pop-house.. another sidechaining question- sorry

Hey-

Ive been tryin to get a decent pop house tune together for a while now using Sonar and there are 3 main problems Im having, One being programming a beat with that little bit of swing that makes it catchy, secondly, getting a nice sub bass sound that sits well in the mix, and thirdly and more importantly, SIDECHAINING!!

Since studying my 2 "template" pop-house songs [Call On Me- Eric Thingy *its just so loud and shimmery*, Voyager- Daft Punk *the bass is perfect*] , Ive come to the conclusion that good use of sidechaining will go a long way in keeping with that pop-house feel. Im also hoping that it will solve my bass in the mix problem to some degree too.

Im pretty new so please dont be too hard on me. What Im doing at the moment, and I think Im on the right track, is hard panning my beats to the left and my bass to the right and sending both audio outs to a bus [mono] with the waves c1. It seems to make a slight difference when I use the "classic compressor" setting, but Im sure theres more I can do.

Perhaps someone could advice me here. That would be great- particulary of how to set the ratio, threshold etc on the compressor so that the bass ducks the kick drum [that is the objective AFAIK!!]

Many thanks in advance for any help with this one.

^^If also by any chance anyone has any tips on what to use for bass and how to use it, or indeed on what effects to use on my vocal sample, or of course what kind of BPM and swing/shuffle settings may help, I would also be interested^^

^^^sorry for the long post^^^