Sidechain pump with Fakie

What is sidechaining?

We love the breathtaking pumping effect that punches our chest every time the kick hits. It was invented by audio engineer Douglas Shearer in the 1930s but was first made popular with French Filter House. Nowadays it can be heard in everything from all types of thrusting dance music to Lofi Hip-hop and Future Knock.

Traditional sidechain compression involves two channels - one which acts as an input signal and another that you’d put a compressor on. The input signal makes the compressor lower the audio signal of its host channel every time the sound that’s being fed into it reaches a threshold. Another word for this that will make you sound smarter: Gain reduction.

Typically sidechain compression is used with kick and bass, which is an excellent way to have your kick track hit harder since these types of sounds often share the same frequency range. Because of this, making the bass track duck for the kick allows for a greater dynamic range since frequencies don’t collide and cancel each other out. That’s essentially why we experience the magnificent knock.

You can also get more creative with it and place the Fakie on for example a vocal track to have your lead vocals sound side-chained. Speaking of vocals, compressors are not the only effects to have sidechain capabilities nowadays. You can also find them lurking on de-essers and filters.

How to use Fakie in Soundation

Quick ducking effect [Beginner]

The quickest way to add a sidechain effect to your audio is by using one of the presets in the Soundation studio.

1. 1
   Open Soundation and create a project
2. 2
   Double-click the channel to which you want to apply the Fakie, this will open up the bottom panel
3. 3
   Press "+ Add effect" and select Fakie in the drop-down menu
4. 4
   In the upper right corner, you can now select one of the pre-made settings

Customize the Fakie [Intermediate]

Here's a breakdown of each parameter in Fakie.

Attack

Attack governs how long it takes for the ducking to reach the lowest level.

Hold

Hold lets you select how long the signal will stay at the lowest level.

Release

Release decides how long it will take for the signal to get back to normal after the hold.

Depth

Depth controls how low the lowest level is, in other words, how strong the pumping effect is.

Change the timing [Pro]

Fakie is fixed to ducking at a quarter-note rate, but you can work around it.

• Double or half the tempo of the project. If it's originally 80 - change it to 160 to double the speed of the pumping, and 40 to half it.

Hop into the studio right now and come up with some crazy out-there ideas of how to use Fakie. Remember - there are no rules in music production. Well, it certainly helps to have a solid foundation of knowledge, but music never evolved by following rules. 😉