How to use SideChain effectively?

I'm pretty good with Guitar Rig 5 but i have no idea about this Sidechain. Something tells me it would be a great tool to now how to use. My problem is i have absolutely no idea what it is supposed to achieve therefore i have no idea how to really experiment with it. Can someone just give me a short rundown on what this is and really does?

Thanks a million!

 

Come on, over 20 views and not one person knows what Sidechain really is and how to use it? I'll even appreciate a wild guess

 

Sidechain is used to control something, usually compression, from an external source.

The most common example is for a bass player to set up a compressor to act off of the drummer's kick drum. So he would take the output of the bass drum mic or mixer channel or send etc and place it into the input of the sidechain of GR5.

What this does is while he is playing his bass when the kick drum hits his bass is compressed. This has two effects, first it makes the bass at that specific point in time have more punch and it usually also lowers the peak of the bass so that the bass and drum together do not clip the track and thus usually more headroom can be achieved, IE the bass and drum are not fighting for the same space, the bass is 'ducking" the drums.

In GR5 the Input Level Modifier and the Dynamics processes, Limiters and Compressors, can use the sidechain. The Input Level Modifier makes this especially useful as you can do crazy stuff like say have the kick drum control your Wah Wah pedal sweep every time it hits. Or you could use your voice to control the wah taking the input from your microphone instead of the drums, etc.

Hope that helps.

Enjoy!

 

WOW !

Execellent answer!
Thats what I like to see in these forums

+1 to you !

 

i agree, there's probably a 1000 questions i would like answered as clearly! WELL DONE MAN! [or lady!]