I keep seeing this term being thrown around and I still don't grasp the complete concept. Anyone have any insight?
What is side chaining?
- Thread starter JonWormwood
- Start date
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Video:
Make sure you watch this with good monitors your laptop/stock PC speakers won't let you hear whats happnin:
Make sure you watch this with good monitors your laptop/stock PC speakers won't let you hear whats happnin:
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HeadCrusher
Member
in Pro Tools... since v7.3.1.. you color your tracks any color you want.... i use it to color code things... Drums are dark red, Vox are dark blue, Bass is brown, lol.. etc., and actually i set it so the colors, at least as far as the audio waveform previews themselves go, only activate when their associated Group is active... otherwise all the waveform previews are black. i always set up my sessions the same way and it makes session navigation a breeze. thing is though, you can pick the colors and you can set the opacity of the colors..... so with this guy, all i can say is there's no accounting for taste.
You have total control, more so than any other DAW i know of, over the way in which your tracks "look" in Pro Tools... it can be as understated or as gaudy as your personality dictates. i set the opacities to a very understated setting and i never choose primary colors.. they bug me. At the end of the day it's all about functionality, so why not utilize color coding functionality? it really does make your sessions far easier to navigate. but yeah, this guy's color choices are pretty ugly. lol
You have total control, more so than any other DAW i know of, over the way in which your tracks "look" in Pro Tools... it can be as understated or as gaudy as your personality dictates. i set the opacities to a very understated setting and i never choose primary colors.. they bug me. At the end of the day it's all about functionality, so why not utilize color coding functionality? it really does make your sessions far easier to navigate. but yeah, this guy's color choices are pretty ugly. lol
smy1
Member
It's interesting. Everyone I know does it like that, except me. It doesn't help me at all. I always have to color the song parts, regardless of the individual track. So all parts on all tracks in the verse are blue and all parts on all tracks in the chorus are red and so on.
Maybe it's because I write songs while I record, I don't know, but the "regular" way of doing it makes me confused. Different strokes, I guess.
Now back to sidechaining. Don't wanna OT, too much.
oh you can color code your song parts totally independently of how you color your audio in PT. click Here to see a pic of what i mean... look at the markers up top... see how they are color coded? you just name each section of the song and choose a color for it.
you can easily see which groups are active as well without even looking at the groups list... the tracks whose waveform previews are colored are grouped. the previews colored black are in groups but those groups are not active.
anyone that studies this pic closely, checking each section and relating it to the others, will get a good idea of how i use color coding, groups, and non-time-based markers to speed up session workflow.
to get back on topic, here's a screenshot i took from one of my sessions and edited to show one way in which i use Side-Chaining to open the gate on my kick drum track by sending the kick trigger signal (recorded from a ddrum trigger mounted on the kick) to the Key Input of the Gate that's on the kick drum track. follow the lines and green highlights and it makes it all pretty clear.
aramism
Member
oh so basically the trigger is opening the gate for the actual audio track (d6) this way you don't have to set the gate parameters for the audio track.
yep. much easier to set the gate parameters this way since you have no worries of anything that may be bleeding somewhat into the kick mic causing the gate to open when you don't want it to.
aramism
Member
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Okay since we are talking side chaining and triggers I have a trigger question:
Do you record midi hits (using a module) or do you just record the ticks that the triggers record on each hit?
Do you record midi hits (using a module) or do you just record the ticks that the triggers record on each hit?
no module... i record the acoustic sound made by the trigger. you can see it in the kick trigger track in the graphic i linked above.
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Are triggers better because of the sharper transients? Would (if you wanted) recording midi tigger points work just as well?
Honestly I've found it all depends on the drummer. My recent mix project I put up involved the triggers going into a DM5 that was setup for his playing style (the gating and x-talk parameters take care of everything in the module) and I just recorded the MIDI output from the module. But I have mainly, in the past, used the triggers directly into the interface and recorded the audio ticks from them. If the drummer has a module with MIDI output and it's setup for his style already, I would say use that. But if not, recording the audio generally works just as well. I haven't found either way to be "better" persay, but I do think I prefer the MIDI option more, just for ease of tracking and editing.
Some drummers like their snare drum really low, and if it's got enough oomph to it, it will set off the kick trigger(s) too. In that case the module->MIDI route IMO would be the best way to go. But like I said, so far neither way has been so significantly better than the other in my experiences.
~e.a
Some drummers like their snare drum really low, and if it's got enough oomph to it, it will set off the kick trigger(s) too. In that case the module->MIDI route IMO would be the best way to go. But like I said, so far neither way has been so significantly better than the other in my experiences.
~e.a
no no... you're missing the point of what we were talking about... if you WANT midi because you want to use it with something like DFHS or BFD or Battery or whatever... then fine, you can always used the trigger audio after the fact to capture midi... either by feeding it out to a module and capturing that module's midi output, or you can use drumagog to get the midi... either way the point of recording the audio output of the trigger is to have a clean source to key the gate on the actual drum track.. which was what the thread starters question was ABOUT... side-chaining... a few Gate plugs will accept midi into their key inputs, but many do not... and certainly hardware gates do not.... and no matter what you do, midi timing is inconsistent. the audio IS consistent, so as a source to key a gate on the acoustic drum itself, the Audio from the trigger is the only way to go.. NOT the midi from a module. this thread was about Side-Chaining... midi and drum modules are not part of the equation.
Noumenon
Obsidian Productions
I use the DI track from guitars to trigger the a gate on the real guitar sound. much like the decimator prorackg
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Twas the answer I was inquiring about. I didn't know midi wasn't an option as a key input. I also see your point on midi being inconsistant.
some gates will accept midi as a key input source... most wont though... key inputs are looking for audio signals generally and midi is not audio.
