Nicky Romero + Cableguys give us Kickstart plug-in

[Igro]

Just looked at the Kickstart homepage, and I must admit, I'm a split soul...

While - being a freelance journalist and hobby-copywriter - I LOVE all these marketing terms about "instant sidechaining" and about how great Nicky Romero were...

...on the other side, I HATE it because it's not true and the whole website looks a bit like the Crysonics homepage.

Sidechaining is a completely different thing than using this plugin on a track. It's a MIDI triggered volume envelope plugin which can create ducking effects.

But for real sidechaining there had to be a sidechain input where you can "feed" another track into Kickstarter. Applying a volume LFO like Kickstarter isn't sidechaining!

Quote from the Kickstarter site: "Forget complicated compressor routings, simply drop Kickstart on your channels—a big Mix control and hand-crafted modulation curves get you started."

Seriously?

If we are talking about the end result, then it will be the same. In fact, volume shaper is more precise and easier to use.

So how do you feed your kick track into Kickstart to duck the bass track?

The only thing you could do is to use the inversed waveform (of Kickstarter on the kick track) on the bass track...

It's simple gain-riding but not sidechaining.

Why do you need to feed anything to Kickstart? You just put it on the channel you want to duck. It's just an LFO plugin after all...

Sidechaining adds additional compression, correct me if i'm wrong.

[Sendy]

It IS sidechaining if you consider the end impression, but NOT if you consider the process. Given that today's production values focus on the destination and not the journey, I'm guessing it's somewhat fair to call it sidechaining, though "sidechain effect" would be more accurate, at the risk of sounding less "punchy"

Anyone who knows anything about production knows what it does, so I don't really see it as deceptive. In fact I'm inclined to say to the general tone of this thread, cut them a break!

[Tricky-Loops]

If we are talking about the end result, then it will be the same. In fact, volume shaper is more precise and easier to use.

So how do you feed your kick track into Kickstart to duck the bass track?

The only thing you could do is to use the inversed waveform (of Kickstarter on the kick track) on the bass track...

It's simple gain-riding but not sidechaining.

Why do you need to feed anything to Kickstart? You just put it on the channel you want to duck. It's just an LFO plugin after all...

Sidechaining adds additional compression, correct me if i'm wrong.

By using sidechain compression, I feed the compressor (for example) on the bass track with the kick track (i. e. its volume envelope).

With Kickstart I cannot do this. So how do I know which volume LFO wave I should choose on the kick track?

This would make sense if I could feed Kickstart (on the bass track) with the volume envelope of the kick track, Kickstart would analyze it and would automatically choose the right volume LFO wave to duck the bass track...

(CableGuys, this would be a GREAT feature for a new plugin which really could substitute sidechaining! )

[Sendy]

The only thing that matters is that the bass (or other target track) is lowered on command, it surely doesn't have to share the exact envelope as the kick drum or whatever else you're ducking it with. In fact you could argue it's better not to be tied to the kick drum envelope as it gives you more freedom to try different curves which will impart slightly different grooves on the sound.

[Tricky-Loops]

In fact you could argue it's better not to be tied to the kick drum envelope as it gives you more freedom to try different curves which will impart slightly different grooves on the sound.

This is a nice idea, trying to apply different grooves!

However, I couldn't imagine Kickstart or Volume Shaper to duck the instrumental track with a vocal track. So sidechaining will still be necessary!

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Sendy]

Ethics is defined by society, f**k these judgments...They aren't hurting anyone with plugins.

Exactly. A teacher in Montana was just let out jail with only a 30 day sentence after raping a 14 year old girl. The girl committed suicide over it. How about we make issues out of things like that and leave plugin names alone?

Yes. things that matter.

That's pretty rough.. There is always going to be something in this crazy, scary and often downright atrocious world that is far more important than what we discuss at an electronic music blog. That was totally uncool to do that Eric. Not the time and place whatsoever, not even remotely. Rip to the girl and may the rapist live a long and most miserable life as punishment, but yeah, this topic is about cableguys kick starter plugin.

Indeed, and if you consider that spacetime is infinite, or that there truely are "many worlds" splitting off each time a decision is made kind of like a phase-space of all eventual possibilities, there will always be an infinite amount of things better and worse than any given topic

[chroma]

if you need a real sidechain... use a real sidechain.

if you just want the kick to trigger a volume envelope on the bass.. volumeshaper can do that today. either route the midi track from the kick to volumeshaper and set it to retrigger mode, or use an audio-to-trigger vst (like ktdrumtrigger) to generate one from audio. volumeshaper can already do the midi track thing. it can't generate the triggers itself (either from the source audio, or from a sidechain), but maybe that would be useful for a future enhancement.

and if you want beat-synced volume control... it's not technically sidechaining, but when you say 'sidechain effects' everyone knows what you mean.

[ezelkow1]

The only thing that matters is that the bass (or other target track) is lowered on command, it surely doesn't have to share the exact envelope as the kick drum or whatever else you're ducking it with. In fact you could argue it's better not to be tied to the kick drum envelope as it gives you more freedom to try different curves which will impart slightly different grooves on the sound.

+1

Picked that up from one of the Timothy Allen tutorials at groove3. He had a great suggestion of just having a part of your template a track that is a very very short hi-hat sample, just something to trigger the compressor, then you use the comps release to adjust the envelope instead of always being stuck with whatever the kick in the track is. Gives you much better shaping options

[Tricky-Loops]

if you need a real sidechain... use a real sidechain.

if you just want the kick to trigger a volume envelope on the bass.. volumeshaper can do that today. either route the midi track from the kick to volumeshaper and set it to retrigger mode, or use an audio-to-trigger vst (like ktdrumtrigger) to generate one from audio. volumeshaper can already do the midi track thing. it can't generate the triggers itself (either from the source audio, or from a sidechain), but maybe that would be useful for a future enhancement.

and if you want beat-synced volume control... it's not technically sidechaining, but when you say 'sidechain effects' everyone knows what you mean.

I'll experiment with it in REAPER how I could route a MIDI track to Volumeshaper...

But if the CableGuys would implement a real sidechain into VolumeShaper 4, I'll dance the whole day in loops and sidechain everything, so that my next songs will sound like jumping on a moonwalk after 10 mugs of beer...

[Sendy]

It's quite interesting to apply volume LFO's to different parts of a track, thinking outside of the sidechain "box", for example I had a breakbeat and making it ever-so-slightly louder on beats 2 and 4 really brought out the funkiness, whilst also making a bit of room for the sub bass which usually falls on the 1.

Or say you have an ambience made of two pads, you could have one be louder on 1 and 3 and the other on 2 and 4, so it seesaws them together.

The lowly and technically unimpressive volume LFO is SO useful for layered music, and it's easy to overlook it and it's creative potential, since it is 'just' volume and not some advanced new tech.

BTW, I feel I should bring up Uhbik-T here, it lets you design several gate or fade patterns and crossfade between them gradually. You could even have the L and R channels playing different patterns. Plus it has haas and nonresonant filtering which can really give an edge to the effect in creating distance and movement.

[Uncle E]

That's pretty rough.. There is always going to be something in this crazy, scary and often downright atrocious world that is far more important than what we discuss at an electronic music blog. That was totally uncool to do that Eric. Not the time and place whatsoever, not even remotely.

Got it. Sorry about that.