Hail Chewie and friends,
dunnow if its already been covered but theres that thing about the Marquee tool in logic that really makes it easier. (i use version 9, is it avaliable for other versions?!?!)
Chewie, i think uve watched Olav Basosky, the
dutch electronic music mogul
, with his logic tutorials.
in one of his tutorials, he gives that really nifty tip about the Marquee tool (esc E in your toolbox) to make automation even easier.
I spent the afternoon experimenting with it.
Here's a little tutorial i made, based on it.
Bear with me cause i speak french and im a lazy mofo!!!!!!!
I made a really basic patch, and i put a basic percussion rythm underneath it so :
- The bassline here is generated by Massive, and is portrayed by Mr. Tureaud (inst 1)
- The percussion line comes from the Guru channel which has its own sequencer (that is why u dont see any notes drawn next to it (inst 2)
IMAGE 1
Step 1 : write a melody
So up there, u have a little example. Say u made a basic massive midrange cack bass (pity the fool). U may want to put some random automation on one of the oscillators to make it more interesting.
As i did here : ive effed around with one of the osc's amplifier, by tweaking it live with my mouse in Write mode, just to add some harmonic content at the end of the phrase. (i.e. : weird steep automation data written at the end of the phrase
Soundcloud
Step 2 : Select the Marquee tool
Here by pressing escape, then E, ive chosen the tool which is symbolized by a + sign. The Esc key shortcut will come in handy as we will have to toggle between that tool and the mouse tool.
Step 3 : Highlight with Marquee tool and create breakpoints
With automation for the parameter u want to automate being displayed (a), if u go over a certain region of ur automation data with the marquee tool and highlight it, u will be able to select a portion of the automation.
cool thing about the marquee tool : IT FOLLOWS THE EFFIN GRID.
Once uve selected a region u wish to automate, keep it like that.
NOW BE CAREFUL : press Esc, 1, to select the regular pointer tool again as shown here :
Then DOUBLE CLICK ON THE AUTOMATION LINE FOR THE PARAMETER U WANT TO AUTOMATE. If you click elsewhere, u will lose ur selection. U need to click where there is a colored line. If there is no colored line at first, u will have to create one and start over again.
Step 4 : Have fun.
If you have done what ive just explained right, an ''overshadowed'' section of the automation data, with breakpoints on each of its side shoudve appeared.
Do u think uve created two dots? Nah...
uve just created 4 dots, at a perfect vertical angle.
If you dont trust me, drag the line up or down, u will see that :
....
yes..
And that, makes me a very happy panda :
A good way to know what ur doing (since a lot of people complain about massive displaying 2decimal values instead of fractions.. (i used to complain too) is to keep massive open while u tweak ur automation. that way u know exactly what u are doing (i hope). eg :
after fiddling with it for a minute it sounded like this (sucks i know) :
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.. still think it sucks? me too.. u could always resample
Extra bonus step : resampling inside logic
... a lot of you already use that technique but here's a little walkthru for that too... simply because i feel it compliments the other tips of that thread pretty niceley.
Pretty simple way to resample inside ur daw without having to bounce is to always keep one of ur busses avaliable to feed an audiotrack.
in this example, the audio track (blue) is set to recieve input from bus 5. The bassline's output is also sent to bus 5, and bus 5 is set to no output, that way it doesnt play twice.
if u press play, u wont hear anything, unless audio track is Record enabled (red r next to its icon)
now press record.
uve just created an audio version of ur bass track :
if you chop it, fuck with it and stuff u could come up with fun results.
chopping on this one has been very arbitrary and i didnt think of what i was trying to do.
i also forgot to select the ''snap at zero crossing'' option so my audio parts kept clipping between one another.
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annoying insnt it?
that is why i crossfaded the bits, one by one :
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and ended up realizing different crossfade settings could bring a nice touch of expression to ur lines.
here's the result :
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im sharing this because i want all of yall to make great music for me to listen to and mix during my sets. i also do that because this community has brought me much. keep it creative.
L. (hope it hadnt been covered already)
