10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days: Day One - The Side Chain

I wanted to do a nice and easy digestible series of posts that will help you get better mixes. So I decided to do 10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days. Every day on the blog we will look at a new tip that will help you either in the recording, mixing, or mastering area of making music.

So, with all that aside, let's get started!

Mixing Tip:

Side chain a kick drum into a compressor on the bass to help them sit together. 

Two instruments that often occupy the low end of frequencies in music are the kick drum and the bass guitar. You generally want both of these instruments to be punchy and add some power to your mix, but you also want to be able to hear them both individually. Often times they get lost together and it can be difficult to hear them separately. Side chaining can be a great tool for achieving this sound. Here's how you do it. 

First, you want to put a compressor on the bass track that will be strictly for side chaining. On the compressor there should be a little key somewhere or an option that will let you set the input of the compressor. What you are basically doing here is telling the compressor to only look for a signal coming from a certain input. Let's take a look at the basic compressor in Pro Tools. 

So in this photo we see a compressor on the bass track, as well as a send on the kick drum track. I have the important areas circled in red. In the upper left hand corner of the compressor we see a little key. You'll want to set that input as an available bus. I've named mine "Side Chain Kick." Then you'll want to create a send on your kick drum track to that same bus. What you are doing here is just sending a signal from the kick drum track to the compressor. Also, you'll want to press the key button on the top right of the compressor next to the word "side-chain." This tells the compressor that it is only getting signal from the side chain. 

When the kick drum hits, the compressor will engage on the bass track, compressing the bass. So basically every time the kick hits the bass guitar will get turned down a little. This a great trick for getting the bass and the kick to sit nicely together. Also when you create your send on the kick track, you'll probably want to select the "pre" button. This will send the signal pre (before) the fader so that anything you do to the fader won't affect the sending signal. 

To recap:

1. Insert a compressor on the bass guitar track
2. Engage the side chain on the compressor and set the input to an available bus
3. Create a send, pre fader, on the kick drum track to the same bus. 

As to how much you reduction you want with the compressor, that is up to you. I usually do about 3 to 6db gain reduction when the kick hits on the bass, as well as the normal compression that the bass is getting anyways. 

So there you have it. Day one of mixing tips. Hope this helps!


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