Ducking Music Bed Under Vocals

[gai777]

I'm trying to set up a voice-over with a music bed that will drop in volume once the vocal track is triggered. I know this is a pretty common practice in broadcasting. Does anyone have a good link or some step by step instructions for this procedure in ProTools? Any help would be great!

[Slim Shady]

Use a compressor with a key input on your music bed track, and set that key input to an unused bus. Then create a send to that same bus on your V/O track and adjust away!

[gai777]

Ok, I tried the procedure and still no change. Here's what I did: 1 track is the music bed (stereo) I added a compressor to the insert field on that track. I set the key to bus 1.
the second track is the v/o track. I selected bus 1 in the sends A-E field. I must be missing something because it makes sense. Any suggestions?

[Slim Shady]

You also still have to make adjustments in the compressor as far as gain reduction etc. and that bus send on Track 2 must actually be sending level so make sure it's not set at zero or anything.