[Gear/music making] Question about sidechaining with MPC Studio and Garageband

[The Mollusk]

Heyooo.

Got myself set up with an MPC Studio recently and am very eager to get properly into making hip hop beats, but as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be a function in either the MPC software or Garageband (which I'm intending on using with MPC as a DAW) to apply sidechain compression. I'm fairly shite at all this (hence me opting to make the most basic sort of structured electronic music available) so maybe I'm just missing something here? Or is there another DAW I need to get hold of for this function, and if so, is there owt good that's freely available?

I've seen there's the Mother Ducker sidechain compressor for MPC software version 2 upwards but I'm using something like 1.9 as that version was free and version 2 is £100 which I'm too effing broke to shell out for.

Cheers in advance!

[Proactive]

I had an Mpc Live and from what I recall, Mother Ducker was the only way to do it, which is a bit ridiculous really.

[Proactive]

To be fair though, the Mother Ducker is worth it for the Akai cap wearing Duck animation alone.

[The Mollusk]

Hmm. I wonder if it's worth me, ahem, sourcing some better software like Ableton or something if there's no workaround with what I'm using now?

[mrpupkin]

Would you consider upgrading from Garageband to Logic? You can do it in there as well as pretty much anything else you could think of, but IT'LL COST YA... Otherwise Cakewalk is free these days and will do the job.

[The Mollusk]

I'll have a look into Cakewalk, thanks! I'd happily shell out for Logic or similar if I could afford it but I'm saving for my wedding for the next 12 months so can't justify those sorts of expenditures right now!

[mrpupkin]

Cool, if you go down the Cakewalk route this guy has some good videos that helped me get to grips with it, I believe there's one on sidechain compression in there... https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4ylp_4AhfKtyYYRWyp9B4v2CLm32__9P

[BeardFaceMan]

I'm unfamiliar with GarageBand as a DAW, but could you not use a sidechain plug-in or vst? There are lots of decent free option there.

[The Mollusk]

Ah as I said I'm useless with this stuff so I dunno what options are available. I did google it but the results seemed to just be tutorial videos. Any chance you could point me in the right direction please?

[BeardFaceMan]

There are some decent free options here - https://plugins4free.com/search?term=sidechain