How to Sidechain in FL Studio: Kick, Bass, 808 and Reverb

“The basic rule about compressors is to trust your ear, to have some taste.”

Learning to sidechain in FL Studio ends a fight you’ve probably heard in your own beats: the kick sounds great alone and so does the bass, but together they blur into one muddy boom. Sidechain fixes that by letting the kick nudge the bass aside for a split second whenever it lands, and it’s the setup Max, the founder of Mix Elite, teaches in Mix Elite’s free 4.5-hour FL Studio course. Below are the exact clicks, plus a group trick for full songs, a kick and 808 fix, vocal reverb ducking, a click fix, third-party plugins and a free LFO Tool-style pump. It’s part of the dynamics step in Mix Elite’s method for mixing a whole song.

What is sidechaining in FL Studio?

Sidechaining means one sound controls the volume of another. Most of the time the kick drum is the boss. Every time it hits, the bass gets quieter for a split second, then comes back. Producers call that quick dip ducking.

You do it with a compressor. That’s a plugin that turns a sound down when it gets louder than a set level, called the threshold. The ratio sets how hard it turns it down. A normal compressor listens to the track it sits on. In Max’s words, sidechain compression “works exactly like a compressor,” except “we take a different trigger.” Here, the trigger is the kick. If compressors are new to you, start with how to use a compressor in FL Studio.

Why bother? The kick and the bass both live in the low end. When they hit at the same time, they blur into one muddy thump. The rule is simple: you don’t want any sub bass playing at the same time as the kick, and sidechaining fixes exactly that. The kick punches through, and the bass fills the gaps between hits. Push it harder and you get the pumping sound you hear in a lot of EDM and house.

How to sidechain the kick and bass in FL Studio

This is the classic setup, and all it needs is Fruity Limiter, which comes with FL Studio. It uses Fruity Limiter instead of Fruity Compressor because the limiter shows you the waveform. You can watch the ducking happen.

1. Give the kick and the bass their own mixer tracks. In the Channel Rack, the number on each channel shows which mixer track it plays through. Make sure the kick and the bass don’t share one.
2. Add Fruity Limiter to the bass track. Open the Mixer (F9), click the bass track, click an empty effect slot and pick Fruity Limiter. First turn its CEIL (ceiling) knob up, so the limiter part doesn’t touch the sound. Then switch it from LIMIT to COMP (2).
3. Send the kick to the bass track. Click the kick’s mixer track to select it. Then right-click the small arrow at the bottom of the bass track and choose Sidechain to this track. The kick now reaches the bass track’s plugins, but you don’t hear it through that track.
4. Pick the kick as the trigger. In Fruity Limiter, right-click the SIDECHAIN box (4). You’ll see every signal that reaches this track. Choose the kick. Don’t skip this: picking the kick is what tells the limiter to listen to it.
5. Set the ratio and the threshold (5). Set the ratio to about 4:1. Then pull the threshold down while the kick and the bass play together. In the course demo, the bass ducks by about 7 to 10 dB.
6. Listen, then adjust the release (6). Switch the limiter off and on to compare. Keep ATT (attack) fast so the bass ducks the moment the kick hits. The REL (release) knob sets how fast the bass comes back. A longer release makes the pump more obvious, and a shorter one keeps it subtle.

Don’t let the other knobs scare you. Max’s advice on the threshold and ratio: “Only those two knobs will matter for now and for many, many weeks to come.” A simple way to set the release is by ear: the bass should be fully back up just before the next kick lands.

When the ducking sounds right, play the whole song and re-check your levels. If the kick now sounds boomy, cut a little of the boxy low mids on the kick, and do the same on the bass.

How to sidechain a whole group, not just the bass

On a full song, don’t stop at the bass. Make one separate group for everything you want to duck under the kick. A group, also called a bus, is one mixer track that several sounds play through. One plugin then treats them all at once.

1. Make the group. Pick an empty mixer track and name it Sidechain. Put it on insert 1, at the very start of the mixer.
2. Route your sounds into it (2). Click a sound’s mixer track, then right-click the arrow at the bottom of the Sidechain track and choose Route to this track only. Do this for each sound you want to duck: the bass, pads, chords, melodies, arps and other background parts.
3. Leave some things out. Keep the drums out of it. Leave out the brass as well, since its job is to add impact, and the same goes for the crashes.
4. Add one limiter (4). Put Fruity Limiter on the Sidechain track, ceiling up, COMP mode. Select the kick’s track, right-click the Sidechain track’s arrow and choose Sidechain to this track. Then pick the kick in the SIDECHAIN list, set the ratio to about 4 or higher and lower the threshold.
5. Clean up. If you had a separate sidechain limiter on the bass, remove it. The group does that job now.

The SIDECHAIN list doubles as a check. It shows every sound you routed into the group (2), with the kick at the bottom once you’ve sent it (4).

The video below shows the same setup on a full track. It also adds a second Fruity Limiter to the same group with the snare as its trigger, so the music dips a little on every snare hit too.

How do you sidechain a kick and 808 so they stop clashing?

Duck only the 808’s lowest frequencies, not the whole 808. Put Fruity Peak Controller on the kick and link a low band of Fruity Parametric EQ 2 on the 808 to it, inverted. Every time the kick hits, the 808’s low end below about 200 Hz dips, so the two stop piling up into mud, and the 808’s higher tone keeps playing.

Why not plain sidechain compression? It turns down the whole 808, including the higher frequencies that give it its tone. The clash only happens in the lowest frequencies, so that’s the only part that needs to move.

How to set up the kick and 808 trick in FL Studio

1. On the kick’s mixer track, add Fruity Peak Controller and set its BASE knob to 50%. This plugin follows the kick’s volume and turns it into a control signal.
2. On the 808’s mixer track, add Fruity Parametric EQ 2. Drag the first band to about 200 Hz.
3. Right-click that band’s level (its volume) and choose Link to controller.
4. Pick the kick’s controller. In the window that opens, set Internal controller to Peak ctrl – Peak (4). That’s the peak controller on your kick.
5. Flip it. Set Mapping formula to Inverted (5). FL Studio shows it as 1-Input, with a line that slopes down.
6. Click Accept (6).
7. Play them together. Every time the kick hits, the 808’s low end dips and the rest of it stays. Turn up TENSION on the peak controller to shape the dip.

The clash can be hard to hear on small speakers, so check it by eye too: put Maximus on the master, set it to monitor only the LOW band, and compare the low end with the trick on and off. A balanced low end matters in every mix. For more on getting the two to sit together, from choosing samples to setting levels and EQ, see our guide to mixing a kick and 808.

Why should you sidechain reverb to the lead vocal?

Because reverb that plays under the words blurs them. When the vocal ducks its own reverb, the reverb drops while the singer sings and swells back in the gaps between lines. Every word stays clear and up front, and the song still sounds roomy. It’s the same move as ducking the bass under the kick.

Max is blunt about it: “the worst thing that you could do to your vocal is just put the reverb on it.” It blurs the vocal, and nothing is really clear. Beginners tend to overuse reverb because it hides imperfections, but a pop, trap or EDM vocal needs to be clear and easy to understand.

How to sidechain reverb in FL Studio

Here’s the setup from Mix Elite’s free FL Studio course:

1. Make a new mixer track and call it Side chain Reverb.
2. Put your reverb on it, and take it off the vocal track. Set the reverb’s dry to 0 and turn the wet up.
3. Click the vocal’s mixer track, then left-click the arrow on the reverb track. The vocal now feeds the reverb.
4. Add Fruity Limiter after the reverb and switch it to COMP (4). Right-click SIDECHAIN, pick the vocal (4) and set the ratio to about 4:1.
5. Lower the threshold (5) until the reverb ducks while the vocal plays. Then set how much reverb you want with that track’s fader.

In the demo, the reverb’s decay is 2.5 seconds. An older Mix Elite video gets the same result with Fruity Peak Controller instead: it goes on the vocal, the reverb’s wet knob is linked to the vocal’s peak with Link to controller, and the mapping formula is set to Inverted.

That same video goes one step further. Every instrument except the drums goes to one sidechain track, with a Fruity Limiter keyed from the vocal, so the instruments dip slightly whenever the vocal plays. About 2 dB is enough. If you’re still deciding which effect a sound needs, here’s reverb vs delay in plain words.

How to get the LFO Tool pump with FL Studio’s own plugins

Plugins like LFO Tool and ShaperBox draw the ducking shape for you instead of using a compressor. The video below argues you don’t need them, because “everything that those two plugins make can be done inside of FL Studio.” It builds the same thing in Patcher, says it takes about 30 seconds, and calls it “by far the best way” to sidechain in FL Studio right now.

The big win is that the shape follows your real kick notes. So it works with any kick pattern, not only a steady four-on-the-floor beat. Here’s the build:

1. On the mixer track you want to duck, load Patcher. Inside it, add Fruity Balance (1) and activate its volume knob.
2. Add Fruity Envelope Controller (2). Delete two of its points, so only the dip shape is left.
3. Right-click the envelope controller and choose Outputs, Controllers, Articulator 1. Connect that to Fruity Balance’s volume (3).
4. Right-click From FL Studio and choose Outputs, Events, MIDI port 0. Connect it to the envelope controller (4).
5. In the Channel Rack, add a MIDI Out channel. It uses port 0 by default. Copy your kick’s notes onto it.
6. Set the base to 30%, so the shape only pulls the volume down and never pushes it above 0 dB. Then reshape the curve until it sounds right.

The same envelope can move more than volume. The video links extra articulators to a reverb’s wet, a delay’s wet and an EQ’s low-pass, all moving in time with the kick.

How to sidechain a third-party plugin in FL Studio

FL Studio’s own plugins see a routed sidechain right away. Most third-party plugins don’t. A Mix Elite short puts it bluntly: “If you just sidechain one mixer channel to another, most third-party plugins won’t work properly.” The fix is a setting inside the plugin’s window.

1. Send the kick to the plugin’s mixer track with Sidechain to this track, the same as before.
2. Open the plugin. Click the gear at the top left of its window, then the plug-and-gear icon for its detailed settings (2), and open the Processing tab.
3. Under Connections, open the list next to the sidechain input and pick the kick (3).

Now the plugin hears the kick on its sidechain input, so its own sidechain controls can react to every kick.

Other ways to sidechain in FL Studio

• Fruity Compressor (1). Newer versions of FL Studio let you sidechain it too. Use Sidechain to this track as above, then pick the kick in the compressor’s sidechain list (2). A Mix Elite short from January 2026 shows it.
• Fruity Peak Controller and Fruity Balance. Put the peak controller on the kick and Fruity Balance on the bass. Link Balance’s volume to the kick’s peak with an Inverted mapping. It’s the 808 trick, applied to the whole volume.
• Sidechain automation. Put Fruity Balance on the bass, right-click its volume knob and choose Create automation clip. Then draw a dip at every kick. The kick isn’t actually driving it, but you get full control of the shape.
• A note-triggered automation clip. The LFO Tool video shows a shortcut. Make that automation clip, delete it from the Playlist, and copy your kick’s notes onto it in the Channel Rack. Then open its editor and shrink the shape to one short dip.
• Gross Beat. This FL Studio effect has ready-made volume shapes for a sidechain-style pump. Like LFO Tool, it follows the beat grid rather than your actual kick, so it suits a kick on every beat best.

Sidechain not working? Check these 4 things

1. The limiter is still in LIMIT mode. Switch it to COMP (1).
2. The kick isn’t routed. Select the kick’s track first, then right-click the arrow on the track you want to duck. It’s easy to do this the wrong way around.
3. The SIDECHAIN box is empty. Right-click it and pick the kick. If the kick isn’t in the list (3), it isn’t routed yet.
4. The threshold is too high. Pull it down until the purple gain reduction moves on every kick.

In the screenshot above, the list only shows the bass layers. That’s what an unrouted kick looks like.

Why does my sidechain click every time the kick hits?

A click usually means the volume moves too fast. A bass note is a slow wave: one cycle of a 100 Hz bass lasts 10 milliseconds, so an attack or release much shorter than that bends the wave itself, and you hear the bend as a click. Lengthen the release first, then soften the knee or slow the attack a little.

1. Turn REL up. Image-Line’s own Fruity Limiter manual warns that a release set too low can distort the sound. Raise it until the click goes away, but keep it short enough that the bass is back up before the next kick.
2. Soften the KNEE. The knee sets how gradually the compression kicks in. A softer knee eases the bass down instead of snapping it, which often stops a click.
3. Nudge ATT up a little. A slightly slower attack lets the first instant of the bass through. You give up a bit of clarity right at the kick in exchange for a smoother dip.
4. Smooth a dip you drew yourself. In Patcher, an automation clip or Gross Beat, a dip that drops straight down is the fastest volume change there is. If it clicks, give the start of the dip a short slope.

Sidechaining is one fix among many, so if your mix still sounds off, check these beginner mixing mistakes.

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