Logic: Side chain compression (ducking)

Article tutorial
For this tutorial you will need a control signal and an affected signal.

For our side chain example we will use a kick drum (control signal) to trigger a compressor which will dynamically attenuate (or duck) a track with a sustained note (the affected signal).

This means every time the kick drum plays the sustained note will be compressed.

To accomplish this follow these steps:


 * 1) Create 2 software instrument tracks (You can use audio or instrument tracks for this effect, but for our example we are using instrument tracks)
 * 2) On the first track insert a software instrument with a drum kit and record a kick drum on every quarter note for 2 bars. After your done, insert Bus 1 into the sends field of the tracks channel strip and turn it up.This will automatically create an aux track with the input as Bus 1, this is unnecessary for what we are trying to do so go to the aux track channel strip and change the input to no input
 * 3) On the second software instrument track record a sustained note that plays for 2 bars ( you can do this by opening up the ES1 on a software instrument track and using the default patch).
 * 4) Now on the track you just recorded the sustained note on ,add a compressor plug in to it's respective channel strip. In the side chain field of the compressor click, hold and select Bus 1 as shown in the image below.




 * 1) Push play on the transport
 * 2) Turn the compressors ratio all the way up and begin to pull the threshold down. You should hear the sustain note begin to fluctuate in volume in accordance with the kick drum hitting, if not try pulling up the gain on the compressor