Mr. Bill - Ableton Tutorial 58: Solutions For The Sidechain Click Input Problem
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There are five more ways:
1- you can use the highpass filter in the compressor to isolate the click.
2- You can put at the very end of the kick track a rack with an empty chain and a muted one but with a compressor on it with threshold ratio and release all the way down and an attack set so only the click passes through. Then you route to that chain on every compressor you need.
3- You can also use in the kick track (if midi) a midi instrument rack and inserting in a second chain an external midi instrument and setting it in order to send signal to the LFO TOOL (set in envelope mode) put in the interested track to duck. In this way you get surgical but it requires LFO TOOL on each channel to duck and a copy of the ext midi inst chain set for that single channel.
4- You can put it the kick track (if midi) a instrument rack with a chain with ext midi inst on it; putting at the very end of the kick channel a rack like point 2 but with lfo tool instead (always in env mode), draw your envelope to keep the transient and routing the ext midi inst to that plugin. Then you route to that chain on every compressor you need.
5- you can put a instrument rack on yiur kick if in midi with a parallel muted operator and designing a short click, in this way you use the adsr also as an optional release setting. Then you can route every sidechain to that chain.
Hope these can be helpful, much love :)
Marco Biraghi The second option is dope
@@Samuel-ky2cq #2 is dope indeed. thanks @marco biraghi
Simple idea!
Use a ghost Kick for sidechain add a 3-4ms pre-delay for the track to play earlier.
Add the 3-4ms to the attack of the compressor to hide the click.
So actually I tested it with the send track gate mode and you CAN fix the latency with track delays. The reason you were seeing latency in your recording even after adjusting the track delay was because you were using the direct input from the actual send track, what you want to do is solo the send track, and set the input on the track you're recording to to the "resampling" input. Because for some dumb reason, when you record the direct output from a track, you get latency in the recording. I don't know if that's an actual software limitation or if it's just lazy programming, but when you record with the resampling mode, the track delay will fix the latency caused by the gate.
having your drums in midi for the writing process is the overall easiest solution tho. then you can use that midi to trigger a sampler with a click or send that midi to a volumeshaper or something.
You called it. This is what he does now 🤣
A note regarding sends (c/p from someone else that I stored when I ran into problems with reverbs and delays on sends that were out of time, and I couldn't figure out why):
"Ableton calculates delays from left to right. Getting to the sends last. If you then route the audio from the sends back into the project they will forever be late. And that's where you get the delay from.
It's not really a bug. But rather a limitation in the way Live implemented PDC."
This made me decide to abandon sends altogether, and just work with dry/wet chains on channels.
I thought I'd just put this out there in case anyone runs into issues where things are slightly out of time. Slower computers might run into this sooner.
I know Bill prefers to do his drums on the timeline instead of using drum racks, but if you don't mind using drum racks, here's a great way to do it:
1. Make a drum rack with your kick on C1 and your sidechain click on C#1.
2. In the drum rack's i-o section, set your click to receive input from C1. This will make a "Multi" sample on C1 of your drum pads.
3. Make a new audio track called Sidechain or SC or whatever with its input set to receive your click from the drum rack.
4. Set this audio channel's monitoring to IN and deactivate the channel. Also deactivate the click in the chain activator of your drum rack (do this step so you won't hear your click sound!)
That's it! Now whenever you lay down a kick drum, you're also laying down a sidechain click. Just route your sidechain compressors on all your channels to your Sidechain/SC channel.
Yeah, I started a tune with +IsqaMusic & he set the SC input up in the project in this way, too - clever, but... fuck MIDI drums! :p
cheers
Why step 3 and 4? Just turn the clicks volume in Drumrack to -inf dB. You can select Drumrack on the side chain input of the compressor and then select the click sound in the drumrack pre fx in the box below that. This works great and is the easiest to setup probably.
Edit: I don't change it to a multi sample, just copy the midi in the clips. This gives me more flexibility for triggering the sidechain even when the kick is not playing.
yes def easiest way. Just steps 3 and 4 are not necessary
just have to ask: wouldn't it be just perfect using the EQ-section right next to the sidechain button? It would shorten the sc input to the desired amount of time and frequency + would always be in tune/in rhythm with the original kick. I mean... that's what it's designed for - or did I misunderstand something?
Okay guys are you ready for the super advanced next-level sidechain technique to end them all?
1. Create a midi channel with a sampler and a 10ms super short click sound and mute the output.
2. Create a return track. On this return track create a group that splits the signal in 2. The first have a sidechain compressor on it keyed by the miditrack with the short sound on it (threshold all the way down, ratio all the way up, 0 attack and then play with the release). On the other channel put a phase inverter on it. This means if you solo this return track all you will hear is the "ducking", but when played in a mix the ducking gets phased out so everything you send to this channel gets sidechained.
3. Work your kick and snare in midi and send their midi information to the sidechain channel. (You will have to create 2 sidechain channels if you want both kick and snare to be triggers, as well as 2 return tracks)
4. Save this as a template so it is always ready to go when you are making a new track.
This way you get complete flexibility and control of your sidechain. You get the freedom of being able to always change up your kick and snare patterns. You get a super tight sidechain because of using the click sound as a trigger. You save CPU because you only use 1 or 2 compressors for sidechain in your whole arrangement instead of having to place a compressor on every single track you want to be sidechained. And you only have to set the release time once for your project, since the ratio and threshold are at set values the only timing issue you will have is the release time. So once you have set it you won't have to change it again. Think of everytime you send something to the return channel as playing with the ratio control on the compressor if it was put directly on a track, it just determines how much of the effect you want.
Works amazingly, never imagined sidechaining could work as a parallel effect. thank you so much for this tip.
#mindblown. Thank you good sir, this is super clever!
You can convert audio drums a click track by using the "Beats" warp mode.
1. Duplicate your drum tracks and consolidate the section of audio you want to convert to a sidechain click.
2. Turn on warping, select "beats" mode, then switch the "Preserve:" mode to "transients"
3. Switch the transient loop mode to "off" (looks like one arrow pointing a line), then dail down the transient envelope to between 0 and 10.
Vwa~la, you have in-sync click track from audio drums.
Female producer "Stoni" calls this warp method "Percussifying" in her video "One Thing: Stoni - Percussify "
Just now, I started thinking about how it could be applied as a sidechaining method.
Thanks for delving into this topic!
-Evan S.
ChipperSwitch Audio
in FL you can set up slicex (the factory drum smapler) to send out two samples to different mixer channels on the same midi note, so you can just sort of set up your clicks per-drum and leave them out of sight and out of mind. this has the double benefit of letting you set different release times in the clicks themselves, and then setting Peak Controller to have a release time of zero so the sample itself is directly controlling the release time.
this also helps with delay compensation because once the signal exists as an automation, delay compensation kicks in for both the delay of the enevelope folower AND the delay of the midi that triggers the click itself
I don't know if anyone commented about it before but the reason why your gate and envelope signal are delayed might just be because your kick sample might not have a perfectly timed transient. Don't know if that makes sense because I'm not that good in english. Meaning that the signal reaches peak later in your sample.
For SC using let's say non-standard channels (unlike the usual kick/clap/snare/drums), so to use SC more as a creative effect instead of a mixing technique, sometimes I duplicate and bounce a channel down to audio and make a click track out of it. After duplicating and boucing down open the clip, turn on Warp in Beats mode and use the TransientControl to let through just the initial 'click' of the audio.
You get a sort of stutter effect like you would when using a gate for instance. But if you bounce that down to audio too; you would have a clicktrack without that delay you demonstrated. But of course if you would change something in the original channel you'd have to duplicate and bounce down again so it's not something you'd want to do as a standard SC technique.
1. create two midi channels
2. for channel 1 choose the kick from you drumrack or whatever as the input and for channel 2 the snare (monitor in)
3. put your click sample onto both channels within a drumrack
4. group the channels
(5. use choke, if snare and kick are playing at the same time)
Hey Mister Bill, I have a simple Idea that should work? If you freeze the kick and snare and turn them into an audio track, and then go into the warp settings -> Beats -> Turn the release mode down so the sustain is really fast, and then use that as your SC input. Would that not work? Another idea is to make a "click" chain directly on your drumgroup by using a Gate like you did on a return track, and then mute that chain, and link it to your sidechain. That should eliminate the track delay.
Btw good to have you back man. Missed ya
I think I found a solution to both problems of the Saturn method. First the inability to solo the bass track: if you can live with putting the Saturn audio effect rack on the kick only, you can access it pre mixer and therefore be able to solo the bass and still hear the side-chain. The problem lies in that the individual drums are send to the drum bus post mixer and therefore mute when you solo the bass channel. Using multiple audio effect racks with Saturn for each drum channel you want sidechained and having multiple compressors is a little bit much, but works. You could combine all compressors in a audio effect channel and link everything to macro's for easy changing all values (obviously)
Secondly the inability for Saturn to register fast notes. I think this has to do with the long bass tails of kicks. Putting a sharp low cut before Saturn just gets Saturn to trigger on the high frequencies which lets it register much faster notes.
Create an instrument rack. First instrument is Simpler of your kick, second is Simpler of your ghost. Mute the ghost and use it as the sidechain trigger. This way, every cue for your kick also cues your ghost and subsequently your sidechain compressor.
I like to go a step further and trigger the compressor before the kick so that it reaches full compression right as the kick is hitting. I adjust the track delay to, say, -3ms (adjust to taste) and then you can add back 3ms using either a midi delay, or Ableton's own Simple Delay to the Kick.
Excellent always learn so much here. Something about Your tutorials inspire me to work on music. Thanks
It would be great if Ableton had a window above each plugin/track/send etc. that showed how much delay was being added by each plugin/track/send etc. That way you could follow the rabbit trail to find where delays are being added and also get an overall delay readout which would be useful to know when you're tracking vocals/guitar etc. Perhaps it could also show you core count readings for each plugin/track/send etc. so you would know right away if something you added or changed had suddenly collapsed your project from multi-core to single-core. Overall you would quickly learn what certain plugins and routing techniques do to your CPU and what delays they add to your project.
genius
I usually only sidechain with kick drums, and I've found out that putting a high pass on the side chain signal (inside the ableton compressor) turns it into a short enough click sound. It works because the long part of the kick is usually the low end, and the high end (beater) is usually very short.
You can also create a track feeded with constant noise, put a sidechained gate linked to the kick, set the gate parameters to have the click sound you want, mute the track and then use it as your sidechain compression source.
earlcash05 The gate (atleast abletons one) introduces latency which you can't get rid of
At 15:37 when you are using the Utility + envelope follower the reason why it wasn't working is because you were telling the envelope to go from 50 to 0% instead of 0 to 50%. The gain on the utility needs to go in the opposite direction of the envelope follower.
Ive found your method and Lfo tool offers most control over the years.
If u record a return track directly into a track always has delays, that's because Ableton reads audio and midi tracks and then reads the returns, if u record a return into an audio Ableton will have to loop the process and kinda "feedbacks" the information
You way of using Saturn within an audio effect rack is quite good, but what I meant was to put Saturn on a seperate audio track (and just call that audio track "ghost" for example 😀no "ghost" mode in saturn) and use that audio track as a bus.
So you would set the "ghost" audio track's input as "Drum bus" (which has your kick & snare sent into it).
This way you can solo your sidechained channel, or turn "Drum bus" off, and hear the sidechain effect because the sidechain click actually resides in it's own audio track, just like your normal sc input would
Still slower (in responsiveness to a compressor) than click samples on an audio track ;) Great suggestion - but I like my way better I think after trialling this for a few hours - after all, I'm fast at editing & I don't really mind doing it my way cos' I've done it that way so long. However, using FabFilter as a transient shaper, that's a worthy idea! :D
The input recording delay is caused from live and latency. I’m pretty sure if you select RESAMPLING it will be on time
Yep, I tested it and the latency is fixed by using the resampling mode. This is why I never record the direct output from the track I'm recording, I don't wanna have to readjust the timing after recording. It's much easier to just solo the track I wanna record and then select the resampling mode on the track I'm recording to.
To get rid of that delay when rendering that click from the return maybe try setting the input to "resample" instead of setting the input to that return? I feel like I saw a video somewhere that showed how there will usually be a little bit of latency if you're not setting the input to resample...might work idk.
One of the issues I think is that Ableton sends don't do plugin delay compensation.
Another solution to the sidechain issue that you don't need any 3rd party effects for might be is hipassing the sidechain input to only catch the click aspect of the kick. Since most kicks contain a hi frequency transient and then a pitch sweep down, you could set the hpf to be higher than the body of the kick.
mubalicious True, using sends cause delay that isn't compensated, but if instead of using a send you just use another audio track as a bus, there won't be delay. And there you can even set the audio buses track delay to negative and it'll actually work, unlike doing that to a send channel like Mr. Bill showed where it won't work.
Hipassing the kick works, but commonly that won't work on the snare becuse that has a long tail in the high frequencies, so you would have to set seperate sc compressors for both the kick& snare.
You can negate the delay by disabling sends on the return channel!
Alternative solution without Saturn: new track, using Analog with a sinusoid, tailor the ADSR to your desired sidechain input signal behavior, route the sidechain pre-mixer, mute the Analog track. This works especially well if your drum samples are kept in MIDI. In this way Analog functions as an envelope generator.
Is the delay in the recorded click coming from the fact that you're monitoring while recording it? I wonder if it would be there if you had muted the click channel first.
In FL Studio you can have your drums in one pattern, and have a "Layer" that has Click and actual kick linked as Layer's children, then you can put your midi notes on that layer and it will play kick and click at the same time.
gg ez xD
You can do the same thing in Ableton. Just make an instrument group with your kick and put in an operator or something, mute the output of the operator click. Assign Kickdrum ->Operator click as an input and done.
This only works with midi drums however, in Bills videos there were methods shown to automate the process for audio.
Shit, this is going to save SO much time
There should be a pretty easy solution to the envelope follower problem so its more responsive. just highpass before going into saturn. that way youre already removing most of the tail and whats left is a quick transient followed by some rather quiet noise thatll be cutoff but the saturn. works best for kicks snares with big tails obviously are a little more difficult.
maybe you can use the click error that happens with live 9 compressor to trigger live 8 compressor XD XD XD
1. You can feed a track with gate to sc comp
2. Make resample channel with input from Master, PreFX. Very hefull, ha)
3. In Saturn try to reduce space betwen envelope points, so click is short as posible and scilence after it is not processed
I made the envelope as tight as it could be
I think having a simplr track of a click and having the input of midi from the drum rack would be a fast way. But that's if you primarily use drum racks for drum programming.
In audio's case, I would do it with a transient shaper/compressor and a gate, where you'd make the transients super clicky and follow that up with a gate. I guess doing it within chains is better since returns have the delay?
amazing tips!
Why do you use 10ms look on the sidechain for the click technique?I think it sounds de synced
I use UTILITY and automate the volume manually for each kick/snare... Sounds like a bit more work... But the results are worth the extra effort!
Check my latest tutorial using Gatekeeper. It supercedes both methods.
Pro-L makes latency ;)
also the gate trick works when you have a compressor with a long attack before it
Ahhhh, but, I was taking the audio straight from the return - it wasn't passing through Pro-L at all, right?
See my earlier comment: "Ableton calculates delays from left to right. Getting to the sends last. If you then route the audio from the sends back into the project they will forever be late. And that's where you get the delay from.
It's not really a bug. But rather a limitation in the way Live implemented PDC."
couldn't you stack two drum racks on the kick track. one with the actual kick. and one with a muted click sample. so the midi will always trigger both...? maybe... ?
and do the same with the snare track
this is sick
Thank you!!
ableton live 10 better have a solution for this, I only just realised how much time I waste adjusting the side chain
Its,bit late i guess....well,iam just started use ableton fews week ago(bye....bye fl).
My sc method is...
1.make click sound and put them on simpler and mute them(SC).
2.make drum rack for just kick & snare.
3.set simpler click(SC) input signal from drum rack kick & snare pre fx(at i/o section).
And then u have ur sc play whenever kick & snare play...
wait another q.... i can't seem to get rid of a little pop sound at the beginning of the side chained signal when the trigger goes off... how do you eliminate?
Julian H Use the old ableton 8 compressor. I think mr bill has a tutorial of this.
Just put an Operator with the element you need to sidechain and synthesize a little click. Way more control.
You don't. You can just group it with the instrument/element, mute it and send it the click as a viable sidechain output.
do i need to put ear buds in my nose too or is that optional?
sculpta Hey man, I have a serious condition where my nose bleeds almost constantly. It's a miracle I'm alive from not losing all of my blood... I have to wear these medical absorbers full-time to manage it. Have some respect.
You can fix the input delay issue quit easy. Disable ALL sends on that track you will sending your return channel to, gone.
use operator and create a click and sc that
These are all kind of inaccurate for ducking, especially trying to put the delayed signals back in time
+Neurotic Sos ya, I still prefer my way I think
Agreed. I like my way, tbh. lil' more work, but still the most stable & accurate method I think. I put all these on trial for a few hours each & in the end - I wasn't 100% happy until I did it with the click samples again :p
Are the projects functional in a demo/free version of ableton? FL user over here
+Dan Waterhouse They are! I subject them to a very rigorous standardization process that you can read about under the project file menu on my site (just on my phone right now - it won't let me link the page describing the standardization process)
live.mrbillstunes.com/project-file-standards/
I once played one of your songs at a show, and i was supposed to cut to the other track before a sample, and when i cut my other deck wasnt working for some reason and there was silence for a bit and then all of a sudden the sample played and it said "Im a homosexual" or something like that. Ive never been so embarrassed in my life and instead of chicks coming after my set there was a bunch of dudes....
Nothing has ever not happened as much as this didn't happen.
Mr. Bill /r/thatHappened
Or you can use Bitwig's Audio Sidechain modulator, where you can filter out the tail of the kick, like so: th-cam.com/video/YPrRaruYk9Q/w-d-xo.html
ableton comp 8 solves it too :D
The latency problem in the return tracks just makes me too mad to enjoy this ughhhhhhh
what's the song at 4:20
Fingernail Compost