The most painless way to sidechain compress kickdrum to other instruments?

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Firstly, I apologise if this has been covered a million and 1 times already :)

I know there are simple plugins like Kickstart and Wave's Pumper etc that you can just slap on a group bus channel and apply volume pumping, but these are locked into 4/4 timing variations - so they are basically glorified tremolo or stutter effects.

I'm looking for the simplest way to really get it happening organically where the sidechained channel reacts/ducks in realtime to the incoming signal of the kick. I know it will involve some level of routing.

Previously I've done it in a very roundabout way directly in the DAW but this involves invisible (muted) kick channels and a mess of routing. I've also done it through my own bus channel volume automation which gives me huge flexibility but is obviously very painstaking and timeconsuming.

Is there anything that takes the pain out of this process? Trackspacer, LFOtool, VolumeShaper etc?

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Any compressor with side-chain input. Place it on the track you want pumped & side-chain your kick into it. Or have I misunderstood your question? It depends a lot on your DAW - it's pretty easy in Logic.

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Is there any that accepts midi input so I can trigger it that way?

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Which DAW are you using? Almost sounds like it doesn't support sidechain. Usually, the point of sidechain is exactly that you don't need a midi trigger, or anything, but the compressor is triggered by an audio track (in most cases the kick track), and the compression can be applied to any track. It's very easy to set up in Studio One for example, in Cubase (Artist version and upwards, Elements doesn't support sidechain at all), you'd need a VST3 sidechain capable compressor plugin though.

Here's a tutorial for Studio One 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZkZ9vtmaGg

Ok, it automatically does the routing for you, that's also why it's so easy to set up there, but, should be easy enough in any host which supports sidechaining too. And, you can then easily apply it to any track too.

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Keep seeing/reading "pointless" instead "painless". :lol:

On second taught, that would be interesting thread. :lol:
This entire forum is wading through predictions, opinions, barely formed thoughts, drama, and whining. If you don't enjoy that, why are you here? :D ShawnG

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VolumeShaper and LFO Tool both accept MIDI to trigger the ducking.

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I was going to suggest faking it with VolumeShaper. You get perfect control over the shape and timing that way, and it's extremely easy to just carve out low frequencies for the kick and leave the rest alone if that's what you want to do.

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MogwaiBoy wrote:Is there any that accepts midi input so I can trigger it that way?
Yes, Fabfilter Pro-C2. But it doesn't respond to the velocity of the midi notes.

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