Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Masterclass: Hi, I'm Future Leo. Welcome
to my studio into my masterclass video series. We will be live everything
above side-chain compression. You will learn out to utilize
in your next production. I'm a music producer, good read it in
electronic music and new technologies in the prestige that
Italian conservatory. I've been producing dance
music from a very long time. Many of my songs as
being offshored, supported by artists like marketing areas
suffer many others. Let's dive in to
the masterclass.
2. What is Sidechain ?: What is a side chain? Side chain is a term
that gets used a lot in modern music production is a key part of many common
production techniques, especially in
electronic dance music. But it may not as
easy to understand, say, change if you never
deal with them before. Even if you use the most
common searching techniques, you are probably only scratching the surface of what possible. Using side chains. Chain is essentially
an extra input to an effect per share, sir. That's not part of
its main signal part. Such an inputs are
typically found on dynamics processor like
compressor and the gates. And the int is fx. We said chain signal is fed
to the processor detector circulated to separate from
the signal their fifth axon. And in this setup, the
compression is just listening to the side-chain to decide how to effect
the main signal. The advantage is
that the side chain, it can be processed
differently from the main signal part to get better results
from the effector. And in this way, that might not sound very clear, but the best way to understand the side chain is
through a sample. So let's start right
now to listen. Typical docking,
say chin effects.
3. Sidechain Compression Part 1: To demonstrate is effective, we're going to use this
little setup that consists in our kick track that you're going to do a four on the
floor kick pattern. That is going to
sound like this. Very straightforward, very common in almost
every EDM track. Underneath, I add a clap track that is not necesarily to
the purpose of this video, but I wanted to add a little
bit more rhythmical element. Just textured domain, musical element of this
template is our ped, our synth pad data alone. It sounded like this. If I play it at the same
time with the kicker, you can hear it's very static. Static sounding of paddle
with no rhythmical element. And most important
without the pumping, the pulsating effect you can
hear in the previous video. To do that is very simple, enabled on that a lot
of technique that we are going to see in the
courts of our tutorials. For the first, the
most simple and use just the side-chain compression with utilize the stock
Ableton compressor. So let's go to our
audio effects. Under the Dynamics folder. We can find the
compressor and we can add it to our
synth pad track. Let's go to our default view. There's three view
in the compressor. So you may be in
the default one. To do the side chain. You have to activate the
side chain routing signal. And you can easily do by
clicking on this yellow arrow. You can see it open. I said chin window. To activate it, we need to
click on the side chain tab. In the audio from. We have to select our
side-chain sorts input. So in this case
will be our kick. Let's open the window and
click our kick input. Now, if I click on this headphone button that we make hard to hear
the side chain inputs. We will hear the kick. And also we can see it in the
threshold bars selection. Now, let's mute
this bed for now. For a little bit more
clarity. Let me play. You can hear the difference
because we have to put the threshold point
below Dickey clever. More, we put the
threshold down more, the side chain will be
pronounced. So let's here. It's almost done. You're almost there. We can change some parameters
like the ratio will be, how much the part
will be compressed. For a more stronger feeling, we can augment our ratio
like 10.19 is the same. Maybe let's increase
our output level because when we compress, we reduce the output level to match the regional
before the side chain. For a good searching, we need a fairly fast
attack and release. Not too fast the attack, somebody like one millisecond
will be very good. For release. A very, almost be very depend on the source material because
if you have very long key, maybe we can increase our list. But in this case, 13 milliseconds, 40 will be very good for
the final effect. We can activate now our club. And this is the way, the very simple way
we can do it in Ableton using this
stock compressor.
4. Sidechain Compression Part 2: Let's go for a second example
that is very similar, but in some way very different. And they will let you
understand that we don't need our static grid to make this
side chain works these in. For example, I have the sync IQ, but in a different pattern. It's not foreign
floor is not linear. Whitman and I have a
piano track underneath. Now we're not going to use
the standard compressor, but we can use also
the Glue Compressor, which is an analog emulation
of a very famous compressor. The process is almost the same, so we can expand our
side chain input. Let's select searching
the audio from. We can select our Keq input. Let's just reduce our threshold. You've done it also here. This is a very common
technique user old zone, not also in EDM, but also in the ePub. Production is very, very useful in simple word that
we can describe it as. We're going to make the space for the kick
to breathe through. The, we need to
remember that it is mostly our main important
thing on the track, especially in electronic music. And we need to make
each breath and say, chain is almost the
best way to do it.
5. Sidechain with the Gain: If you need a little
bit more control of the side-chain
amount you're doing. You can also use volume
automation technique. So let's see how we can do it. So we have the same
kick clip pad. And for doing that, we need the utility device in Ableton is almost gain plug-in. Under our audio
effects utilities, we can add the utility device
to the, our pad track. We needed to go in the
automation tab in able to live. Let's select the
automation view. We click on the game. We select the first beat. Like this. We can, instead, we can also
draw our sheep, but for the
side-chain and needs, we can also right-click on the part we'd need
say chin and select. It is wave shape.
We have this one. Now if we hear the result, you can also take a
look to our gain knob. You can hear the
session effect now is a little bit drastic
effect because it start with minus infinity dB
with very, very low level. So we can increase the start
level at, around that point. And now we can simply select our part and duplicate
the rest of our clip. And if we hear right now, we have the side chain effect. This can be very useful in the, maybe the part of the data. We don't have the Keq playing, but we still need our pumping effect because
now if I mute the kicker, the side chain will
still continue to do.
6. Alternative Sidechain Technique: For remaining on this mindset that don't link the kick and
the part at the same time, but still wanting the pumping
effected is using Auto Pan. So let's go to grab our auto
pan and putting on the pad. We can also solve the pylori. Now. We need to sync the auto pan in doing the main BPM and select
our 1 fourth division. We need to increase the
amount for the moment we can put 280% defeats
if very important. To put at 0, we need to select
our cascades shape and we can reverse it. Now, we have
something like this. We are also FR, right
now are pumping effect. But we can do more. We can do, we can play with the shape made very similar to the volume
automation we had before. And we can also play
with the amount. So maybe in subsection
we don't have such in other we can increase it. The very extreme.
7. Creative Sidechain with Effects: In this example,
I wanted to debt. You understand that it's not
necessary to do say chain. We'd kick drum elements and
melodic elements together. But you can use side-chain
in a more creative ways. One very most user from the pro producer mixer engineer is a two, say, chin effects. Like in this example, we are going to side-chain the reverb on this vocal sample. So let's first of
all, let's listen to the dry vocal sound. If I asked you. So it's a very dry vocal. I've set up a reverb sand and with a very long
time of five seconds. And now I can send
these vocal track to my reversible by
increasing the send amount. Right now with fuel sand. I have this very long tale, but you can hear that delivery is almost covering the vocal. I want that. I want to
maintain the Taylor, but I don't want to reverberate when the
singer is singing it. To do that, I can go to my
truck and grab my compressor. Now, I can say chain, the original vocal
signal to just select our vocal track and
reduce our threshold. If I asked you, you can already hear that when
the vocal is singing, you're not hearing
no more the riverbed and only when the vocal fit-out, the reverb tail come out. But now you can also
hear a little bit of stuttering effect because we have a very faster releasing. Let's just increase
the release time at around for other DBT. Second will be fine
here. If I asked you. This is a very common
technique used by many mixing
engineer to clean up the vocal without losing this sense of space
that we usually do. You can also apply this
effect to not only river, but delay, flanging effect
and many other creative ways.
8. Sidechain to make Space in the Mix: Now we're going to
see a technique that make space between
your instrument. For this example, we're
going to make our vocal comes to the mix with
the side-chain compression. So we have our loop, same loop with our vocal. To do that, we're going to
group our instrumental, our pods and base. Let's press Command
G to group book. Let's rename it to instrumental. Now, we are going to take our compressor and it
puts it on the group. Let's activate our researching. And for the input,
we are going to select the vocal track. In this way every time
the vocal heater, we are going to apply Ali, just a little bit of gain reduction to our
instrumental bus. Let's try, maybe let's
reduce the ratio because we need a very
gentle compression. If I asked you if I asked you, if I asked you if it is way, we have just a little bit of gain reduction that
permit our vocal to come two more,
two in the mixed. This is especially useful
when we have a lot of instrumental track in
the same frequency range.
9. Dynamic EQ and third party plugins: For the final part of
this masterclass video, we're going to see some
other methods to do say, chaining that is
not possible with only using stock
Ableton effects, but we are going to use only free third party plugin
as the first example. We had bass track to our loop. We are going to use
our dynamic EQ. For these purposes,
we are going to need the TDR Nova, which is free. You can load on the bass track. And right now, if we play, we hear the bass is just static
with no pumping effected. To do a little bit more precise and located
the side-chain, we can use our dynamic EQ. What dynamic EQ does is
when they keep heater, only 13 banded on dQ
will gain reduction. The base frequency of the base, sorry for the repetition. To do that, we just use
the side of the chin. The session inputs in the
device enabled them to select our kick
source. On the plugin. We're going to select it
as a side-chain is source, the external side chain, the side chain that
comes from Ableton. Right now. We don't
hear any different because we can we needed
to adjust our acute level. So let's go to our first acute. At around 100 hertz
will be fine. We can select a
different shape of the acute are low shelf
in the details. And now we can activate how a threshold that will act exactly as in the compressor. Let's start our track and
reduce the threshold. And you can visually see that
as we reduce the threshold, only the first band will move. We can adjust those
to the queue. It this way we say chain only the frequency they are interacting
with each other on the kick and the bass and lead all the high frequency of
the base comes to the mix. Another way to do with etc. Plugin is using an
envelope follower. Let's keep our best
truck is example. We can use another free
plug-in called towel filter to get is very useful
because you can draw your automation shape. Let's select the volume. So this is a shape with this envelope will
control our volume. We can do something very similar to what do we do
with the automation. We needed to select
our 16 multiplier. And now we can just simply
draw side-chain envelope. We can listen the result is very useful because you can adopt these envelopes
to the sound. You are going to side chain.
10. Class Project: For the class project,
I asked you to make our simple full bar loops with our main kick that will
control all the side chain. And the other at least
two musical elements, like a pad or obese as what
do we want that user to? Different technique that we covered in this
video to side-chain. If you want, you can also
add the vocal sample to experiment with the
side-chain reverb technique.
11. Thank You for Watching!: So for this master cast, hope you enjoy and hope
you learned something. I highly recommend you to try these techniques in all
your future production. Thank you again.
See you next video.
Future Leo, Record Producer
