Hi.

Quick question...

In a musical situation, when my guitar solo comes up, is setting up a ducking channel deemed a wise/acceptable thing to do, or should I stick to automation?

I like the idea of the fact that I can perhaps leave some side chains ready set up in a template on the lead guitar channels, so once I've set up the kind of attenuation I'm after, I no longer have to get busy with the mouse and draw in automation.

By the way, I've never attempted Side-chaining, but I've just found an excellent tutorial on how to do it using Cubase SX2 and Waves C1, so I'm going to try that now, but I'd still appreciate people's advice on whether this is common practice, or if it's just for radio DJs and TV voice overs?

Thanks.

I think you have to ask yourself what a producer would do wth a mixing desk in front of him/her. Would they set up a compressor with a sidechain or would they just push the channel fader up? I'd go for the fader myself. It's what automation's for. Ducking is really for those live uncontrolled moments where you don't know what's going to happen, but when it does it needs to be heard.

But please experiment. It's a learning experience - which can't be bad - and you may come up with an effect you like and can use another time. There are no rules for things like this, and if there are, they can always be broken!

I'd be well interested to know how you get on with this particular use of sidechaining, I've started a thread on using sidechaining for drums, but this is an interesting aside.

I look forward to hearing how you get on.

Thank you both for the replies.

I'm also intrigued to know how it pans out, but have already run into problems! lol. *Note my new thread on Twisted Lemons plugin...

You see, I've only just realised after many years of recording that instead of making my lead guitar louder, I've had far better results recently in making backing rhythm guitars and keys quieter. The lead guitar seems to sit so much better.

I already have a master template set-up with everything ready to go.

My aim is to make this template as "automated" as possible, so I can just work on getting my songs to disk.

I've spent a lot of time working on my first album song using the template, and have saved every aspect from panning, levels, EQs, reverbs etc... for all my instruments. I figure, if I'm using the same sounds for all my songs, then they should all sound nice and uniform, which will help hugely in the "mastering" stage.

But yeah, if I can make it so that whenever I play lead guitar, certain other channels automatically dip in volume then I'll go ahead and save that in the template too instead of having to draw in automation. I have motorised faders, but have found that it's too hard to accurately dip the correct db attenuation via manual automation (an oxymoron there!).