Ableton Live Ultimate Course 36 - Envelope Followers & Sidechaining Video Lecture | Become the Master of Music Production: Ableton (English)

so guys in this video I'm gonna be going
over side-chaining and envelope
followers so side-chaining first this is
the first thing you'll kind of hear
about when you get into making dance
music and really not that complicated
it's basically change of volume over
time from another input right so let me
focus here and get our compressor down
here so we have the sound and we have a
compressor on it so we bring the
threshold down we'll see a game
reduction and what's affecting the game
reduction is the audio itself so every
time the sound goes over kind of a
certain velocity will get gain reduction
and we'll see that here and we can we'll
open our histogram so you can see you
gain reduction all right so what
side-chaining is is you're taking the
audio from another piece of another
channel and that's affecting the
compressor that that's affecting the
game reduction on this so you get to
that but cooking this little arrow here
sidechain and that's basically all it is
you go 19 because that's our kick drum
and we'll notice
and we'll see you know we can hear it we
have our kick coming through when you
hear that little little preview button
right so when we bring the threshold
down right the kick is affecting the
threshold and that's really interesting
and I really frees up the mix and that's
how you get that pumping effect all
right and there's ways to refine it so a
lot of people a lot of producers they'll
use like a ghost kick and you can use
that if you want it's a way to you know
because when you when you listen to this
the kick is kind of long and it kind of
triggers the triggers the compression
twice right it's just like a it's like a
really deep valley and sometimes it
doesn't really sound harmonically okay
so what you can do in the detection
circuit I call it a detection circuit
just because the sidechain texture
circuit so we will listen to it all
right so this is our kick what we can do
is we can add a filter that you can hear
in the actual audio when you're not
soloing it or not monitoring it
you'll hear a high pass band pass low
pass bell the shelf all that fun stuff I
go high pass so we're getting is we're
getting a click we're getting the high
pass version of that kick and what
that's doing is that's making the gain
reduction kind of smoother and more
musically pumping like the whole body of
the kick like this part is not
triggering the compression the click is
because everything else is kind of I
passed so we have that so we can bring
that down to an appropriate level right
now listen to that
we're getting there all right I'll just
do EQ on/off you can hear the difference
right so that that that right there that
allows the the click of that kick to
have full force when it when it hits and
that's all well and good so how you get
more of a pumping effect is you increase
the ratio so remember a ratio of one to
one is nothing nothing's going on but as
you increase the ratio you get more of
uh you get more of a gain reduction and
we'll bring that down and how you make
it more or less pumping is the release
time so a fast release time it goes back
to normal right away right came and
really here that it's so quick it's one
millisecond what are we thinking as we
increase it
right we get more of a pumping sound or
pumping effect and it's depending on the
track depending on what you want you can
get a really nice sound
all right and that's basically
side-chaining in a nutshell it's really
useful for mixing and making things all
sit together and like basically when
you're starting out you should sidechain
literally everything but to varying
degrees even want a sidechain a clap
like this you'd have the threshold a
little bit up and the ratio a little bit
down and that's that alright so I want
to show you another form there's also
you also have a side chaining for the
glue compressor if you're into that you
can do the same thing in the same kind
of formula applies you get a set release
time and not so much of a an infinity to
1 ratio but it does add nice kind of
harmonics and is is another flavor of a
of a compressor the Ableton compressor
here this one is more linear and this
one adds some nice harmonics based off
of an SSL 4000 buss compressor guy all
right so we have this right here notes
get rid of these to avoid confusion on
here so I'm going to do is I'm just
gonna increase the dynamic so you can
hear this a bit more alright so we have
that alright so I compress that kind of
that just for the example so we're gonna
drop in a Auto filter we're gonna use
something called an envelope an envelope
follower so what this does this is it's
from the olden days and what it does is
it takes the voltage or the amplitude of
like another signal it could be you know
a voice or something anything that has
changes in volume it will do that in
will convert it to a value so it's kind
of like the sidechaining but for a
filter or such and really it works kind
of the same way as sidechaining but it
it sits in a value of like negative and
positive so it's not so much something
coming in and triggering a reduction
this is triggering fun things so we're
gonna go sidechain I'm gonna drop this
on 18 because it's an 18 here I just
wanted something that's kind of
elongated so you can hear
right so you look here and this so will
go pre FX no worry about that right now
we'll bring our amplitude or envelope
maxstep and I'll do that
give it some resonance all right so the
filter is opening when this part is
really loud and then it closes as this
part you know there's nothing triggering
this right and opposite right that's a
it can be it could start out closed or
start out open and open or closed the
opposite so we can do now is we can add
say another one so you can hear it now
this could be a side chaining technique
I don't know I don't really use it that
much but what you can do is you can kind
of have interesting evolving percussion
percussion need fill three bits and it's
a really nice effect so I'll go 19 right
so the kick is triggering the filth the
band the band pass moving up and down
automatically and this one is being
triggered by this guy so right you can
get lucky interesting sounds that way
and that is the involute follower you
can do a lot of neat things with that
not so much of the ability to route it
to other things but it's there and yeah
you can add some neat little effects you
can ping pong delay it
and that's it all right
hope you don't stop and have a good