[OldSchool]

Interesting read, in effect, the live room level defined the envelope of the added reverb in the original discovery at least- I was not aware of this detail.

Perhaps much more subtle and useful, (certainly more timeless...) is the technique of gating the bass guitar sound with the envelope of the kick drum, either reducing the volume of the bass guitar on the drum hit, or the dropping its volume except when the kick drum is hit.

[wartywhoa23]

> the technique of gating the bass guitar sound with the envelope of the kick drum

Also known as sidechaining.

[aa-jv]

Sidechaining is the technique of gating one channel with the envelope of another - doesn't have to be applied to bass guitar+kick drum - its also popular as a technique in synthesis, such as on a 303 acid line, gated by whichever part of the rythmn track is most relevant to the cause, or in eurorack modular context when one module is gated by another through a side chain signal. It is also highly effective when applied to vocals too.

[wartywhoa23]

I agree, there are countless both purely engineering and creative use cases for sidechaining!

My absolutely adored kind of sidechaining is spectral, that is, when it's not merely a loudness envelope of a source that drives the gain of a target, but when both are split into FFT bins and the envelope of each bin of the source drives the gain of the corresponding bin in the target.

That allows for carving out the target signal with the frequency response of the source, surgically. Works miracles is modern bass-heavy styles, along with spectral limiting.

There is one particularly amazing VST plugin at this, but I won't advertise here.

[xanderlewis]

You won't advertise? Please do.

[wartywhoa23]

Alright, it's Melda MSpectralDynamics.

But before anyone blames me for advertising a commercial product, I'll balance this out with an open source alternative: Nih-Plug Spectral Compressor.

[krighxz]

Possibly referring to the Trackspacer VST plugin

[the_other]

My inherent pedantry drives me to say "this sounds like compression, not gating". Do lots of people use "gating" to mean "automated volume control"? In 30ish years of hobbyist music production I have only encountered it to mean "automated in/out control". It's "compression" that automates dynamics.

Thinking out load a bit here:

- maybe the existence of West-coast style "low pass gates" proves me wrong...

- gates sometimes have release controls, which would make them "automated volume control", but I still contend that aiming for zero gain when the gate closes makes them in/out controls not "dynamics" controls).