Ducking

A Beat Saber gameplay mechanic where players duck under obstacles to avoid damage.

In Beat Saber, ducking is a core gameplay mechanic used to avoid obstacles. Players must lower their head or body to pass under red-and-white striped walls (or blue in custom maps) to prevent losing health or failing the level.

Quick Facts

Mechanic type: Defensive Evasion
Target object: Obstacle (Wall)
Required action: Lowering head or body
Failure consequence: Player loses health (or fails the level in one-hit mode)
Visual indicator: Red-and-white striped walls (or blue in custom maps)

Lore & Background

Ducking in Beat Saber is a defensive evasion technique where players physically lower themselves to dodge incoming walls. This mechanic adds a physical dimension to the rhythm game, requiring players to combine precise head movements with their saber swings to survive challenging sections.

Reader's Guide

In music, the ducking effect is applied in more sophisticated ways where a signal's volume is delicately lowered by another signal's presence. Ducking here works through the use of a 'side chain' gate. In other words, one track is made quieter (the ducked track) whenever another (the ducking track) gets louder. This may be done with a gate with its ducking function engaged or by a dedicated ducker.

A typical application is to achieve an impression similar to the 'pumping' effect. The difference between ducking and side-chain pumping is that in ducking the attenuation is by a specific range while side-chain compression creates variable attenuation. Ducking may be used in place of mirrored equalization to combat masking, for example with the bass guitar (or bass timbre from synth or other instruments) ducked under the kick drum, resembling subtle side-chain pumping.

A ducking system may be created where one track ducks another, which ducks another, and so on. Examples include Portishead's 'Biscuit'. Used most often to turn down the music when the DJ speaks, ducking may be used to combat the muffling and distancing effect of reverb and delay. The ducker is inserted into the reverb and delay line and keyed to a dry track to duck its own reverb and delay so that when the dry track exceeds the ducker's threshold by reaching a certain amplitude the reverb and delay are attenuated.

Clear examples include Céline Dion's 'The Power Of Love' where the reverb and delay become audible when Dion pauses; and Adele's 'Cold Shoulder'.

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