
This method can also be used to prevent kick drums from overpowering bass in the mix. Experimenting here will reward you with vocals that sit much better in the mix and are much clearer to listeners. To solve the issue, you could group the strings and backing vocals together on a bus (or even on a bus for each), add a compressor to the bus, then use the sidechain input from the lead vocal to duck those instruments whenever the vocals comes in.Ĭompression lowers the volume of instruments being compressed, so you would adjust the release time here to allow the instruments to come back up in volume right after each vocal phrase or word ends. For example, you might have a mix that sounds great but the lead vocal is getting lost amid the strings and backing vocals. The compressor still goes on the track that you want to modulate and is fed by a track that triggers the compressor. In this case, the difference is that you’re using a compressor. Now you can lower the volume fader for the trigger track all the way down – et voila! Now you can have a gate trigger without an annoying cowbell track in the mix – unless you like that sort of thing… Duck for coverĭucking is another common use of the sidechain function. This allows you to use the send slider to adjust the volume of the signal being sent to the gate. On the send of the track you’re using as the sidechain, just click the pre/post-fader icon and select pre-fader. What if you don’t want to hear the track that’s being used to trigger the gate? Simple. But it’s easier to apply these effects to audio tracks than to instrument tracks, although it’s possible to do this on instrument tracks too. This requires listening to the processed track while adjusting the parameters.Ĭareful tweaking of these parameters can lead to interesting results. The key to success with this type of processing is to get the attack and release times just right.

One of the coolest tricks that can help add life and movement to stale pads, especially in dance music, is adding a gate as an insert on a pad or string track and using some kind of rhythmic track to feed the gate’s sidechain input.

Technically, the audio through the sidechain input adjusts the threshold of the processor, which, in turn, affects the audio on the track where the processor exists. For example, you can feed the audio from a hi-hat track into a gate on a simple pad track to give the pad a choppy, rhythmic quality.

Yanking your chainĪ sidechain is an input into a processor, and allows you to use one track’s audio to trigger a processor on another.
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These sidechain functions can be harnessed via several of the effects in Studio One 5, including gate, compressor and various effects such as autofilter, channel strip, expander, fat channel, multiband dynamics, pro EQ, and Tricomp. In this tutorial, we’re highlighting a couple of techniques that can really add interest to your tracks using a gate and the sidechain functions in Studio One. We might have an idea that sounds good but there are certain techniques that can turn ‘good’ into ‘excellent’. Broadly speaking, music production can be understood as taking a musical theme or idea and turning it into something interesting.
