There’s a specific sound (often heard on dance tracks) and I’ve often wondered how it’s produced.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRfuAukYTKg[/video]

About 1:15 into this. That pulsing… Is it to do with increasing, decreasing volume?

Sounds like just that, but no doubt he’s used some ultra expensive bespoke effects rack in whatever DAW he used to produce it

That is sidechaining.

I’m not very good with explaining it but iirc you use a compressor on the channels you want to ‘pulse’ and you feed a signal from another channel/bus (i.e a kick) through the compressor to activate it. This will cause the sound to duck out of the way of the activating signal which creates the pulsing effect. You can then use envelopes on the compressor to adjust the pulsing to your liking. Depending on what software you use there will be different ways of setting it up but there is loads of stuff on the web about it.

Also look up ‘ghost sidechaining’ which lets you create the pulsing effect without the activating channel making any sound.

Thanks guys. I knew someone on here would have the answer!

My electric plane makes that sound when planing down warped floorboards.

That is sidechaining.

I’m not very good with explaining it but iirc you use a compressor on the channels you want to ‘pulse’ and you feed a signal from another channel/bus (i.e a kick) through the compressor to activate it. This will cause the sound to duck out of the way of the activating signal which creates the pulsing effect. You can then use envelopes on the compressor to adjust the pulsing to your liking. Depending on what software you use there will be different ways of setting it up but there is loads of stuff on the web about it.

yup, this. it is indeed the volume decreasing and increasing, caused by a compressor with a trigger input.

in this case it’s applied to pretty much the entire track (except the kick drum) – and is activated by the kick drum. This is to:

a) make the kick sound even bigger without having to turn it up
b) make the overall track sound louder (see also: Loudness War)
c) give the tune ‘that sidechain sound’. Which, a bit like autotune, was once a side-effect to be avoided, and is now ramped up to extreme levels, because that’s what things have to sound like these days

Sidechaining is just fast volume automation. Doing it with a compressor, hardware or software is just more practical then recording automation clips or doing it by hand for a whole track! You can also use tempo synced LFO’s linked to volume to do the same thing.

It can be done on:

1) Indivdual elements (at different time divisions and velocity if needed)
2) Bussed/grouped instruments (Drums, pads, lead, vocals, bass whatever)
3) On the master output.

You can also get a bit more advanced and focus it on specific frequency ranges using a filtered ghost signal/automatable EQ/specific VST i.e. just duck the bass at 100 Hz so the kick punches through, bass ducked by the kick drum being the most common use. This is more subtle than the Guetta example and allows you to put kicks and basses together that occupy similar frequency ranges that would clip at the output if played together.

White noise is often used as ghost signal instead of the original kick drum as you have complete control over the frequency range using filters and duration using envelopes.

You can also syncopate the sidechaining to make it even cooler 😉