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Create a ducking

Press ⌥D (Add Ducking…) and choose the trigger track, such as the kick. If a track you can duck is selected, the ducking applies to it right away at a default amount.

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Duck another track

Select the track, open the Ducking section in the Inspector, and drag the ducking’s slider above 0.

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Draw the shape

Click the ducking’s name in its row to open the shape editor. Draw the curve over the folded waveforms and press Space to hear it against the music.

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Duck only the lows or the highs

In the shape editor, set Range to Lows or Highs. Drag on the spectrum strip next to the menu to move the cutoff.

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Try a different curve

In the shape editor, press ◀ ▶ beside the preset menu to step through the curve presets while it plays. Save Curve… in that menu adds your own.

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Make a second style from the same trigger

Right-click a row and choose Duplicate, or use the shape editor header’s duplicate button. Change the copy and apply it to the tracks that want it.

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Good to know

  • The trigger is the timeline, not the audio. A duck fires from the trigger track’s clip starts and MIDI note-ons, so live playback and a bounce produce the identical gain curve, with no detection delay and no added latency.
  • Ducking only ever lowers the level. The dip is applied after the clipper and limiter, so it never adds gain or colors the source.
  • One ducking, many targets. A ducking is named, project-wide and lives on its trigger track. It shows up as an amount row on every other track, so one kick can pump the bass, the pads and a reverb return by a different amount each.
  • The shape editor edits the shared ducking. It opens the same way from any track’s row, and every edit is felt on every track the ducking applies to.
  • Ducking is not a plugin sidechain. Use Ducking for a clean drawn volume duck with no plugin in the path. Use a sidechain when a compressor, gate or filter should react to the source.
  • The first ducking cannot come from the Ducking section: it only appears once a ducking can apply to the track. Use ⌥D, the Inspector’s empty-area right-click menu (Add Ducking ▸ trigger track) or the Command Palette. The section header’s ⋯ menu adds further ones.
  • Any track with clips can trigger, sample or instrument; a track with nothing to trigger from is not offered. A track cannot duck itself, so its own row never appears.
  • Groups, returns and the Master can be ducked, so one trigger can duck a whole submix or a shared effect return.
  • A ducking at 0 still exists on that track, with its automation lane and MIDI binding. Remove from This Track takes it off this track only; Delete Ducking (All Tracks) removes it everywhere, and its label says so.
  • The waveforms behind the curve are folded so every hit lands in the same place: what you draw is exactly what you hear against. A live oscilloscope shows the actual post-effects audio under the curve.
  • The vertical axis is the gain multiplier: the top is unity, the bottom fully ducked. A target’s amount scales the whole shape between those.
  • Length is in beats, so the duck stays musical across tempo changes. Changing the length keeps existing points anchored to the trigger instead of rescaling the curve.
  • Lookahead pre-ducks with zero latency: the curve left of the trigger line ramps down into the hit, so the transient is never caught mid-slope. Gridshift fires the schedule early because the triggers are known from the timeline.
  • One trigger can carry several styles, Kick, Kick 2, …, each with its own curve and range. Range belongs to the ducking, so for another range on another track, duplicate the ducking.
  • While you drag the cutoff, every track the ducking applies to plays only its ducked part. Releasing commits one undo step.
  • A ranged ducking leaves the signal untouched between ducks, not even the phase changes. It adds no latency, and a bounce renders it identically.
  • Each preset step is one undo, so you can audition curves without stopping. Saved curves sync via iCloud and join the same list; folders in the library show as submenus. The menu also deletes the curve you are on and has Show in Finder for renaming and sorting.
  • A preset carries only the curve, length and lookahead. The trigger, targets, amounts, trigger mode and range stay, so one saved curve fits any duck.
  • Flatten Track (⌥F) keeps the ducking live on that track: it prints the instrument and effects but leaves the mixer.
Last modified on October 22, 2026