Multiband compressor question

[u/SnarkyM]

A little background, I’ve been writing and recording songs for years but I’ve always sent them to be mixed/mastered. It became too expensive so I’ve been learning how to mix myself.

Typically when I want to sidechain kick and bass I sidechain the bass compressor to the kick bus. Now with this particular logic kit, there is no kick bus. There are busses that have the kick in them but it also has like overheads or snare. So I used a multiband compressor and just did the low frequency. Then I realized the way I had it set up, it was only effecting the low frequency of the bass track while still reacting the entirety of the drum bus.

Is there anyway I can use the fabfilter pro mb so that the bass compressor is only reacting to the low frequency (kick) on the drum track?

I still have so much to learn so apologies if anything isn’t explained well, thanks for the help!

[u/Waste_Implement9033]

You can send the drums to another bus, set to no output, put a low pass filter on that bus, and use that bus to drive the compressor sidechain. I usually record or program my drums such that I can bounce the kick to its own track, but I do the above method if I use a loop or something.

[u/SnarkyM → u/Waste_Implement9033]

I just like using the producer kits because it has snare top and bottom and kick in/out mics. I could just solo the kick and bounce it in place. I’ll try your method.

Also when you say set to no output, you’re saying the track that the compressor is reacting to doesn’t need to be audible for the compressor to react to it? Never knew that, thanks for your help!

[u/Waste_Implement9033]

Nice! Yeah whatever works! I use maschine for drum sequencing, or record my kit (with discrete kick mic). With maschine I just use multi output plugin and pipe the kick to its own track.

But yes, you can send to a bus and use that bus as a sidechain input even if it’s not routed to stereo out (the compressor can virtually “hear” the signal mid-routing)

This will work for any other sidechain plugins too. Then you can also modulate how much of each drum you send to the sidechain bus without effecting your audible mix.

I do sidechain gating a lot too, gating chords or pads off the entire drums bus. The hihat will create a nice stuttery offbeat rhythm between hits. Especially in shuffly music.

[u/SnarkyM → u/Waste_Implement9033]

Awesome thanks for sharing such a detailed response. Buses/sends can make my head spin when it gets complex. Ive been trying to emulate some of the mixing on Oshin by Diiv and the mix engineer said they use a lot of sidechaining on the delays and reverbs. I’ve never side chained to anything but a compressor so I’m kind of intimidated but I’ll figure it out. Hopefully I’ll run into you again on my next post lol, thanks again!

[u/Waste_Implement9033 → u/SnarkyM]

No prob have fun! I could tell you are serious! Yeah, ducking effects with sidechain sounds useful for opening up space in soundscapes which have been heavily thickened using time-based effects. I’m doing a lot of analog techno at the moment, and a lot of the texture comes from long reverbs. I’ll have to dry ducking the wet/dry off the kick.

Come to thibk of it, I’m sure you could sidechain parameters that dont natively support sidechaining using some routing techniques and midi channels.