Side-chaining things other than Bass/Drums in your mixes?!!?

[logancircle]

Do you use key-input/side-chain techniques for elements of your mix other than the rhythm section? I've just started using this for kick/bass ducking, but I'd like to know what other creative uses you all have found. THANKS!

[Recycled_Brains]

I posted this in another thread a while back:

I've started using expanders for the first time recently. 2 nights ago, I added an expander to a room mic track, keyed by the snare drum, so that when the snare is hit, the room mic gets louder by about 6db or so. I then compressed the 'expanded' room track with a fast attack, but not too much GR. Just enough to bring out the sustain a bit. It's a really cool effect. The snare has a nice bloom to it.

[logancircle]

That sounds like a cool experiment to try. More?!

[ashcat_lt]

I can remember a couple threads about creative uses for side-chains. Not to say utsf, but...

I have used sidechaining as a kind of half-assed envelope control. Run signal through effects into expander. Run clean copy of track into side-chain. Tweak the expander carefully. The effects get louder when original signal does. To smooth or blur the action, you can patch a reverb into the side-chain signal as well.

I remember an article in GuitarWorld a while (like 15 yrs) back describing how "dream pop" folks were using keyed-gates for funky tremelo effects. Might be neat to try that with the gated signal detuned, for a vibrato type thing. hmm....

Course then there's always de-essing and other forms of freq dependant processing.

[joninc]

yeah - i was gonna say - i use frequency dependent compression on "hard" sounding vocals fairly often.

[DupleMeter]

So many possibilities with side chains.

[1] compress the guitars from the vocal track to get the guitars to jump out between verses and phrases.

[2] along the same idea - compress BG VOX from the lead VOX to keep them all feeling very cohesive and like they're following each other dynamically.

[3] this one works best with reggae or heavy bass led genres: compress the gtrs & keys from the bass...but very lightly. Just so it feels like the GTR/KEYS are pulling back a hair when the bass digs in.

[4] Compress your reverb return from your VOX channel (Lexicon has preset for this on their HW units).

and then mix & match all kinds of ways to find interesting sounds.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

if you compress loud guitars off the drums you can sorta get an MBV thing going.

[cgarges]

Here's one I did the other day:

I'm working on a new record for the TOMB's own David Tomaloff and he wants a kind of live feel with ambience that sounds like leakage from other open mics in the room. We've been using Trouble by Ray Lamontange as a template and we both like the thuddy drum sounds that are basically mono, planned to the left, where the drums on the right are basically what leaked into the acoustic guitar mic.

With that in mind, I set up to get a good, thuddy, mono drum sound, which I panned to the left, then set up a few other mics in places where I might have people singing and playing guitar close to the drums. That alone was close to what I wanted, but when I soloed those mics and the scratch acoustic guitar track that David sent me, it wasn't quite convincing by itself. So, I sent the scratch acoustic guitar track to one side of a Summit compressor (on which I linked the channels), but didn't hook up the return from the acoustic guitar channel (so there was no compression occurring on the acoustic guitar itself). I sent the closest drumkit ambient mic to the other side of the compressor and let the acoustic guitar linkage do all of the gain reduction work. The result was an ambient drumkit track that sounded much more like real bleed, even though the two instruments were recorded weeks apart in two different time zones. I think we'll keep using that technique for most of the record.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[logancircle]

That's what I'm talking about, that's awesome!