Sidechain Compression in FL Studio Tutorial .

Using sidechain compression is a technique that musicians in many genres implement. You’ll hear it a lot in dance and other forms of electronic music, but the effect can be used in any genre with a little creativity. Sidechaining is basically using one signal as an input to compress another signal. A common example of this is using the kick drum to compress other tracks to give them that classic pumping sound. Here’s some audio to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

This is the uncompressed synth and hi-hat track.

Uncompressed example

Next is the same track with a sidechain compressor on it.

Compressed example

I’ve made the compression really pronounced here to emphasize the effect, but the amount can easily be adjusted to fit your song. Also the kick drum is muted here to make the effect stand out. You can hear how the music gets smashed on each beat, gets out of the way of the drum, and has the pump effect.

To set this up you can use the compressor that comes with **FL Studio or you can download a VST that makes it easier to setup the sidechaining. In this tutorial I’ll use the Fruity Compressor to achieve this effect.

First create a new bit of music or use something you already have to practice setting up the sidechain on. I used this synth track on pattern 1 and hi hats on pattern 2. These will be the music signals that are compressed.





Next we need the signal that is doing the compressing. Most common this will be a kick drum, but you can experiment with using any sound source. Here I’ll just use a simple kick drum on pattern 3 that hits on every down beat. Four-on-the-floor works great for sidechaining.



Now open the playlist and lay out the patterns so they play with each other as a song.



And switch the play mode from PAT to SONG on the transport controls.



Now we’ll set up the compressor using the drum as an input to squash the music. Open the “Channel settings” for the bass drum and set the FX to 1. Do the same for any music channels that you want to compress except send them to FX 2.







Go to the mixer and put in a Fruity Peak Controller on Insert 1. Also put a Fruity Compressor on Insert 2.




Open the Fruity Compressor controls, right click on the Threshold knob, and select “Link to controller…”



This will bring up the Remote control settings for the Threshold control. Look in the middle where it says Internal controller and in the drop down box select “Peak ctrl (Insert 1) – Peak”. Also directly below that where it says Mapping formula click the little arrow and choose Inverted. Then click Accept.





This links the kick drum output into the compressor. Play the song and on the Fruity Compressor you should see the Threshold amount pulsing with the beat of the song. You might not hear the effect yet, but with a few tweaks you can dial in the amount of sidechaining you want in your tune. First on the Fruity Compressor turn the Ratio up all the way to 30.0:1 to really smash the sounds. If you’re still not hearing any difference, you need to raise the level on the kick drum to hit the compressor harder. You can do this on the Peak Controller on Insert 1 by boosting the PEAK VOL control or just turn up the drum volume in the step sequencer or mixer. If you want to hear the kick drum that is triggering the compressor, just untick the little MUTE box in the bottom right corner on the Peak Controller.



You can change the qualities of the sidechain effect by trying different volumes on the kick drum or playing around with the Attack and Release controls on the Fruity Compressor.

Hopefully this Fruity Loops sidechaining tutorial helped you get your sidechain going, so you can pump up those tracks and make them start to breathe on the dance floor.