Music production tutorial: Simple Kick & Bass Sidechain 🎹

🎹 What is sidechain?

In simple words, sidechain is when you make one sound that interfere with another sound volume up only when the other one is not playing. In other words, one sound is played in present time and other sound come after the one is finished.

It does not mean that one sound needs to be completely volume down in order to other one volume up. It is matter of taste and "what sounds better"

🎹 Why would I sidechain kick & bass?

Both of this instruments take a lot of space in low frequencies so when played one on another they interfere and it often times sounds muddy, so you will have a problem mixing them.

This simple trick helped me so much and saved me tons of time and I think all producers should know to use this.

🎹 So...how do I sidechain kick & bass?

Since I use Studio One v3 I will show you how to do it in this DAW. But it is all same in other DAWs so you don't need to worry ;)

🎵Step 1.

Find good kick that you want and make simple 4/4 beat.

🎵Step 2.

Find the bass that you want and make your bassline

🎵Step 3.

Make volume automation of the bass. The shape of automation curve should be like this. So when the kickdrum hits. bass should be down in volume and then go up. You can set up volume automation in every DAW.

🎵Step 4.

Play with automation curves to get best results. You should be using your ears because there is not formula for this, you need to see what sounds better ;)

🎹 You should get something like this :D

And thats about it. I hope you learned something new and stay tuned for more tutorials. There is couple more tricks I want to learn you. ;)

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