It’s also possible to invert this effect, where the incoming signal triggers a low-pass filter to open up. Here’s what it sounds like with a more exaggerated release time of 120 ms. Your browser does not support the audio element. I used a basic 4x4 kick pattern to demonstrate the filter sidechaining. The kick track is muted but it’s signal is still being sent to the Auto Filter Sidechain. The Release is set to 16 ms which means that the filter will wait 16 ms after the incoming sidechain signal drops, to follow it’s envelope. The Attack time indicates that the filter will react immediately rising input signals. This happens because the Envelope Amount is turned to it’s highest value, meaning the high-pass filter that is selected, will sweep all the way up to it’s maximum value while there is a signal coming in through the sidechain. Every time the kick’s signal enters the sidechain, the filter frequency will be high-passed. The sidechain input signal comes from a Kick track.
This will prevent any frequency clashing in the low-end of your synths/basses and your kick. The cool thing about using Auto Filter Sidechaining is that we can use the kick to trigger the filter to quickly high-pass. The most common reason to use this is to sidechain the low-frequency of a sound to sweep out of the way of the kick or snare. Here are a few examples of how you can use this in your productions: Envelope release: Controls how quickly the auto filter responds to falling input levels.Envelope attack: Controls how quickly the auto filter responds to rising input levels.Envelope amount: Controls how much the envelope affects the filter frequency.Dry = Internal and Wet = External trigger. External/Internal mix: Adjust the balance between external and internal signal used for triggering the device.Adjusting this knob can however change the extent of the filter frequency cutoff movement. Adjusting this knob does not affect to the main track signal. Audio source input gain: Controls the volume of the signal coming into the sidechain.Note: If you want to use a signal from a specific drum pad on Ableton’s Drum Rack, select the drum rack as the signal source in the first box, and then you can select the specific drum pad you want from the second box (tapping point). Post Mixer: This will take the signal with after going through the channel's volume fader.Post FX: This will take the signal after it has been processed by the effects chain.Pre FX: This will take the signal before it goes through the effects chain.Simply select the kick track.Ĭlicking on the second box will display a list of:
We can use the kick as a trigger to move the filter frequency cutoff according to the envelope of the kick sample. Let’s say you want the filter to react every time a “kick” sample is played. Clicking on the first box will open a list of all the tracks in your project.
Here are the 9 expandable Ableton Audio Effect Racks, along with an in-depth guide, showing you how to use them.Ībleton’s Auto Filter can be quite powerful under the hood. Have you ever noticed this little triangle icon, next to the “On/Off” switch in the title bar of an Audio Effect? What exactly is an expandable Ableton audio effect? This is an Intermediate/Advanced guide, so if you are new to Ableton, this might be difficult to understand. For more interesting production techniques in Ableton, check out our Ableton Projects Collection. In this article, you’ll learn about the 9 expandable Ableton Audio Effects, and how you can use them. Did you know that 9 of them are expandable for extra features? Ableton comes equipped with 36 stock Ableton Audio Effects.