AA3 - Week 6 - Production "Outside The Square" (3)

Sidechaining is not something I have had a use for, perhaps because I never really knew what context to use it in. For this week's exercises, I used some samples from the Mac library. Each MP3 has an untouched sample followed by the... touched... sample...

1. I tested out sidechaining a gate, so I used a percussive sound (trumpet honks) to control the gate on a continuous sound (a bass synth). After boosting the Threshold and extending the Hold time, I had added a pseudo-bassline to the trumpets.

2. I extended this idea to an actual percussion sound (a drum loop) and used the same bass as before. I used the low pass filter on the sidechain controls so only the lower sounds of the drum loop would open the gate for the bass. While this worked, it sounded a bit dodgy.

3. I then used a (good sounding) drum loop to control the gate on a didgeridoo sound. Only sounds below 89Hz opened the gate, meaning only the kick drum had any effect. I had to play around with the ratio, release and threshold, but I eventually made it sound like someone was actually playing the didgeridoo rhythmically. Finally, I swapped the gate for a compressor, and made the didgeridoo turn down dramatically on each kick drum hit. The result is very Daft Punk, and I can't wait to find a use for it.

BenAAwk6.ZIP 712KB