🤔Did Oliver react to Kenny's "Stop Using Sidechain As A Bandaid" video? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d5QxBjipvMg.html My Guess is yes.
Yes absolutely. I hate the ”never do this” type of videos. Those type of people usually overstate some weird principle, or don’t know how to do something properly. For example: kick+bass sidechain needs to be very short. Oliver achieved it with using a separate key track. I usually high pass filter the sidechain signal in the logic compressor, that way only a short snap of the kick is the trigger.
I love that he just went in to 'solve' the debate. I alway's think that the top producers are waaaaaayyy to nitpicky with the sounds while the consumer really doesn't care at all.
Oliver tracks are cleaner and smack harder than anything Kenny has ever made. Number one rule of music: if it sounds good, it’s good. Keep doing you my guy.
Completely agree with the premise of this video, the end result is key, but if you're working in a genre where loudness matters a lot, the method you choose will impact the mastering stage quite a bit.
Everytime i come back to a sol state video i just think about all the time that was wasted looking at youtube videos before sol state. Sol stateeeeee 🐐
My favorite method is dynamic EQ sidechaining. Linking Fab Filter Pro Q 3 on a kick to Fab Filter Pro Q 3 on an 808, finding where the fundamental frequency of the kick is, and matching that with the 808, and having the 808 duck right there upon the input of the kick. Another way to do something similar would be with a plugin like Wavesfactory Trackspacer, and dialing in a frequency band on the 808 where the fundamental root of the kick is, and having that duck on the 808.
I don’t generally make this kinda music, usually rock and metal, but the dynamic eq sidechain is my favorite for rock. I set a relatively narrow band right at the fundamental of the kick and put the eq on the bass. That way, the kick punches the fundamental out of the bass. It keeps the bass heavy and big and present, and it makes the kick sound thunderous.
When I saw that he used a tiny “click” sound as the SC source, I thought “ah! he figured it out!” haha… Regardless of what effect is desired, I always use the same “click” sound for external SC routing because then it will always work the same on everything - if you use the actual kick drum sample then you immediately complicate the method because the compression release will now be delayed by an unpredictable value, plus the SC volume will also change depending on the program material - meaning the threshold will have to be adjusted too. He’s also right that ALL the methods work in different situations - the only one I’d be cautious of is the MB sidechain which often creates a subtle “phasey” effect which can be hard to workaround even switching to linear phase mode since the former creates phase artefacts and the latter creates pre-ringing 😩 Good video!
You can adjust the length of the volume ducking with the release control in the compressor. This isn't very practical if your actual kick keeps changing volume though, but a lot of kicks have a bit of a "wobble" in their volume (because the transient isn't always very short and sharp) which leads to ducking that also wobbles. If you use a short sound to trigger the side chain compressor, the release control makes the volume change more smoothly.
Working with good musicians, I learned some of the best bass players that I worked with just played a little late when the kick hits, that’s my favorite way is just move the 808 or bass a little late so they don’t hit exactly. Also sound selection
If your working with midi and have your samples in a sampler Adjust the decay of the kick and the attack of the 808 until they gel well together. Helps if the kick is same key as the 808.
Just a big THANK YOU for going through all the streams, fishing out the gems, editing it in a brilliant way and making it available to everyone. ♥️ While I really enjoy watching full musical streams, I hardly find the time to do so anymore. So, this is appreciated so much!
The limiter thing works, but that comes at the cost of altering the kick sound, which is not always wanted. Some fried-up trap beats might want it, but you still can achieve it by clipping the kick individually and sidechaining the 808.
Something I liked sometimes aswell is using TrackSpacer, keeps your Kick tonally there and your 808 can come back quite nice (needs some tweaking tho). Just as an additional method :) (its basically multiband SC)
The whole "edm pump" stigma people try to put on sidechaining to make it seem bad is just a matter of shortening the release. It's the most efficient way since each kick and 808 is different you'll waste time getting the eq right when you can just sidechain real quick and get a consistent result.
If you wanted to give yourself the most flexibility in how you tweak each individual hit, you could use the phase alignment method on multiple 808s at different pitches, and load the lot into a sampler. Is it worth it? Maybe.... once you have the samples made, you can run them on any sampler by just loading up a patch, so it could be worth the time to set it up. Excellent tutorial!
This is my favorite digital eq! I mentioned in another comment that in rock and metal music, I use a narrow q dynamic eq to have the kick “punch” its fundamental out of the bass. I always use F6 to get that. Also, I’ve tried putting several narrow bands, one at the fundamental of the kick, one at the first harmonic, and one at the fundamental of the snare. That works pretty good too
Here's a use Trick that I came up wid, where you have to use shaperbox on 808 n kick(Vertically inverted) at the same time on *Trigger Mode*...by triggering them at the same time using *midi trigger* to avoid bowtie'ing(peak) cuz you cutting out the tail of your kick n it'll make it sound so smooth n yu can also split the frequencies to make *specific Attack n release* time for different frequency bands...n sometimes while you changing the note of your 808 can cause some bowtie'ing...to Avoid that you can *invert the phase* of you kick while it hit that particular note by automating phase inversion on n off...it's more like *phase align* method with some extras control over your sidechain
that's basically the phase-align method with the pro of having kick and 808 on separate channels but having to do extra clicks on both tracks to fine-tune it.
1)Sidechain without compressor: Simply turn down the volume of the 808 manually wherever the kick and the 808 are on top of each other in the pattern. 2) Looking for a kick with the same root note as that of the 808, this is the best sounding ate and easiest method. Greetings from Germany
best method is to use a midi triggered gate on the 808, like envelover. it has perfect timing precision and a clean modulation with precise adjustments easy to accomplish
great video. In the end it is really a flavor thing. I must say I like the phase version the most. In a way in this example it sounds more "sidechained" than the sidechained version itself haha. For me it's a stylistic technique so it's nice when it's really heard. Like the bass has been stopped for a short while before continuing, giving extra momentum to the groove.
Just find a kick and 808 that work nicely together. Layer them, optionally you could try to get a "more optimal" phase relationship between the two by shifting them around, flipping the phase etc. The "phase-alignment" he demonstrates is just a crossfade, has very little to do with what is commonly referred to as phase-alignment. That is when you try to change the combined sound of two elements by shifting them around in very small amounts (often on the level of samples) flipping their phase/reversing polarity etc to try and get a "more favourable" phase relationship. Apart from that you just need to do some decent gain staging in your chains and make sure you're not clipping your masterbus and you should be fine honestly. Kick and bass have worked together for decades. If you're experiencing issues with them, you could either give them their own space in the frequency spectrum, and/or you make sure they have a nice phase relationship in which they reinforce eachother tastefully. Sidechaining is a technique that can be used, but unless it's a standard in the genre you're working in, it would rarely be my first choice. One last thing, subtle sidechaining, either frequency-specific or just in very small amounts with tasteful attack and release settings can really work well in a lot of situations. I use it on quite a few elements when mixing. To me it can almost act as some sort of very subtle fader-ride, and can really get your mix moving a little bit if it's done very subtly and in combination with other techniques such as automation etc.
One last tip could be to shorten your kick. The kick is used to get punch, it doesn't have to last long. By shortening the kick when layering it on top of the 808, it will just be there for some nice punch and not interfere with the rest of the 808
Kick and bass have worked together for decades, but they used to be tuned or filtered higher than they are today with modern bass-heavy music. Mixing a kick drum with an 808-style sub-bass is quite a modern phenomenon. Since there is a taste for these sounds, rather than the old fashioned idea of keeping kick and bass entirely separate in the frequency ranges, sidechaining or fake sidechaining has evolved to prevent the issues caused by having two instruments sharing the same frequencies in a way that can cause phasing or distortion problems.
I mean, you didn't have tracks that had kick and bass fighting over the 55Hz region back in the '80s, because no one listened to some with loads of sub-100Hz bass. When most music was made for vinyl and radio play on cheap transistors, all the low end was rolled off, so you wouldn't have even been able to hear the lowest sounds from an 808 or a clubby kick.
Wehbba show in some video that if you use a combination it might sound more natural than one tool, he uses a volume automation like kickstart and a sidechain after, both shaving just a bit
Artists with great knowledge and understanding would always say, "There's no right or wrong way to do music, sometimes things work sometimes they don't work"
This is how music should be done: Deciding what you as a musician think sounds good and roll with it. Not just blindly slapping effects or production techniques, because you watched a tutorial.
You know what would be really nice? A plugin that isolates only the frequencies that are amplified by summing the two sounds and limits only those frequencies.
@@MiljanaFabio That works really well but I'm talking about something even more precise. Multiband is really just either highpass, lowpass, or bandpass with the crossovers set precisely, however the sounds themselves are more complex than a region on the spectrum. There are plugins that can do it but you have to compensate for quite a bit of latency. I'm talking about something that can isolate specific frequency collisions like a good multi-track analyzer can with very little latency. I would just do it myself but I don't know a lick of C++ or any language and it's not exactly an easy task even for someone who does.
Yes, this is why you use multiband to sidechain only frequency you want, in this case low/sub frequency that would interfere with your kick and therefore make your mix muddy and cause other problems like clipping, distorted sound etc. This is more desirable technique if you use it on the instruments with more high frequency information like leads and bass.
Yeah. You often only really want to reduce the volume of the (low end) 808/bass because that's where you get phasing issues where the two sounds either add together and cause distortion, or cancel each other out and create that wobbly/phased sound that lacks power. You might want the higher frequencies of the 808/bass to pass through unchanged because they don't clash with the kick, and you want the listener to still feel/hear that the bass is there, but you don't need the lower end of the 808/bass to mix with the kick during the transient portion, since it can clash with it in a way that doesn't sound good or that messes up the volume level.
For those who aren't aware sidechain doesn't mean having a volume pumping effect. It just merely means to duck one sound in terms of volume when another sound is playing. I multiband sidechain so that my sidechain isn't really audible and just lets my kick and snare not be covered by mud. If you're not going to sidechain the entire sound then at least sidechain the sub bass.
Using multiband makes logical sense to me, as it's only the clashing low frequencies that need to duck out ofthe way of the kick's transient, but it's just an extra bid of fiddling with an extra plugin that you have to do. I'm sure it's worthwhile to do once you've got the knack of it though.
And the issue to begin with was? All of these methods are going to work entirely different depending on your audio sources and they’re all valid. If this is based on the Kenny beats video he was largely talking about stylistic choices and how “popular stuff right now is using no kick layer so kick layers r bad” which is an asinine dodging-question-point to begin with
Shouldn't the sidechained ones be turned up in volume so the peak matches the peak of the dry one? I feel like the sidechained ones sound worse but only because they're not level matched. And why is the dry one clipping in the first place, of course that's going to make it sound better. This really didn't solve shit for me.
Everything in this video is level matched that's the whole point, the dry is louder because the kick and 808 together double the lowend frequencies. If that same kick was playing with the 808 it would be much quieter, make sense?
It sounds totally bad with that distortion on the transient and after during the body of the kickdrum, if somehow u find that nastiness in ur mix, feel free to use it but that is the worst possible thing you coulr do. This guy just wants no haters to comment but he would never use a limiter
@@RP-vq4wd I use side chaining at times but its personal choice. Kick is transient. There are no rules and if it sounds good it sounds good. If you care so much about the transient then your power of your kick must be lacking. If you don't know how to mix the sounds then thats your problem and not mine. I make EDM music and hiphop beats so im a bit of a nerd. Thanks for your feed back but instead go make your own music and stop telling others what not to do. Good luck on your music production.
To the general listener of music, they would not hear a difference with basically any of these, nor would they even care, they just want a track to sound good. I think you just do whatever you like for your workflow because whether you sidechained or you phase aligned your kick and 808, it will not make a single difference on how many plays your song gets.
They might not consciously hear or notice a difference, but unconsciously they will feel it, definitely when dancing in clubs with bass-heavy sound systems. People have come to expect a certain punch, pump, rumble or whatever is appropriate for the specific genre, even if they don't really realize it. That being said, songwriting, recording, production, arrangement etc will all make an arguably way bigger impact on the overall track than the kick and bass relationship, but it's something that you can definitely not overlook. Producers and mixing engineers have been crafting techniques and styles for how the low-end elements interact for years, and some even have clients coming in almost purely based on how they handle the relationships between these low frequency elements. It's definitely not something you just want to toss to the side, but also probably not something you want to pay too much attention to when you're in the creative flow of a session.
