Hello Guys. Wanted to simulate side chain action, playing with the volume envelope in modulation/volume/envelope so that every time I want to lower the bass to make room for the kick I just type a command next to kick, I see a post here from 07 talking about this but I cant google up any solution, any tips or workaround to do this
Hi there… You can use an FX chain on the kick track:
KeyTracker → LFO → Hydra
The keytracker reset the LFO.
Use a custom LFO envelope and set it to “one shot”.
Then either use the destination of the LFO to sidechain or add an Hydra device so you can use multiple places to sidechain.
That’s the method I used to use and it works alright but eventually I bought Duck from Devious Machines to keep things easy and quick, there’s also Kickstart 2 and some others.
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Awesome, Thanks , Hydra will be a big step up to the manuel method drawing in the volume on the track. Kickstart looks pretty cool.
you can also send a signal follower on the kick track to duck a gainer on the bass track to simulated side chaining. I tend to like this sound a bit better than using the sidechain device on a compressor for pump… you may need to dial in the sensitivity, attack, and release on the signal follower to get it to behave how you like.
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Great tip, I got it working pretty fast and I like the feeling it gives the “envelope” of my other sounds. Thanks.
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Hi Garf,
I’m trying to use Duck in Renoise and am having a hell of a time figuring out how to best use it. In other DAWs I use a midi signal to activate duck on another track, but can’t figure out how to set a kick in Track 01 to activate Duck on Track 02. How have you been routing it within Renoise?
Hey. [edit: just edited this]
About using a Midi signal here’s how I just figured it out, mostly I’ve just used Duck on 4/4 repeat or sidechain but it should work with midi too, test it out and let me know if it works as intended:
- Insert Duck on a FX track and select Midi as Trigger mode
- Make a VST3 FX alias for the Duck by going to a new empty instrument slot and chose it from the pulldown menu
- Select your kick sample and go to the Plugin tab and choose the VST3 FX alias you created before, then it essentially plays both a sample and a VST at the same time. That’s it.
That should work with samples but if you use a VST as trigger instrument then you can only do this if the VST support midi routing as far as I know, Pigments for example does and in this case there will appear a midi routing option in the plugin tab to use.
I agree it’s not intuitive and require a step more than you’d like, ideally we’d just want to route the midi signal from the sample regardless to Duck and not have to make an alias etc…
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I’ve updated my song template with this so thanks for asking 
Remember you can use more Ducks on other tracks to react to your kick with the Group functionality of Duck.
On the following instances of Duck choose Repeat as Trigger mode and obviously select the same group.
Awesome replies and working great!!