Side Chain – Ducking A Music Track When Speaking – Here’s How To Do It In Logic Pro With VoiceOver!

If you have ever been curious about how to duck the music while you are talking, a common effect heard everywhere from radio to podcast to live streams and other online content, this tutorial goes into the details of how to get it done.
This tutorial centers around the threshold, ratio, attack and release times. Dialing in these 4 controls is the key to any compressor and understanding their role in the task at hand will assist you in getting the results you want. To see how they work in a more general context of using a compressor, check out this tutorial.
Also, to see side chaining in the context of an EDM style production where you may use the kick or hat to duck a pad or something like that, this tutorial explains how and shows off how the Logic Pro Noise Gate may be more useful for that effect as well.
Got any questions? Lets discuss! in the comments.

Check out the tutorial here

For other tutorials on effects check out this tutorial

For other Mixing tutorials check out this playlist.

For this example we have a project with two tracks, a music track and the spoken word track. The first thing we’ll need to do, after getting a basic level balance, is insert a compressor on the music bed track. Once the compressor is inserted, the next step is to side chain it to the spoken word track.
Once you do that, the parameters of the compressor are used to achieve the ducking effect. In this instance, since we are using the logic stock compressor, we’ll start by pulling the threshold down a bit. Next up adjust the ratio. The ratio in this instance controls how much the audio springs back up once the talking is done.
The attack parameter controls how quickly the music ducks down when the talking begins, and on the opposite end, the release parameter controls how long it takes the level of the music to come back up once the talking stops.
While this tutorial is done using the Logic Pro Compressor, you can do this with any third party compressor that supports side chaining. About 9:25 into the other side chain tutorial shows how it could work in some 3rd party compressors.
Also this isn’t limited to just a prerecorded audio track, as the side chain could be set to an instrument track or a live input on your audio interface.