What is Sidechain Reverb?

Sidechain reverb is a trick used to keep the reverb clean and punchy.

While reverb is a great way to bring out vocals and synths, it can often be harsh and overpower elements in your mix.

Sidechaining the reverb enables you to have more control over how much of it is processed.

You can sidechain pretty much any effect you’d like.

I mainly use Logic Pro these days, but I only have access to Garage Band today on this computer (my daughter is on my main MacBook now doing homework lol) so I can’t get into Logic at the moment.

However, I found a great tutorial online that walks you through using sidechain compression. I’ll post the steps for you here:

You’ll need 2 things:

1) The track(s) that will be compressed – i.e. the bass

2) The track(s) that will be added to the sidechain input of the first track’s compressor – i.e. the bass drum

FIRST

1) Put a compressor on the bass track (the thing you want to turn down when the other track gets loud)

2) On the bass drum track, SEND some of it to a bus, like this:

3) Since Logic created an aux input listening to that bus – which we DON’T NEED – delete or mute that AUX input

4) Now the drum send goes to the bus, and goes nowhere… YET!

5) On the bass compressor, in the sidechain menu –

Choose the bus you just used- in this case, bus 20

6) Great! Now, if you mute the bass track, the compressor should still be getting audio from the bass drum track

(you can tell by the blue in the “gain reduction” meter)

7) Now, when the bass drum plays, that audio will be added to the side chain in the compressor, helping the compressor decide when it’s supposed to compress stuff

8) For the Daft Punk pulsing synth bad effect, replace the bass track with a sustained synth pad

9) Adjust the threshold, attack, and release to taste!

I hope this helps – have fun!