From the course: Real Recording School Weekly

Bass sidechained from kick drum - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: Real Recording School Weekly

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Bass sidechained from kick drum

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- Sending a signal from the kick drum and having it control the compressor on an electric bass track is a mix trick I've always heard a lot about, but I have honestly experimented with it very little on my own. To set this up, I'll first put a send on the kick drum track. Make sure to set the send pre-fader so that if you solo the bass, the kick send is still being sent and will affect the compressor we will use. Then put the compressor on the bass track and assign the key input to the bus you were sending from. In proper studio parlance, this should be labeled "Side-Chain Input" but I guess the Pro Tools people don't know this. You'll need to engage what's actually called Side-Chain, forcing it to replace the audio of the bass track, the detector signal that the compressor reacts to. By setting this up, we can cause the bass to dip where the kick drum hits. (full track plays) You'll see here with a high threshold, there's not much happening. But as we lower it... It starts to get kind of weird. Now if we tighten up the release quicker, and relax the threshold... We start to get to a point where we can actually sculpt the bass guitar a little bit. What we're doing is scooping the bass out, you'll hear some of this. A little overt, relax it a little more. So now every time (music stops) That you hear the kick drum, the bass is dipping out a little bit. What that allows is, to get a little more low-end into the mix. We can pump both of these up a little hotter. They're not hitting at the same time. We're going to get a little more kick drum poking through the bass guitar track in the low end, we're going to be able to put a little more of both in the mix. And we're going to be able to allow the mix to feel a little more dynamic if we do it very carefully. It's kind of a fun trick and now that I messed with it here, I'm probably going to be using it a lot more. And I think it'll be something that'll be helpful in certain styles of music and everything. You can see how this trick could be used to make the bass guitar duck with the kick drum hit and allow a handoff of low frequencies between the two parts of the mix. As you problem solve your own mixes, you'll find uses for this technique that can be subtle or over the top.

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