12.01.2008 | WOMP | That Daft Punk Pumping Sidechain

OK! So what the hell is Daft Punk doing to get that “pumping” sound in their songs? That’s what we’re going to tackle here in this Weapon of Mass Production… and frankly, you’ll be surprised at how simple it really is to setup this sound. It’s a compression effect called ducking and what it does is compress one audio signal using the amplitude of another. Rather than spend a bunch of time writing out the details, what I’ve decided to do is give you an ableton live session of a new track I’m working on that has the ducking setup properly. So download the session, open it up and mess with the compressor on the synth track. Turn it on and off and mess with the attack and release to fine tune that pumping sound. For those of you who’d like more info on ducking, there’s a great tutorial here as well as sound examples. Next WOMP there’ll be something very special for you Access Virus users…

How to install and use:

  1. - Download Ableton Live Daft Ducking Project (1681)
  2. - Unzip and open session in Ableton Live
  3. - On the Synth track, locate the compressor and turn it on and off and listen to the change
  4. - Suggested: Mess w/ attack and release on the compressor
  5. - TIP: Try compressing the Synth audio with the Bass signal

And here’s a sample of a new VTG song with the ducking in action:

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2 Responses to “12.01.2008 | WOMP | That Daft Punk Pumping Sidechain”

  1. This is cool, but your live set is missing a sample “1 4-Audio.wav” :(

  2. val,
    thanks for the reply. i’ve updated this file to include the missing audio :)

    lawrence // vtg

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