My brother and I have always wanted to design a sidechain pedal for live use. We wanted to be able to use either a drum machine or a microphone placed on a kick drum and run that signal into one of our guitars so that we could achieve a ducking effect while performing live.
Some of the music we make is heavily influenced by dance music, where sidechain compression is often used to maintain the rhythm and create a pulsing effect throughout a song. We wanted to recreate this effect in a live setting without relying on software.
Our idea was to use a distortion or fuzz pedal and build a separate boost circuit for it. Whatever signal was sent into the boost pedal would trigger an LED whenever sound was detected. The brightness of the LED would correspond to the amplitude of the incoming signal.
This LED would then be positioned next to a photoresistor inside the distortion pedal, replacing the function of a traditional potentiometer. As the LED became brighter, the resistance of the photoresistor would change. This would effectively reduce the volume or gain of the distortion pedal whenever the input signal triggered the LED, creating a ducking or sidechain-style effect.
The system could potentially work with contact microphones connected to the boost pedal and attached to a kick drum. This would allow the kick drum to control the sidechain effect in real time, creating a live sidechain input without the need for digital processing.
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