What's it called when each kick best causes a slight volume reduction of the whole tr

hatrickpatrick

Just starting out with EDM production so I'm sure this is a horribly newish question

There's an effect in a lot of today's dance music which causes a sort of pulsating volume. Each kick drum hit causes the volume of the entire track, all instruments, to reduce for a split second and then quickly fade back up to normal.

The song "Call On Me" is a good example of the kind of effect I'm talking about.

Does it even have a name, in fact? I used to think it was just a side effect of an overdriven sound system but since in some songs it happens even at low volumes and through headphones, I'm assuming it's a deliberate effect?

gctest50

There's surely a name for it but anyway - a bit of automatic gain control with slow "return to normal" to get the effect they want

http://www.waves.com/plugins/renaissance-compressor

holystungun9

Scroll down the first page on this forum and you will see a question about compression. That is what you are looking for I guess.

jjpep

Side chaining compression. If you google you'll find a good few how to's

shane9689

ahh, good old side chain compression to the kicks. its like the mark of dance music really, kinda like having high gain in metal, nearly always a must to some extent

Stab*City

Try side-chaining to more than just the kick drum for some nice effects too.

whiterob81

Side chaining, that's the one. Some good tutorials on it out there. It's a pretty easy effect to achieve but gives some good power to a tune

kumate_champ07

'ducking'?