Sidechaining in Drum and Bass Explained 

Yeah me too, they are fun to make and take less time for me as well. More will be coming soon!

WE!! Like this type of short tutorial! Very nice lesson of sidechain

You're welcome my friend!

yo wtf you doing here boi

Dope Arty

Not yet, but just keep an eye on my channel I guess lol

It’s called Sidechain

Any compressor that has a sidechain input.

anything works as a sub in dnb, be creative! organic subs ftw

It dosn't have to be a pure sinewave :p Especially when making heavier DnB it will sound weird and less powerful if the sub is just a clean sinewave. Generally you're gonna want the sub to kina distorted. Also an 808 is just a distorted sine wave anyways. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (with a pitch envelope gliding down of course)

you can just make a reese and apply a very deep low pass filter

and also split the sub and bass frequencies so you have more freedom in terms of sidechaining but i dont know if splitting the frequencies i s any good so correct me if im wrong

I am an Ableton user, so no I won't make tutorials for other DAWs, there are already plenty of other people doing that.

This all depends on the length of the kick/snare and how much it interferes with the rest of the track. By keeping the trigger short, you can use the release to dial in the right length.

@@artfxdnb Sorry but I don't really get it. If I have a kick sample that is f.e. 100ms, my release time of the bass also needs to be 100ms right? If my release time is shorter, it interferes with the last part of the kick sample. Or is the trick to blend the kick and bass together till it sounds good? What is really the advantage of the short sidechain trigger? (Sorry if im noob)

@@sebastiaanbosker1199 Well you just answered it yourself, it needs to sound good and that should always be the main focus. Most of the time you don't need to remove the bass completely during the entire duration of the kick since a lot of kicks will decay in volume over time. Also, more often than not the actual clashing part is not the tail of the kick, but the transient failing to punch through the bass, and thus it's much shorter than the kick itself. Often just sidechaining the bass for the duration of the transient can already clean a track up enough, and if you then play with the phase of the kick, you can align it so the tail of the kick is aligned with the sub and thus not clash as much. The reason why a short trigger is important, is because the length of the trigger determines the shortest possible sidechain you can do, if you trigger is 20ms, you will never be able to do a shorter sidechain than that. If your trigger is 1ms, and you need a sidechain of let's say 10ms, you could raise the release on the compressor to 9-10ms and it should work pretty well. The best however is to actually create a trigger with the length you need, so if you have a 10ms long kick transient (which is clashing the most with the bass), make your trigger about 9-10ms long with full sustain and almost no release (the release will add a little extra time so that's why I would say maybe try a little shorter than what you need). You should now have a trigger sound that is the same length as the transient in the kick. Now sidechain using that and the sidechain will act like a short 10ms 'hold' basically, ducking everything away, and then you can use the release to dial in how long it takes for the sidechain to reset after the sidechain trigger was finished. This then allows you to blend the tail of the kick with the bass coming after it.

@@artfxdnb Wow. I understand it. Thanks a lot for the explanation!! :)

When layering drums one of the most important thing is phase alignment, you can't visually see the phase alignment when working in MIDI unless you use some tool like an oscilloscope. When you work in audio you can visually see the phase of the drum samples and thus aligning them properly would not require any extra tools.

@@artfxdnb thank you!

Only if you call me senpai...

I have no clue what you just said, your sentences made not much sense, sorry. Sidechaining and volume shaping are two ways to achieve a similar thing and they are both good, pick what you prefer.

@@artfxdnb when u layering kicks u must allign its phase, same if u have a kick u must allign kick and snare phase if the hit at the same time. if ya use a compressor in sidechain it doesn't kill to infinite, so the shaped area is dirty, it leaves a tail, all compressors do it. if ya have so many sounds hit on kick and snare u will have so many tails of other sounds that ruin the attack / needed part of kick snare, so creates mood, so after u often need to rework kick and snare with other stuff. try to resample some stuff u sidechain with a compressor u will see that tail, there isn't a way to kill to infinite with a compressor. sidechaining with volume shaper in midi trigger or example with utility curve shaping kill to infinite, so no, they aren't both good. for better results of sidechaining u need something kills to infinite. that why exist tools like volume shaper, lfo tool and simils. i often see tutos like yours nobody tell normal sidechaing with a compressor leave tails, i think cause simply people dunno this fact.

@@onikore That sounds like you don't know how to setup a compressor correctly, a compressor can duck away to infinity as long as you set it up correctly and use the right compressor for the job. Edit: And the signal feeding into the compressor matters a lot as well.

@@artfxdnb set a compressor in way that don't leave any tail c'mon i want see it)))) take a full sustained bass and try to do it.

@@onikore I already do that quite often, I don't need to do it to prove my point, it works as long as you set it up correctly.

Because you don't need to have the bass cut out for the entire duration of the kick/snare, only for the duration of the actual transient. Also you don't remove all sub from the kick, there is still plenty of sub in it, you remove just as much as you need to make the mix sound right. It's never going to be the exact same approach too, every track and sound is different, I am merely showing one way to do it.

@@artfxdnb I had never thought about sidechaining merely for transients. that is an interesting idea!

lately i've been into duckless mixing. (trying to get your kick, snare and sub to sound blended well without any sidechaining. i do this by removing all low end from the kick and giving the sub an attack so that it mimics the low end of the kick, then compressing them together. but keeping a very short sidechain for the transient is interesting, thx dud!

That's a big claim, nothing is wrong with what I stated in the video. Also wether or not it is outdated depends on how you do sidechain, you'll be surprised how many people still prefer a compressor over LFOTool or Volumeshaper, and there is also nothing wrong with that. All it does it decrease the volume and however you do that is up to you, doesn't mean the other ways are outdated or wrong.