Mid/side is an alternative way to capture stereo audio. Instead of having the left and right channels separately, you have a mono summed track (containing mainly the audio that is in the middle, aka the 'mid') and a mono track with everything else (out of phase elements and things that are panned to the sides, aka the 'side').
Traditionally when you listen to the side signal you should not have any kick or bass (or any other low frequency sounds), and you will hear just the reverb of the main elements like lead vocal, lead instruments etc.
Listening to the mid signal on the other hand should give you the 'core' of the track. Everything should be here, if important things are missing there are problems with the phase or stereo placement.
Now if you listen to the side of other producers' work you can find out a lot of stuff about how they mix their music. You can find out which elements are slap bang in the middle, how tight the low end is, how much artificial reverb is put on different elements etc. It gives great insights and is strangely addictive, I have been listening to side for a good part of the afternoon now
And on a side note you can discover how the mp3 format really fucks up the audio
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believe it or not, i actually discovered this on my own a long time ago, while playing with audio effects ... but i never tought that it could be useful.
MSED is a professional audio encoder/decoder plug-in for mid/side processing which is able to encode (split) the incoming stereo signal into two components: mid/side pair, and vice versa: decode mid/side signal pair into stereo signal.
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This looks like really interesting stuff, I could really use some help getting my mixing on lockdown. Seems like just the thing I need.
However, my version of Audacity seems to be different than depicted. I've got the latest version, 1.2.6, and I'm able to do everything except convert the duplicated/inverted track into mono, because my version of Audacity lacks the "Tracks" option in Audacity's toolbar. I can't find the option anywhere else, either. Any way I can get around this?
This looks like really interesting stuff, I could really use some help getting my mixing on lockdown. Seems like just the thing I need.
However, my version of Audacity seems to be different than depicted. I've got the latest version, 1.2.6, and I'm able to do everything except convert the duplicated/inverted track into mono, because my version of Audacity lacks the "Tracks" option in Audacity's toolbar. I can't find the option anywhere else, either. Any way I can get around this?
Really great advice, mate.
Cheers
Download the beta version of 1.3.7 I use it and it can do this.
Rather interesting. I read something similar to this for getting vocals out of a track. Never actually tried it, but it involved inverting an exact copy of the music over the vocal part and it left the vocals intact.
if you have an MP3 player/iPod/etc you can achieve the said effect by pulling the jack out ever so slightly. keep trying 'til you get it. It's useful because some stuff is made perfect for sampling. One example is, if done on nCode - Spasm, the bassline is the only thing left in.
I think it's because most sounds are cancelled out by this (due to panning equalities) but other stuff ksuch as reverb or flanging isn't... it's pretty cool as it can show you which effects have been used! here listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M40-wbgyii4 and compare it to how it 'should' be... I actually quite like this, the drums are all washed with a strange resonance and the synths are the center of attention
button and select my name. I'll personally kick it to the murky depths of hell where it belongs! 
Great stuff 
