> What started out as a rare mix technique designed to add glue between specific sounds has become, without question, the most popular audible compression technique ever, and much like extreme pitch correction, is often overused. That said, things have clearly moved on from the early days, and applied with care, the process can add life and energy to your tracks without killing the dynamics.
But what exactly do we mean by the term sidechain compression? In fact, all compression actually uses a sidechain, it’s just that it normally comes from a split of the compressor input signal itself, and this is why the compressor reacts to the input. However, if we can use an external signal of our choice to instigate the compression, then it opens up a whole world of creative opportunities as the compressor will apply the dynamics of the external signal to its own input.
Of course DAW flexibility allows us to be quite specific with how we set this up and allows us to not only process specific tracks or subgroups, but also create bespoke sidechain blends. Throw in some automation as well and we have a highly flexible way to shape dynamics.
Here we’ll show you how to set up a typical pumping sidechain compression effect, suggesting routings and basic settings. Then we’ll look at how to finesse it and make it do what you want. Finally, although the focus of this tutorial is compression, if you’re simply after a rhythmic pumping effect, this can be created in other ways, and there are even some bespoke plugins (CableGuys Kickstart 2 for example) that do this. With this in mind, we’ll finish up by looking at one specific and quite simple technique that can create sidechain compression pumping effects.