First of all, Sidechain or ducking is the act of compress a sound by using a second source for accomplish the job. It is used in House, Trance, Ambient and the like. however, you can use it to give creative effects in instruments like electric bases, or synthesizer pads. You may know in GNU/Linux, specifically in LADSPA and LV2 plug in format there is only one compressor that acquire this effect, the Scott Harris' SC3 Compressor. For this tutorial, we will need three important components:
- ·Ardour 2 or 3 (Version do not matter)
·SC3 Compressor (LV2 or LADSPA)
·A 4 on 4 kick and a WhiteNoise sample (For purposes of example of this method)
After we created the tracks, open Ardour's mixer. As you may know, mixer we'll be plain and square. Just the two tacks we have created:
Now, create a 3 channel Bus. This one will be named "Sidechain", as this:
You may wonder, Why 3 channels instead of 2?, Mainly because SC3 has three inputs. Channel 1 activates the Sidechain and Chanels 2 and 3 are the simple stereo outputs you connect to the next part of the chain. With this is mind, we need to remember the next mantra:
"Channel 1 excites, Channels 2 and 3 receive"
As this, we go to the Bus, and we insert the SC3 compressor after the Fader:
As personal taste, I always use it after the fader. However you can put it before the fader. It is just a personal thing. Later on, we need to set the "Aural Position" (Dunno if this is the correct name, correct me if I'm wrong). We go to the blue circle alike graphic and right click on it. We select the "Reset" option. It should be like the following picture:
After we did this, we can route al the signals to the bus in order to get the SideChain working. So, go to the kick channel strip and create a mono send to the bus:
We just need on side of the kick, It is not necessary to use both. This kick needs to be connected to channel one. Remember the Mantra?, well you need to follow it with no hesitation. Now, we route the WhiteNoise from the channel strip towards the Bus. So we open Ardour's patchbay and route it to channels 2 and 3 of the bus, like this:
Important!!!, The outputs of the instrument that is going to be SideChained must be disconnected from the master. Why this? We do it in order to avoid distortion and "double listens" or phase problems. The output should look like this:
The output chain must follow this route: "Instrument -> Bus with SC3 -> Master"
Finally we can play with SC3 at the bus, We tweak the sliders in order to reach a good SideChain effect:
We set:
- ·Attack Time: 2.00ms
·Release Time:2.000ms
·Threshold Level: -30.00db
·Ratio: 10.000db
·Knee radius: 10.000db
And as simple as this, we have a bus doing SideChain from a third source in no less of ten minutes. You can do very crazy stuff with this like stacking more busses in order to get a more aggressive effect, or for letting a nice ducking touch to your synth pads (As deadmau5 and other Progressive House producers do) or for more simple thing like ducking electric basses in any kind of genres.
But, all this must be showed up. This is the project without doing SideChain:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19463730/Sound ... ession.wav
And here, it is the sidechained version of the project:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19463730/Sound ... ession.wav
And, as a musical example, you can remit to one of my songs called "Tormenta Electrica", specifically at 4:17. This is the very first time I used SC3 for SideChain purposes.
http://soundcloud.com/irwincespedes/tor ... a-original
In order to finish, I'll let you the Ardour project for personal study http://www.mediafire.com/?uf3xdgvw2467xb1 and the gallery with better definition http://goo.gl/uRuoe
And with this, I finish this pictographic tutorial. I hoped you liked it and put it into practice in your following projects. Cheers and happy symphony with GNU/Linux!
P.d. You may wonder where's the sounds? Well, Im kinda new here and I don't know why the board does not let me attach mp3 or ogg files... I must read more in here.