Are these unnecessary sidechains?

[BYTEME]

Just curious and I want to hear if anyone else does these, or if there unnecessary.

I'll sometimes layer kicks, I'll have one for sub, one for mid-high frequency 'clicking sort of sound.' Sometimes I'll multiband distort by adding distortion to the high passed kick.

Heres where sh*t gets weird. Things I do:

1. I drop a peak controller on my sub kick and link my high end kicks fader/volume to my sub kick. So the sub ducks the high frequencies in the high kick.

2. Sometimes I'll have a really good kick but feel theres too much muddy sub. So I'll duck the sub frequencies (on the channels 3-band EQ in the bottom right of a channel in the mixer) below maybe 60-100hz whatever sounds good.

3. When I sidechain my kicks to my leads, I ALSO make the kick duck volume of the reverb/delay fx. I also sometimes add a send on my snares, adding reverb to the snares send channel, then I'll make the snare duck the volume of the reverb. Is that weird?

4. I'll sidechain my snares to my kicks just incase the tail of the kick goes over where the snare hits. So I make my snares duck the kicks tail.

I know to just go with whatever sounds good, but I have always been interested in how to make my percussive elements sound clearest and loudest with no issues. So does anyone else do this or is this weird? And are there any other sidechaining ideas you reccomend experimenting with?

[BYTEME]

Two extra questions I'd like to add:

Is it weird to sidechain the kick to the leads ceiling in a limiter?

Should hats be sidechained to punch through the kick? Does it make the hats more noticable or does it cause a bad stuttery effect on the kick?

[Benji]

I don't really know what to make of any of that but I'd definitely like to hear what it sounds like

[Brothulhu]

Good to see you are still over thinking absolutely every aspect of production

Why don't you side chain everything, listen to it, remove all the sidechaining and listen to it again. Then start adding the sidechaining to different parts. If it makes it sound better, keep it, if it doesn't, bin it

[dca]

to answer your question, probably

[BYTEME]

Brothulu, I don't over think a much as I use to when I first joined DSF, I just like to experiment a lot. I want to master as I go along making a track. It doesn't doesn't have to be perfect, I would just like to have a routine of things to do to my tracks to bring out the sounds better. Sometimes I'm unhappy with my percussive elements not being the loudest in the mix, because a lead will fill too much of the spectrum, or sound way louder than it actually is. I'd like to not have everything overlapped and rumbly muddy frequencies all over.

[legend4ry]

You know you can solve most of your work arounds on FL a lot easier.



Add everything you don't want clashing to the same "cut" channels. That means that sound A will stop when sound B is triggered.

This also works that the tail of A doesn't bleed into another hit of A.

So instead of ducks, it just cuts.

[nowaysj]

1. I drop a peak controller on my sub kick and link my high end kicks fader/volume to my sub kick. So the sub ducks the high frequencies in the high kick.

Do the opposite.

All that business is necessary if you think it is necessary. You are the author of your artwork.