Sidechaining

So I want to look into sidechaining and / or compressing pads to get the sound like for example Tame Impala uses a lot, where the sound of the hihat is lowered whenever one of the others is hit.

I know there's a mute group function, but it's not satisfactory because it cancels the sound completely. The way I want it, it's not cancelled completely but only when other sounds are present so that it continues when other pads are not playing.

Is there a way to do this? Any thoughts are appreciated

the only way to do this *in* the mpc 500 is to manually turn down the velocity of the desired hits in step edit.

sidechain compression is normally done at the mixing stage though.

everybody is sidechaining everything these days. probably because its so easy in ableton live.