How to choose which track sidechains are chained to?

[plygnrnbw]

Hi. So, another noob switching from Windows/Ableton. In Ableton, sidechain compression is soooo easy, which I have heard is an upshot to ableton, and with a little playing around so far, LMMS seems more like FL Studio, or Caustic, than ableton. I am sure I will get used to this, but my problem so far, is I cant figure out how to set my compressor sidechain, to my kick drum track. Can help plz?

[musikbear]

First
Welcome to the forum!
I like to list all those links that could be of interest to new LMMS-users, so :
Heres the most important LMMS links:
LSP - dedicated site for sharing projects, presets, themes and more https://lmms.io/lsp/
LMMS homepage https://lmms.io/
The Forum - for discussion https://lmms.io/forum/
LMMS Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/makefreemusic
LMMS Soundcloud group https://soundcloud.com/groups/lmms
LMMS Wiki - documentation about the program https://lmms.io/documentation/
LMMS Google+ community http://goo.gl/CxzpNI
LMMS Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/LMMSOfficial

I have a video on lmms side-chaining:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzWiufjkko
There are lots of tutorials on other subjects on my channel too :)

[farawayinspace]

Hi. So, another noob switching from Windows/Ableton. In Ableton, sidechain compression is soooo easy, which I have heard is an upshot to ableton, and with a little playing around so far, LMMS seems more like FL Studio, or Caustic, than ableton. I am sure I will get used to this, but my problem so far, is I cant figure out how to set my compressor sidechain, to my kick drum track. Can help plz?

There are lots of threads and video tutorials on this, like here and a youtube video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q02AOg95Wzs
Short answer to your question: there isn't true sidechain compression in LMMS (yet). However, you can do a similar volume ducking by: 1) place a "Peak Controller" Effect on the FX channel of the instrument you want triggering the 'compression' (eg the kick); 2) for the sound you want to duck outta the way (like a bass) right-click on the FX Channel volume and select "Connect to controller". Adjust the attack/decay to satisfaction. Obviously, this is not sidechain "compression" but sidechain ducking.

Or, if you have the Carla instrument plugins running (linux, jack), you can implement true sidechain compression with Carla-patchbay-plugins, using the Calf studio sidechain compressor.