SideKick QuickStart

This tutorial explains basic usage of SideKick Ex6. If you’ve not yet installed the plugin follow the mac or windows instructions first. We’ll use Logic as our host in this tutorial but the larger part of this tutorial is uniform for all sequencers.

Lets start! SideKick ducks one sound with the input of another. Therefore you will need two instances of the plugin to work. So start by creating two tracks in your plugin host. We’ll use the first track for a kick. For now keep it simple. Add a steady house kick or similar sound as you would usually do.

Now add an instance of SideKick as insert to this track.

When you’ve loaded the SideKick it should automatically open the plugin window. (If your host doesn’t, open the plugin editor window manually).

Make sure SideKick is set to “send”. This first instance is going to send the audio to another instance of Sidekick which will be added later on. We’ll only use one send and one receive plugin in this example, so make sure you’ve selected channel “1”.

On the second track load a nice bass synth and add some notes as you would usually do. Again keep it simple, to get the best result make sure the sounds are long (legato) sounds. You can of course use short synth bleeps but the effect will be less noticeable. Now add a second SideKick to this channel’s inserts.

Again the plugin interface should be opened. Now this second instance of SideKick should listen to the first instance so make sure it’s set to “receive” and channel “1”.

Now let the fun begin. You might already hear something going on when you hit play. If not, you should probably start fidgeting with “duck knob” (that’s the large outer ring). Turn it clockwise to increase the ducking effect. Or counter clockwise to invert the effect.

The attack ring sets the attack speed. Imagine when your kick sounds, the bass line could be ducked immediately or with a little delay. A faster or slower response.

The most inner ring set the recovery speed. Imagine your kick ducked the bass sound all the way down. Now how long would it take for the bass sound to recover to full level? That’s what you set with the recover. The lower the recovery time the faster your sound will be on full strength again.

Finally you can turn up the saturation slider to get some more fatness and volume in the sound. The effect is comparable with over-driving a old tube amplifier.

That’s it! If you run in to any problems visit the support section. Also make sure to check the examples on the product page , these show you some of the possibilities.