Hi all,
I have been reading a lot on this forum about ducking a sample with a kick. I’ve been using a lfo with exp, and a negative value on the sample level lately. Seems to work. But on low frequency material it generates clicks. I guess because the lfo is being retriggered. At the moment I just resample with a filter to more or less remove it. Is this the way to go. Or any other suggestions? Basically I want quite a small ducking. To let the transient of the kick through.
When I want to “fake” sidechain compression I usually use the sample level and p-lock it to a low value where the kick hits. Avoids using up the lfo.
You might try an LFO on a filter instead of level.
You could try out the exponential trigger LFO but with a slight LFO fade in, that should smoothen the curve.
I don‘t have access to my Digitakt at the moment, so don‘t take my word for it.
Thanks for the suggestions. Generally i dont really want to achieve sidechain compression. I just want to make sure that my bass doesnt get in the way of the kick. So i want duck the bass for max 1/16 note. Wondering what a good setting on lfo might be for that?
Yes that could be a clean way as well. But then you get quite an abrupt change in volume. It is like a square i guess. Ideally i would like to start ducking 10ms before the kick. And have it ducked for lets say 30-100ms max.
I could try your suggestion with plock but how do you handle the first step? Since the sample has a duration of 16 steps. I cant lower the volume of the first step. Perhaps an idea could be to have a sample running for 32 steps. And plock 2nd 16 steps correctly. Then resample. And cut out first 16 steps. If you follow me? Or do i get it wrong?
Try out placing some trigless trigs where you want the bass to duck away. And depending on the method you use, either re-activate the filter trig, or the lfo trig.
I place a trigless trig right after it to bring the level back up, subsequently I place a trigless trig where I want the ducking and one next to it to bring the level back up and repeat.
TBH you can get some nice ducking using the compressor alone.
If it’s just a question of cleaning up the mix I would focus more on the levels, filtering and the compressor.
If you’re after a sidechain style effect, then you could try the MPC method and chop your sample into slices and use the Amp envelope attack to “duck” the start of the sample. Or you could just drop the sample into your DAW, add a sidechain effect, resample it and send to the Digitakt.
Another technique to help clean up the low end is to move any bass notes that fall on the kick slightly forward, this gives the attack of the kick more room before the bass comes in.
None of the solution are good solutions imo… I wish Elektron would have just used stereo ins for the Digitakt und let us use the Compressor for real sidechaining. So much potential lost here with a bad decision for the inputs.
I don’t know about that, I find it quite easy to get the results I want. I think it’s way more useful to concentrate on what it can do than what it can’t.
everytime I tried to do it with an LFO or trigless trigs I ended up twiddling into nowhere - that’s when I say “what am I doing here?” and switch to Ableton where it’s two clicks. It could have been two knob twists as well for the Digitakt.
A way that you can have it sound less like “compression ducking” is to use a hp filter on the bass channel, leave it 100% open but triggered by the triangle lfo with a faster rate, plocked to the same steps as the kick
, and only -12% to -25% for the amount,so when the kick hits you are effectively only removing the low end…
Well, maybe your expectations are out of whack with what the DT can offer. Personally I learned to embrace the limitations and use them creatively. When I want something else I’ll choose another tool for the job.
For me the p-locking the volume technique works fine, I also spent a lot of time with the compressor and I can set it just right. I also think this whole sidechaining thing is way overused, it should really just be about a clean mix. Which the Digitakt is perfectly capable of achieving.
If I really want a pumping effect there are plenty of other ways of achieving it.
And FYI i have the luxury of having an A4mkii for drums so i can afford to assign a whole DT track to be a ghost compression ducking track.
I.E track 6 always has a kick on it, volume turned all the way down so its silent… but in the compression settings track 6 is the compressor trigger…so it ducks and pumps all day but my actual kick is coming from the A4mkii…
You could try this if you have a spare track, with less extreme settings maybe, but it is very “side chain compression” sounding…
I use this method a lot as well! Works pretty straightforward actually.
Even sometimes without any kick sidechaining, just for some kind of master volume automation before a… drop.
I feel so dirty now, after using this bad word.
Well… sometimes my solution is to do the bass in my daw as well. But I don’t like to sidechain compress it. Just duck it a bit. Or I move up my bass somewhat in frequency … so it doesn’t really get in the way. Problem is when you make a bass from the kick reverb … then you are messing in same frequency range. I didn’t really find a way yet to resample and transpose the sample 5 subnotes or something.
Right, will try that as well! Good one. I only want to duck first 100hz or so. Any idea how frequency number of digitakt to frequency range?
Mmmmmm good question?
A. USE YOUR EARS
B. Use a spectrograph in your DAW, slowly raise the lfo amount of the hp filter until everything under 100Hz disappears…
C. Do the maths on what is possibly a 20Hz to 20kHz range filter (19080 units), divided by the 128 possible midi vales and work out how many midi values would remove the first 80Hz…assuming the filter curve is linear which it probably/definately isnt…
D. Guess 
Thing is in FL20 i have this worked out for 250Hz i will see tonight if i can do it for 100Hz and if it translates to the DT…
A. Obviously:) but sometimes bass is a bit difficult to hear in home studio.
Will check my Daw to see what is being carved away at a certain setting.
Anyway going to try a few things.
True enough.