The opposite of ducking

[philbrown]

I'm sure most of you understand the concept of ducking. A common example would be a music bed that needs to drop down to make room for a voiceover. You'd put a compressor with a sidechain input on the music bed and send an aux feed from the voiceover to the sidechain input so it drops the music level down during voiceover sections. I've been doing these modular synth youtube improvs for fun and figured out I could use a function that's the opposite of ducking. I have drum loops running in sync with a stereo modular improv already recorded. But I want the loop volume to go up and down dynamically with the synth track rather than ducking. So I put a dynamics plug on the drum loop track and routed the synth track via an aux bus to the Dynamics sidechain input. But instead of selecting compression I used the expander function. Other than the attack only going up to 10ms on the dynamics plug (what's up with that??) it worked really well. The metering kind of messes with your head after looking at compression metering for so many years! You'd have to try it to see what I mean. The effect is roughly analogous to a band having dynamics and playing off one another. I had it set for a while where the loops dropped out almost completely during quiet sections and then came back in when the synth track got louder. I don't recall any of my other plugs being able to be used that way as you need an expander that also has a sidechain input. I'm on DP 5.13 BTW. Is there a name for this trick besides 'the opposite of ducking'? Maybe it's a common trick that I've just never heard of. I'm mainly posting in case someone might be able to use this method sometime. I'll probably use it quite a bit for the stuff I'm doing even if it's just used subtly. I don't know though, subtlety is overrated.
'Subtlety' is one of those words that always appears misspelled no matter how you spell it.

Cheers
Phil

[magicd]

Key gating?

You might want to also try the MW Gate for this job. The MW Gate has adjustable attack up to 1000ms. In addition to audio side-chaining, the MW Gate also allows MIDI notes to be used to trigger the gate.

Lotsa fun!

Dave

[philbrown]

Key gating?

You might want to also try the MW Gate for this job. The MW Gate has adjustable attack up to 1000ms. In addition to audio side-chaining, the MW Gate also allows MIDI notes to be used to trigger the gate.

Lotsa fun!

Dave

Coolness! I have heard that term, just didn't apply it to this.
Forgot all about the MW gate - doh! I remember now that it can work as an expander as well as a square gate. Haven't used it in years TBH. The attack time is welcome news- I'm listening to the effect right now and it's great other than 10ms is too short. I may post a short demo clip once I get it set up. It's sounding very cool and musical in this context. You'd swear the drum lopps were being automated or fader-ridden.

Thanks MagicD - always great to see you post here.
EDIT: BTW Dave I'm using Volta a bunch these days too.

[trevorallan]

<<Is there a name for this trick besides 'the opposite of ducking'?>>



Goosing?

[newrigel]

I'm sure most of you understand the concept of ducking. A common example would be a music bed that needs to drop down to make room for a voiceover. You'd put a compressor with a sidechain input on the music bed and send an aux feed from the voiceover to the sidechain input so it drops the music level down during voiceover sections. I've been doing these modular synth youtube improvs for fun and figured out I could use a function that's the opposite of ducking. I have drum loops running in sync with a stereo modular improv already recorded. But I want the loop volume to go up and down dynamically with the synth track rather than ducking. So I put a dynamics plug on the drum loop track and routed the synth track via an aux bus to the Dynamics sidechain input. But instead of selecting compression I used the expander function. Other than the attack only going up to 10ms on the dynamics plug (what's up with that??) it worked really well. The metering kind of messes with your head after looking at compression metering for so many years! You'd have to try it to see what I mean. The effect is roughly analogous to a band having dynamics and playing off one another. I had it set for a while where the loops dropped out almost completely during quiet sections and then came back in when the synth track got louder. I don't recall any of my other plugs being able to be used that way as you need an expander that also has a sidechain input. I'm on DP 5.13 BTW. Is there a name for this trick besides 'the opposite of ducking'? Maybe it's a common trick that I've just never heard of. I'm mainly posting in case someone might be able to use this method sometime. I'll probably use it quite a bit for the stuff I'm doing even if it's just used subtly. I don't know though, subtlety is overrated.
'Subtlety' is one of those words that always appears misspelled no matter how you spell it.

Cheers
Phil

Phil,
You do some really cool stuff man... Your like a Mad scientist on those modulars and I love modular synths because of their simplistic nature... and that they are super rich and FAT!
The only thing I can think of that's the opposite is to invert a noise gates settings.

[Dan Worley]

<<Is there a name for this trick besides 'the opposite of ducking'?>>

Goosing?

Very good. You kept it fowl, and goosing does tend to make the one being goosed pop right up.

c-ya,

Dan Worley

[philbrown]

Goosing?

Perfect!!!

@Newrigel - thanks so much for the kind words. It started out as a lark and now has become a fun little hobby. The next one will have guitar on it.

Back to the topic - I realized later this is just another version of the old trick of 'gating the bass with the kick track'. If you split the bass out to 2 tracks you gate one with the kick track into the sidechain so they 'punch' together. There are other ways to do it of course. You'd want it fast there - what I described earlier I need a slower version - more like riding a fader. I never was able to get the Masterworks to feel right, but perhaps I just didn't find the magic numbers. This method is extremely tweaky it seems. The Dynamics plug actually worked a bit better. The Masterworks wants to act like a gate and the Dynamics plug (in Expander mode) acts more like a 'reverse compressor' as does the Wave Renaissance Comp. I think the Masterworks would probably work better on the bass-kick trick.