What sidechain compression is, why house and techno producers use it, and how to set it up in the browser in five steps, with settings from subtle glue to a full Call On Me pump.
Quick answer: sidechain compression turns one sound down whenever another one plays, most often ducking pads or bass on every kick so the track pumps. In the InternetDJ studio, open the effects on the track you want to duck, tick Sidechain, follow your drum track on the Kick, and start with Depth 0.5, Attack 0.005 and Release 0.3. Put on almost any house record from the last few decades and listen to what happens between the kicks. The chords, the bass, even the reverb seem to breathe: they duck out of the way every time the kick lands and swell back up before the next one. That breathing is sidechain compression. Once you notice it you hear it everywhere, from the barely-there glue on a techno groove to the huge, obvious pump of Eric Prydz's Call On Me. This guide explains what sidechain compression is, why producers use it, and how to set it up on your own track in the InternetDJ studio, step by step. There are two demo projects to hear first, settings to start from for different styles, and fixes for the usual problems. Hear it before you read about it We made a thirty second house track that pushes the effect as far as it will go, in two versions that are identical except for the sidechain. Same notes, same sounds, same levels. Play them one after the other. Ridiculous Pump (sidechain off): flat 30 second typical house hook, no FX. Ridiculous Pump (sidechain on): same song, but every held sound drops to silence on each kick and climbs back before the next one. Sidechain on: the wall of chords is knocked down by every kick and swells back up. Sidechain off: the same kicks land and nothing moves. Notice how much bigger the kick sounds in the sidechain version, even though its level never changed. Nothing got louder. Everything else got out of its way. What sidechain compression is A normal compressor turns a sound down when that same sound gets loud. A sidechain compressor turns a sound down when a different sound plays. You choose a trigger, almost always the kick drum, and a target, such as a pad or a bassline. Every time the trigger hits, the target dips in volume and then recovers. Producers use it for two reasons, and most tracks use it for both. Space. A kick and a bassline live in the same low frequencies. When they hit at the same moment they fight, and the result is a muddy low end where neither one punches. Ducking the bass for a fraction of a second on each kick lets the kick through cleanly without turning the bass down for the rest of the beat. Groove. Pushed harder, the dip stops being invisible and becomes a rhythm of its own. Held chords turn into a pulse that locks to the kick. That is the bouncing, breathing feel of French house, big room EDM and a lot of melodic techno. How it works in the InternetDJ studio In a traditional studio the compressor listens to the kick's audio and reacts to it. The InternetDJ studio takes a more direct route: the dip follows the kick's notes. Because the studio knows exactly when each kick is written to play, every dip lands precisely on time, there is no threshold or ratio to fiddle with, and the result is identical every time you play, export or publish. It is the same approach as the volume shaping plugins many producers reach for instead of a real compressor, for exactly those reasons. Two things follow from that. The track you follow has to be an instrument track, such as a drum kit or a synth, because an audio clip has no notes to follow. The track you duck can be anything: a synth, a pad, a bassline or an audio sample. Set it up in five steps Open a project that has a kick drum in it, or start a new project and add one. Then: Open the effects on the track you want to duck. On that track's row, click the 🎛️ button (Effects Settings). Pick the pad, the chords or the bass here, not the kick. Switch the sidechain on. At the bottom of the window, tick Sidechain: duck when another track plays. Choose the trigger. Under Follow this track, choose your drum track. Choose the d…