Welcome 🤙🏽

Yeah man you can also answer this by shifting the thinking a bit. In every song as a producer we are guiding the focus of the listener. Sidechaining is just a tool to finesse that. So this may change song to song but you are thinking of using Sidechain to help elements move in and out and stay in focus. This shifts more of your focus to start thinking of your elements as either more of the foreground and background. For instance, in some tracks, atmosphere and ambience might be painted in the background to really fill out a song and give it a sense of space and cohesion and in that case side chaining the pads ambience and reverbs makes sense. But in some tracks the ambience might be the forward focus while other elements move to the background like a vocal. The short answer is it varies depending on where your wanting to pivot focus. There are no rules in music so keep experimenting man and share what you find here.

LFG!!!!