sidechain-setup

sidechain-setup is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from glincker/ableton-skills. It costs 59 tokens per session (986 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A setup guide for sidechain compression, an audio effect where one track temporarily lowers the volume of another when a trigger track plays. Common examples are making bass duck under a kick drum or music duck under vocals.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to route a kick, vocal, or other source into a compressor on a bass, pad, music-bed, or bus track, with settings for standard, musical, or creative ducking.
Why use it?
It prevents competing tracks from masking each other and can create rhythmic pumping. The guide also helps confirm which track triggers the effect and which track is lowered.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/glincker/ableton-skills/sidechain-setup
Any agent
npx skills add glincker/ableton-skills --skill sidechain-setup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/glincker/ableton-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for sidechain-setup

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/glincker/ableton-skills/sidechain-setup.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/glincker/ableton-skills/sidechain-setup)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/glincker/ableton-skills/sidechain-setup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/glincker/ableton-skills/sidechain-setup.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 59 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 986 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00059 $0.00986
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00493
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00197
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00099

Measured 6d ago against content hash e1f22543c9c2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

sidechain-setup scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/sidechain-setup/SKILL.md · 85 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 85 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Sidechain Setup

Set up sidechain compression routing. Different DAWs/MCP servers expose this differently — read the available tools and use the simplest path.

Workflow

1. Identify the source and target

  • Source = trigger (the track that causes the duck) — usually kick or vocal
  • Target = the track that gets ducked — usually bass, pads, or music bed

Confirm with user: "Sidechain target = bass on track 2, source = kick on track 1?"

2. Choose the technique

A. Compressor sidechain (standard for kick→bass)
  • Add Compressor to the target track
  • Enable sidechain input on the compressor
  • Route source: select the kick track as the input
  • Settings:
    • Ratio: 4:1
    • Attack: 5 ms
    • Release: 80-120 ms (release should match the tempo — at 120 BPM, 1 beat = 500ms, so 100ms ≈ 1/8 note)
    • Threshold: set so that GR shows -4 to -6 dB on each kick hit
    • Output gain: +1 to +2 dB to compensate
B. Glue Compressor sidechain (more musical for buses)

Same as above but using Glue Compressor — gives a more "analog" pumping sound, typical for house/EDM masters where you want musical pumping.

C. LFO Tool / volume automation (creative)

If the user wants extreme rhythmic pumping (EDM-style 4/4 pump):

  • Use Auto Filter or a volume LFO modulator if no LFO Tool plugin
  • LFO shape: sawtooth (fast attack, slow release looks like ⏐╲⏐╲)
  • Sync to 1/4 notes
  • Depth: -6 to -12 dB
  • This is used when there's no actual kick (e.g., during a breakdown) but you want the pump feel.
D. Volume envelope automation (per-clip)

For surgical control on a specific section:

  • Show automation on the target track
  • Draw a manual ducking envelope tied to the source's hits
  • Useful for vocal-driven ducking on a music bed

3. Apply

Use add_device and set_device_parameter to route. If the MCP server doesn't expose sidechain routing directly, write the parameters that can be set and tell the user the manual step:

"Compressor added to bass track with 4:1 ratio, 5ms attack, 100ms release. The MCP can't set the sidechain source — please click the sidechain section and select 'Kick' from the input dropdown manually. Then I'll dial in the threshold."

Read the full file on GitHub · 85 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 85 lines · 59 tokens per session scan A e1f22543c9c2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

sidechain-setup is a skill published in the GitHub repository glincker/ableton-skills (22 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 59 tokens to every session and 986 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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