I got a question about side chaining

[sjs94704]

I have not done any side chaining at all and am wanting to start to learn the concept.

Since a major part of what I'm doing is singing, the plugin 'Vocal Rider' from waves was on sale, so I decided to purchase it and have not yet got too far into it.

I found a video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8rrqW4a5JE which is about 18 minutes long and in it the guy suggests that using a side chain is his opinion the right way to use the plugin and he is sidechaining it.

He sends both the music and vocal to the side chain, but, my confusion is that he does not send anything to the MASTER fader and all I want to know is, is that the correct way a sidechain works and does indeed not need to go to the MASTER fader?

[fred garvin]

Yup. Don't wanna sidechain the master, I'd think that'd be bad. A sidechain uses input from one track to affect another, for instance using the lead vocal track as input to control a compressor to lower the guitar volume when the lead vocal is present. Generally you want all that kinda stuff all done before it hits the master. So in the previous example, the guitar track goes to the master as usual, its just being controlled by the sidechain. Even if you wanted to sidechain all the other tracks to the vocal, you'd set up another bus to do that and let the master be the master.

[sjs94704]

Originally Posted by fred garvin

Yup. Don't wanna sidechain the master, I'd think that'd be bad. A sidechain uses input from one track to affect another, for instance using the lead vocal track as input to control a compressor to lower the guitar volume when the lead vocal is present. Generally you want all that kinda stuff all done before it hits the master. So in the previous example, the guitar track goes to the master as usual, its just being controlled by the sidechain. Even if you wanted to sidechain all the other tracks to the vocal, you'd set up another bus to do that and let the master be the master.

Thank You!

[sjs94704]

Originally Posted by fred garvin

Yup. Don't wanna sidechain the master, I'd think that'd be bad. A sidechain uses input from one track to affect another, for instance using the lead vocal track as input to control a compressor to lower the guitar volume when the lead vocal is present. Generally you want all that kinda stuff all done before it hits the master. So in the previous example, the guitar track goes to the master as usual, its just being controlled by the sidechain. Even if you wanted to sidechain all the other tracks to the vocal, you'd set up another bus to do that and let the master be the master.

So, since the person in the video is not using Reaper, let me take a shot to see if I can get what I should do in Reaper to accomplish the same thing.

In regards to routing, I currently have 20 tracks:

1. Vox
2. Vox Delay Throw
3. Vox EQ / Compression / Reverb
7: Music Buss. Tracks 8-18 All the instruments & Sound Effects) are routed to it
19: Guide Lead Vocal
20: Vox Pad

So, to accomplish what this guy talks about but doing it in Reaper what I THINK I should do is:

1. Add a Vox BUSS track and send tracks 1-3 to it
2. Create a new track for the sidechain and send both the Vox BUSS as well as the Music BUSS to it.
3. Put the Vocal Rider plugin on the sidechain track and follow the instructions in the video from there...

Do I have that right?

[ashcat_lt]

It's a lot easier in Reaper.

Put VocalRider on the Track 1 as the first plug in the chain
Create a Send from Track 7 to Track 1 set it to go to channels 3/4 on Track 1
On the plugin, set the Key Input the way they show in the video you linked

In ProTools, you can't send directly to other tracks. In Reaper, what they call an aux or a buss is just any other tracks. He's working around the limitations of his platform. You should take advantage of the freedom ours offers.

BTW, this is no different than any other sidechain scenario. There are plenty of Reaper specifics vids out there.