TECHNEWS IN ASSOCIATION WITH


POINT BLANK’S PRODUCTION TIP OF THE WEEK DISCO SIDECHAIN


DANNY J LEWIS gets his sidechain on with a Disco loop – a tutorial taken from Point Blank’s online Mixing Dance Music Course in Logic


WELCOME to the new look section in DJ Weekly brought to you by Point Blank - voted ‘Best Music Production & DJ College’ 6 years running by DJmag readers. Each week, they’ll provide us with music production advice courtesy of their team of pro producer course developers and tutors… This week we take a look at sidechaining, also referred to as ducking. The easiest example of this you’ll hear is when a radio DJ speaks, the music playing is automatically turned down. When they fi nish speaking, the music level goes back up again. To do this, a compressor is added onto the music and the vocal is fed in via a sidechain input. Instead of the compressor responding to the music it responds


to the vocal. When the vocal comes through, it turns the music down and when it stops it turns it back up. Another example is the ‘classic’ sustained sound being ducked by a kick drum. As a technical process this can help the two elements sit together in the mix but as a production process it can create the ‘pumping’ fl avour that is very popular in contemporary club music. That ‘French’ electro house sound of the 90s is probably best defi ned by this technique. In the video tutorial example the kick is used to reduce the volume of a disco loop to bring you a bit of Gallic, Bangaltier styled ‘je ne sais quoi’!


NOW you know a bit more about the technique you will notice it all over electronic music – See if you can pick out which elements in these tracks are being sidechained:


WATCH MORE FREE TUTORIALS FROM THE MIXING DANCE MUSIC LOGIC COURSE AND FIND OUT HOW POINT BLANK ONLINE SCHOOL WORKS ON THEIR SAMPLE COURSE PAGE. YOU CAN ALSO KEEP UP TO DATE WITH ALL OF THEIR NEWS, TUTORIALS AND GIVEAWAYS BY SUBSCRIBING TO THEIR YOUTUBE CHANNEL, OR FOLLOWING THEM ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.


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