back and I'm going to dive in a little bit here on a slightly different use of how to sidechain something using a noise gate. [silence] It's not always just a kick or a compressor.
I just pulled out a demo of a song for an artist and I'm going to retool this demo as they look to be probably recording this song and in the middle of it is a special effect that was done using a pure signed synth and I ended up having to do something rather complicated even in a DAW Mm-hmm. [ Pause ]
situation for this to actually work because it's setting up a noise gate to open and close sound that happens in a rhythmic fashion and this is where I think that concept of something you you just mentioned at the top of the podcast where it's like it can improve your timing.
Well, technically speaking in a way it could, [ Pause ] if you set it up to a rhythmic value of what you're doing and you're, I'm using this sine wave synth that is very specifically on the grid plus very specific links for each time it's hit. But then it has to be passed to another bus and then that bus has to have the signal of the sound effect going to it with the compressor triggering back off yet another bus where the output of the synth is set to nil.
Yeah. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to do it when you pull the channel strip down on its own track of the synth Yeah. because then the synth is not there That brings me to 7. and it won't trigger the compressor. So it was required two buses plus an extra synth That brings me to 7. It's 7, it's 2 in order to make this effect work. it's 1. And I hadn't thought about it in a few years Yes, it is 7. C since I originally did it. And I thought, wow, maybe I should try this effect a few more times.
And essentially it is very cool. L of In fact, the way I did it, rod I just forgot that I had done it. And that's why I brought up the fact that it's like, . it's not just compressors. L You can do this with noise gates and maybe a few other things as well, Yeah, absolutely. if they allow for it.
Mm. What you're describing there sounds a little bit of what tended to happen, I think, with a lot of the original hip-hop and rap guys, where they would have that gating thing happen (silence) (silence) to a sine wave to open up when the kick was hitting as well to get that little extra weight Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. on it. Mm-hmm. So you have that really, really low subby kind of sine wave just to add more weight Mm-hmm. to the kick.
I tried to eat 2 eggs in my head, thought to myself "THAT SWITCH DRINKsh Network is infrastructure free!" So that's creative use. I'm also reminded of, and this was one of those experimental things that I was doing at the time, and I think I was really into a lot of dance music at the time. [ Silence ]
Again, there was a gate essentially, where I would have all of these MIDI triggers routed to a synth, again, like it could be a synth pad or something, and then having it close and open in all these different rhythmic values. So you're essentially creating a very specific gate pattern. Now today we have so many like step sequences and stuff and we can just do this automatically. [BLANK_AUDIO]
But it was a cool thing to kind of experiment with in your DAW at that point, where again, much like you were just describing that what you were doing with that demo track. [LAUGH] We can get creative with this kind of stuff as well. However, I will still hold firm to my belief that this has very little to do with your timing as a track. And I think you're much better off redoing the track Sure. if that's the issue. Don't count on side chaining to be able to fix your sloppy timing.
There are some creative uses there that we can use Mm hmm. outside of just kind of ducking something out of the way. We can, with gates, like so. But I think overall with side chaining, I'm thinking of it has to do with compression in some form, or dynamics in some form anyway. Sure. One thing that it's also important to remember Sure. is that when we're using this method with side chaining, some compressors do it internally as well.
And this is something that I know for me was a bit confusing because I was initially always thinking about has to be like an external source that triggers the side chain. Sure. Sure. Sure. But that's not true. You. Some compressors have EQ built into them basically for the detection. Logix stock compressor does this actually remarkably well, where you can have the detection trigger the compression. So you can set that to a certain frequency. Let's say for example, that you have a kick
Sure. You like your kicks, don't you? that's triggering the compressor a little bit too aggressively. You can then roll off some of the low end in the side chain. So that will be out of the detection of the compressor. So it would kick in a little bit later. Man, there was a lot of kick in there, but it would, kicks and triggers, I gotta get my vocabulary correct here. ( audio cuts out) Uh-huh.
But so that you can control that, And if your compressor doesn't technically have this, you can still do this using a side how aggressively that's going to be affected. And. [ Pause ] chain type of effect where you'd run your sonic material to a bus that has an EQ on Yeah. it. And you can set the EQ to whatever set of bands you want.
And then you'd mute that signal out at the end of it, but then you could use that bus as the trigger for the compressor, which would allow you to do some really odd things when it comes to triggering compression. And one thing that might come up is like, yeah, if you're working on a drum loop and the snare is too loud, you could actually have the compressor compress itself Yeah. Yeah. And each compressor that has this sort of functionality works a little bit different.
using just the middle frequencies where the snare is at by the side chain value. And then it would tame that down. That's a little extravagant, but it can happen. Okay. So these are probably going to be very much like blanket statements of this is how you do this. So it will differ a little bit. For example, let's take Logic's compressor and use the drum loop example that you have there. If you have just a stereo drum loop, Okay.
but you feel that the clap or the snare is too prominent, what you can do is dial in the side chain EQ in Logic on the compressor to find that frequency and then have that trigger where it will actually ignore everything else. It's a very, very handy technique if you're handed just a stereo drum track and it paints you in the corner a little bit, so to speak, you can still tweak some things right there.
Well, it's sort of like having a handy dandy multiband compressor that only uses one band in one narrow set of frequencies. We're going outside a little bit of what, Mm hmm. just a sidechaining, but there's many different ways to get a very similar result. So for example, when you started mentioning Mm hmm. like multi-band compressors and things, right? We can also almost get into the gray area of dynamic EQ and that kind of thing as well. So a lot of muddy waters here.
Yes. It can be used to fix things and it can also be used in a very creative way I would say. So, yeah. What are some of the other you've mentioned logic compressor multiple times here. Well, I think it's one of those things What are some of the other compressors that you feel are rather rich in the ability to do this? that there's probably fewer compressors out there You mean, but that's not that's not a clone as in like a hardware unit.
that can do this internal EQ side chain type of thing than most type of compressors, right? I know that the Sonux compressor does it, the Sony Oxford thing. One that was really interesting, I think, is 1176 clone on steroids by Pulsar Audio. It's actually... talking about a clone is in a plug in. There you go. I should probably use the word emulation, right? Where, yeah, as in 1176, it's called the 1178 [BLANK_AUDIO] because guess what? It's more, right? [LAUGH]
So 1178, and that actually has the EQ side chain built in. [BLANK_AUDIO] If that's something that you feel like you want (laughs) in your 1176, that's cool. The Then you can do that. Most 1176 style compressions don't have that, especially if they are emulations of the original hardware. The Purple Audio 1176, but it's called the MC77, because again, it's more, right?
But that one has also a bit of a side chain that I think, and I could be wrong, but I think it's primarily rolling off low end in the detection. Mm-hmm. That would work great on that bass heavy material, of course. Well, I know that there is the ability to use sidechain compression with several of the UA ones in logic Those are the ones that I think of initially. I'm sure there are more, but if I have to use this technique, I would reach for the logic one because it works really well.
Do you have any other ones that you can think on top of your head or? Yeah. But that's because it's logic specific. It's you can't do it in Luna Unfortunately, so in Luna it requires something else. Although I believe they are working on it Fingers crossed.
Hopefully it will be coming quite soon. Yeah coming soon because I know people are So how often do you -- I -- actually clamoring for that wanting that as a function of Luna Fab filters another one that actually comes to mind that you can do that stuff with Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of. They make some great stuff. You know what else? Isotope.
Hmm. Hmm. You got the compressors that come within the ozone bundle or just even their EQ stuff [silence] that has side chaining capability along with their compressors and such. And they have the dynamic EQ which you can set which is kind of like an on the fly side chain ability within an EQ of itself. And even tide has side chain ability within certain dogs that allow it. So there's a lot that are out there.
Yeah, yeah, there are. It's something that the Slate universe, when I say that, I mean, the users have been sort of clamoring for the functionality within the virtual mix rack, which at this point, at the top of the recording, this podcast, it is not existing. So the slates... So it's not existent within itself, but does it work within a DAW?
I don't think so. No. Well, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, for me, it's like it's something that Like let's just say you take a single slate compressor and stick it on a channel strip. Does it still not come up with a side chain thing? Oh, that sucks. It's just like lunar though. It's like, get it done, make it happen. it's so unlikely to happen for me, for my workflow. That doesn't mean that I'm sure there's a ton of Hmm. No, of course not. guys out there that rely on it on every production they do.
But for me, it's such a niche thing where I don't need, and I certainly don't need all the color compressors to do it. Right. And that's why I think it was mentioned earlier in the podcast is like, it's not usually your emulation type compressors that would be doing this kind of thing. And I know that you can't pull up the Line 6 noise gate from Podfarm and set a side But... Right. Hmm. Maybe that's another podcast. Yeah, I was just reminded that when we're talking chain for it. It doesn't work.
It's not how they work that. You're not really side chaining a lot of effects and guitars, are you? It might be. I think I've just come up with another thing to talk about. Yeah, it's the frequency detection, that's a roll off. about analog emulation and it strikes me that it just occurs to me that the LA-2A actually does have it of sorts because it has the detection. I just got the roll off there, right? Yes, that's a different thing though.
Exactly. Yeah, from the detection circuit, right? It's not from the output. It's along the lines of being able to just say, this is where I'd like to kick it in. Let's take some of the bass out kind of thing. Yeah, it's a high pass filter that you can set that would allow for the LA-2A to suddenly say, Yeah. okay, I'm ignoring everything below this particular Yeah, and I believe that actually goes all the way up to 1k if it's fully rolling.
frequency and then once it hits this frequency, I'll start reacting. Yeah, it sounds about right. Yeah, so side chaining, it can be a little bit of a gray area, but I think... Well, there's nothing gray about it. It's just maybe somebody doesn't know that it's a technique that can be used to help solve an issue or create a colorful palette of something new. While I'm thinking in the gray area, I'll go along with that.
Okay. But my way of a gray area was like we're talking about multi-band compressors and dynamic EQs Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. and things like that. That's where the confusion might start. But it's important to think, before somebody goes, you know, we're talking about essentially ducking here. That's not sidechaining, that's ducking. using sidechain to accomplish the task. So that's what's important. But yeah. Of course. All right. And with that, we're going to move on to our Friday finds.
I am actually especially excited today because Spitfire Audio have announced a new instrument Chris, what have you got today? Uh-oh. Is it toxic? called Mercury. And Mercury, if you don't use it right, it is. It is an instrument (chuckles) Mm. that is based on a lot of physical instruments built by this guy called Mm. Chaz Smith. And if you haven't heard of Chaz Smith, you would be fully excused, [ Pause ]
but he builds a lot of esoteric sound design type of instruments. And one of my favorite guys, composers ever, Charlie Clauser uses a bunch of his stuff for his scores with Saw and Hans Zimmer uses his stuff as well and they now have this in virtual instrument form for a lot of really cool spooky kind of stuff so I Hmm. Rock on. was very excited when I realized that so of course that's my Friday fine this week it's Mercury by Spitfire Audio and you what have you got for us?
I came across an interview with Eric Valentine, and he was asked very specifically about how the drums were recorded by Dave Grohl for no one knows for Queens of the Stone Age. And of course, a lot of people would probably speculate that no one knows how they were recorded. But that's not true. Eric Valentine being the mix and recording engineer on that, bada boom (laughs) he was there for the recording value of how Dave Grohl actually did that and what they ended up doing.
The long and short of it is they recorded it in multiple passes for very specific reasons. And if you want to know what those reasons are, go check out the interview with Eric Valentine about Queens of the Stone Age and Dave Grohl on drums at music radar dot com. Yeah. Very cool. You told me about it. We've actually touched on that type of recording before. This is very interesting. It is, it is, it is.
(breathing deeply) While we've got your attention, we ask that you go to inside the recording [ Pause ] studio dot com and sign up for our mailing list. Doing so will get you weekly reminders about the Tuesday tips when they come out. And we'll make sure that you don't miss any future episodes of the podcast. Send us an email at gold star G O L D S T A R at inside the recording studio .com with the words side chain. And you'll get something cool back in your inbox.
If you have a topic or suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact us at the contact page and we'll put it into consideration for a future Thanks for listening, everybody. episode. With that, I'll say, see you next week. Thank you. I'll talk to you later, Jody.