A quick tutorial overview of the different techniques used within Renoise and Ableton Live for allowing your Bass Section to duck your Kick section. Plus, how to utilize rewire to achieve the Ableton effect directly in a Renoise song.
My first ever screencast, few glitches to work out still… Would love to hear some feedback from the community
http://www.youtube.c…h?v=RJYyJ2GP6Nw
(embedded Youtube player seems to be having issues)
Can’t see the video link…really interested though
sorry about that =) - edited
I really wasn’t hearing anything different between the renoise ducking and ableton’s. When you changed the bass sample I heard the ducking happening, I just wish you could have played the renoise version of the same sample. I appreciate the effort you put in to this, make no mistake, just not enough of a positive difference for me to rewire renoise strictly for sidechaining. All said good job putting this together though.
Thanks
Well, unfortunately I was using the built in mic on my mac, but I was thinking of doing all the audio through another medium (my other laptop or something)… Maybe I will remake this one with clean sound. Either way, its all up to preference, and this is the beginning of a list of tricks to show using rewire…
Not faulting the tutorial at all… Thanks for putting this out there… the more you know, and all that… once again thanks for taking the time… not too many people show what they use rewire for.
You duck your kick with your bass? I’ve always done the exact opposite 
Try chaining the Signal Follower to the Compressor’s Treshold in the bass track… 
That’s exactly what I thought. What’s the difference between sidechain compression in Live and chaining the Signal Follower to Compressor in Renoise?
kazakore: It’s done quite a bit in minimal techno… In a club environment, you still want all the kicks to pop and be full, while the bass molds around it to form a more constant fuller bass spectrum.
vincentvc: I have experimented with it a little and found the need for a very large dsp chain to drive multiple effects (compression and reverb takes 2 signal follower and compression and reverb, meanwhile live only takes a compressor and reverb)
foxbunny: Well, again its all up to preference… I just find Lives compression to have a fuller sound for the type of music I make, and easier to work with once you get into grouping and macro’ing effects… Im in no way saying the techniques that can be used in renoise are bad… But just trying to maybe motivate some people to think outside the box with this. It opens up so many possibilities, including max4live support directly within renoise =)
Um… I think you will find that is my point! You duck the bass with the kick, not the other way around.
In fact you do in your video. You have just described it wrong twice and then not picked up on the fact I tried to point this out (I had thought you had probably done it that way around but had no audio connected to check.) You put a Signal Follower on the Kick and Gainer on the Bass. Which one is adjusting the level (Ducking) the other?
I would think of it as the Bass is ducking (moving out of the way) of the Kick… The kick does absolutely nothing. Only the bass is affected. I may be wrong?
Yeah the bass is ducking. It is being ducked by the kick.
“allowing your Bass Section to duck your Kick section”
Sounds like bass section is used to duck your kick.
I guess English isn’t your first language, correct?
See my first post: “You duck your kick with your bass? I’ve always done the exact opposite”
Which you also said was the opposite of what you are doing yet it clearly says it thinks it’s weird you claim to duck the kick.
I am Canadian, born and raised, Yes English is my first language and taken from a Dubspot tutorial on a similar idea for logic: “simple ducking of a bass in order to make room for a kick drum”… The bass is the one doing the ducking, think about me (kick drum) throwing a beer bottle at your (bass) head… You would be the one ducking, not me… The bass is the one moving out of the way (ducking) the kick… Really, the Bass section is ducking the kick section.
I think it may be how you are interpreting it, but would rather not make a big deal about it…
What are the missing words here to make it proper English?
allowing your Bass Section to duck your Kick section
Answer:
allowing your Bass Section to be ducked by your Kick section
Your quote from the Logic tutorial makes perfect sense in English though!
“simple ducking of a bass in order to make room for a kick drum”
See - Ducking of a bass.
Only trying to help your tutorial makes sense so you don’t confuse people but if you’re happy to have backwards English in it by all means keep it. No skin off my nose.
My English isn’t good enough to give you the name of the rule and explain it well but you can have a Ducking Bass or have your Bass Ducked.
Ducking Fred would be about Fred Ducking himself. Fred Ducked Oli under the water, here Oli is the one who is ducked (dunked would be more suitable) forcibly by Fred.
Hope it makes at least some kind of sense.
I’m working inside the box most of the time, so thanks for showing how easy it is to set up rewire between these programs!!
PS: Have to agree with kazakore on the wording of things. To duck or be ducked… 
I was just reading Compresssion 101 the other day, so I guess you mean that Live’s compressor sounds different/better than Renoise’s built-in compressor(s)? In that case, inability to control (some) VST DSPs in Renoise is a huge minus, as having that would allow you to use a different (as in 3rd party VST) compressor to get better results, and I guess that would be somewhat cheaper than using Live. 
I’ve just tried using MDA’s Dynamics VST(compressor) with Renoise, and to my surprise, all controls are shown as native sliders. This means it can be used for ducking the kick bass. I’ve tried, and I like what I hear (better than native compressor / bus compressor DSPs). Give it a go.
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/
EDIT: Here’s a screenshot:
EDIT2: Aw, damn, I wasn’t aware that you can use ANY VST compressor for this purpose… Now where did I get the idea that VST plugins cannot be automated… 
Anyhow, here’s another compressor that sounds pretty nice:
Really, I also can’t get decent results with signal follower. But connecting signal follower to compresor threshold? How’s that supposed to work? Should ratio be very high? Like close to infinity:1?