If you paid attention to music in the past few years or in the last decade with dance music, you’ll notice a “pump” effect. Side-chain compression has many names such as “ducking”, “pumping” and loads of others. We’ll explain what makes the sound “pump”.

What is side-chaining:
A cousin of Compression which simply lowers the volume of one of your audio track when the other audio track gets loud.

Let’s illustrate:
You have  Kick Drum and a Bass Line.  Ideal situation, you don’t want the bass-line to clash with the Kick Drum when played together. So once you turn on the Side-Chain compressor FX, when the Kick Drum is at its loudest, the Bass-Line will simply “DUCK” (sound is lowered). You will hear this term used quite often in the dance community called “ducking” which gives the listeners that “pumping” effect.

How to use Side-Chain Compression: FL STUDIO TUTORIAL
*Update - Fixed & updated the free plugin download address.

Step 1: Download Sidekick3 Side Chain Plugin by Twisted Lemon  (free plugin)
Step 2: Make sure you place the VST into your VST folder in FL STUDIO
Step 3: Create 2 samples: Load a Kick Drum and a Hi-Hat and insert 3OSC
Step 4: Go to your Channel Effect and Insert the “Sidekick 3” FX into Insert 1, Insert 2, Insert 3.

Make sure you do the following:
Route the Kick Drum FX Channel to Insert 1
Route the Hi-Hat FX Channel to Insert 2
Route the 3OSC FX Channel to Insert 3

Now bring up ALL 3 Sidekick 3 FX windows in front you.

You will notice Sidekick 3 has 4 virtual channels labeled A, B, etc..

The Kick Drum will be the “Carrier” of the effect for the Hi-Hat and the 3OSC (Bass-Line). The Kick Drum will tell the compressors what to do when the kick plays, thus lowering (compressing) the volume of the Hi-Hat and the Bass-line giving it the “ducking” i.e. “pumping” effect.

Click here for the screen shot and apply the settings that you see for the Hi-Hat, the Kick-Drum and the Bass-line.

Once you have done that and you’ve added some notes in the 3OSC. Press PLAY. You will notice a nice pumping sound that you probably heard in “One More time” by Daft Punk. It is a great effect. You can also use this effect on pads, leads, vocals etc.

Play with the “threshold”, “release” and “attack” settings to your liking.

Keep experimenting and remember that this tutorial only scratches the surface of what is possible with side-chaining.

~Deeps Pabla
CEO, Goldenchild Audio
The leading sound developers of Indian audio loops and samples
http://www.goldenchildrecords.com