Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 25 - Intro to Automation Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

[Music]
hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 25 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
I'm going to give you a basic
introduction to automation automation
essentially allows you to control
parameters in your mix across time it's
one of the most common mixing techniques
and audio because it allows you to
change things like volume and pan on
your tracks across your timeline and
it's not just a mix function either you
can use automation to control plug-in
parameters synthesizer parameters and
MIDI parameters as well so a lot of
things that you can do with automation
that we're not going to cover in this
video but we will cover later so I want
to say up front is that this is in no
way a complete tutorial on automation or
even a tutorial on mixing the reason why
I'm covering automation now is because
in the next several videos we're gonna
start working with MIDI and one of the
central functions of MIDI is controller
automation or continuous controller
automation so I want everyone to have a
basic understanding of automation before
we get to that point so this again is
just a very basic introduction to what's
called offline automation meaning that
automation is going to be drawn in with
our mouse not with a MIDI controller or
with a control surface so what I've got
here is a mix I'm working on and it's
got a lot of tracks in it like 39 tracks
or so and button red and the top I have
all these kind of vocal tracks these
stacked vocal tracks basically what
you're seeing is the chorus of the song
this whole area right here and the lead
vocal chorus has been doubled in the
left and in the right channel so this is
the left this is the right and below it
right here here and here these are
essentially stacked vocal harmonies so
let's listen to what this sounds like
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
all right so you probably noticed again
that the top two tracks are the main
melody and again these are just stacked
backing vocals harmonies that are kind
of kicking in from time to time that
aren't singing the entire time what I
want to do here is I want to increase
the volume of the lead vocals where they
are kind of not really singing by
themselves but where they're more
prominent and I want to decrease the
lead vocals where the harmonies are
where the stacked harmonies are you can
see here there's basically five tracks
of stacked harmonies so again one of the
great things about automation is that it
allows us to adjust parameters across
time so that's exactly what I'm going to
do I'm going to adjust the volume of the
mix across time rather than having to
create two different tracks for a volume
change so the way you turn on automation
is you click on this icon right here and
this will hide or show automation
another way to do it is you can just hit
a on your keyboard and it'll pull up and
hide or show automation one of the
things I don't really like about hiding
or showing automation in Logic 10 is
that the track that you have selected
when you hide or show automation is
automatically enabled for automation
that's this icon right here I would much
prefer that it just stays off until I
turn it on but it is what it is I don't
think you can change it unless there's a
preference for it and I've checked and I
don't see a preference for it so to
enable automation on a track you just
click on these icons right here and
you'll see the track changes color and
darkens and you'll see that a line will
show up on the track okay
one thing that you can see here is that
on the backing vocals down here I
already have some automation drawn in
here we have a volume change from
negative 6.1 DB to negative 4.3 and then
over here I have a pan change I'm going
from far far right to a little less far
right on the track so volume is not the
only parameter that we can adjust the
automation we can automate pan sends
inserts insert bypasses
plug-in parameters synthesizer
parameters as well so for this video
we're just gonna stick to volume and pan
nothing else okay so what we're gonna do
is right here where the lead vocal is
kind of more exposed we're gonna pull up
the volume so you can hear it better
because I'm having some trouble hearing
the lyrics there and then we're gonna
pull it down here where these five
vocals are stacked together so just one
more time let's let's let's just listen
this one more time just this section and
then we'll automate the volume
[Music]
so the part where he says feeling faith
lost in I want to pull that up and then
the word music where the stacked vocals
are I'm going to pull that down or
actually I'm not going to pull it down
I'm just going to leave it where it's at
so let me just zoom in a bit here and
what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make
sure that on the track header volume is
chosen as our automation parameter now
by default volume will show up as your
default automation parameter so what
you're seeing here on the track this
line is what's called a break point
envelope and a break point envelope
essentially allows you to create a break
in the envelope breaking the line and
increase or decrease values here we're
gonna increase or decrease volume so all
you do is you click on the line to
create an automation point there we go
and I'm going to go over to where the
word music starts right here create
another one now we can't just create two
like this we actually need to create two
more inside of those two to create kind
of a pivot point for us to pull
automation up or pull it down while not
affecting everything to the far left it
to the far right you can also
double-click on an automation point to
delete it so what I'm going to do is
instead of just pulling up or down on
these two points what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna pull up or down whoops I'm
gonna pull up or down right on the line
in the middle it'll actually pull both
of them up at the same time so I'm going
to pull this up to negative two dB so
it's a little bit louder than before
right here and then the volume will come
back down right there and then we'll do
the same thing down here on our second
track or second vocal track here create
our four points pull straight up and
there we go now one of the tricky things
about automation is that there's so many
places that a point can be vertically
sometimes you'll move the line or a
point up or down and it won't quite snap
to the correct value that you want it to
snap to one thing that you can do is you
can hold control while you're moving a
point or moving the line
it'll kind of lower the resolution of
how of your movement and so like when I
pull straight up or down it's directly
moving to that position but what I can
do is if I hold control it'll kind of
move - like a fine movement so I can
kind of fine-tune this and make sure I
get right to negative - instead of you
know 2.1 or 2.2 or something like that
so let's just pull that down get to
negative - whoops didn't mean to do that
and there we go let's yeah there we go
yeah automation is a little tricky
especially when you're trying to do it
with your mouse
so okay so let's take a listen to this
we should hear volume come up and then
volume volume come back down
[Music]
there we go so sometimes it's these
subtle things you know just a subtle
bumping up or down a volume that help
the mix to really come to life now I can
I could if I want to pull this way up
but it's gonna be really exaggerated
more than we want it to be actually that
wasn't half bad
so another thing you want to make sure
make sure is on is over in your track
header there's this another just to the
left of the automation parameter there's
another menu that'll say probably read
when that is on read mode that basically
means that the track is currently
reading the automation on the track you
for now you don't want to use touch
latch or right those are called live
automation modes those are ones that you
draw in in real time we'll use those in
a future video of it so for now we're
just gonna use read the other thing is
that if you check your mixer hit command
two if you check your mixer the tracks
that have read on on them will be in
green and if you want to disable
automation in those tracks you just
hover over the left side and turn it off
and it'll turn off automation as you can
see the automation has kind of been
grayed out here in the background and we
can turn it back on now the other thing
is I don't want to have that that height
I want at point three because I'm gonna
be clipping now so what I'm going to do
is just pull this down to zero point
zero whoops yeah I'm gonna pull it down
to zero point zero well sure negative
0.01 that'll work there we go
[Music]
[Music]
now let's say we want to copy this same
shape here over to this section right
here he says well let's just listen to
it
[Music]
so basically we want to pull the
automation up for this whole section
right here and when he says losing time
where all the stacked vocal harmonies
are we're gonna pull it back down again
we'll keep it where it is now you could
just go in and draw this in again but
you can actually copy and paste the
shape from here over to here and the way
we do that is with our automation select
tool the automation select tools one of
the normal edit tools in the arrange
window and all you do is you drag over
the automation points here with your
automation select tool you can click and
just drag to move things but you can
also just hold option to duplicate the
shape it'll make a duplicate of it I'll
do the same thing down here and no you
can't you can't duplicate a shape from
one track to another track unfortunately
now the problem here is that the shape
isn't far enough over we need to move
over a bit further because this phrase
was a little shorter than this phrase
it's pretty easy just click on the
background to deselect the automation
and then you just pull the points over
so just extending our break point
envelope across a greater range do that
there and I'll do the same thing right
here as well there's also an automation
curve tool but we'll come back to that
later as well so let's see what this
sounds like now
[Music]
[Music]
and there we go we can better hear the
vocals here than we can hear now let's
talk about pan now let's say that I want
to pan these vocals right here where the
the harmonies are a little wider so we
get kind of a more exaggerated stereo
spread effect but during the part where
he's kind of singing by himself or more
or less by himself we don't want the pan
spread to be as drastic all you have to
do is go to the track header here and
change volume too and you go to main and
then choose pan and what you'll see here
is there's a whole bunch of other
parameters we can choose volume pan solo
mute send amounts insert bypasses and
also every single insert that's on your
channel strip will show up here as well
so if I want to automate just an element
of my compressor here across time you
can so you can really go crazy with this
but we're not going to do that in this
video because we're just kind of
sticking to the basics here so I'm just
gonna go to main and then pan and here
I'm also gonna go main and pan now that
doesn't get rid of the automation that
we drew in before you can actually have
multiple automation parameters on one
track you can see very faintly here in
the background the yellow line
representing volume and this kind of
faint I think it's a green line
representing pan so what you'll notice
here let me just type in some points
here there we go what you notice is that
the pan on the Left track the upper
track is far left and then the pan on
the lower track is far right now in case
you don't understand panning and logic
yet panning and logics a little weird
the fifty negative fifty positive fifty
doesn't mean fifty percent actually pan
and logic is a MIDI data byte value
which is from 0 to 127
so in logic far left is actually
negative 64 and then far right is
actually well it's actually negative
sick or positive actually yeah yeah
positive 63 so you take positive 63 plus
negative 64 you get 127 plus Center
which is 0 you get 0 to 127 a total of
128 possible values so again I don't
want you to think that 50 means 50% to
the left or to the right it actually
means far more than that
so what I'm gonna do here is we're the
stacked vocals come in I'm gonna pan him
further to the left and further to the
right so that we get a more drastic
stereo spread effect so where the word
music comes in here and to make it far
left and everything before that will be
50 left there we go
and I'll do the same thing down here far
right for the word music and then 50
right for everything else and then I'll
just create some more points here pull
this back down to 50 I'm kind of doing
this the long way because I didn't make
that little plateau like I did before
but it works the same way and then again
we can use our automation select tool to
grab this automation hold option to
duplicate it pull it over to the new
location do the same thing down here and
then I'm just going to kind of extend it
out a little further because this phrase
is a little longer than the one was
before and so let's
and just listen to what this sounds like
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
feeling very lost in music now I know
how I can change when you're just losing
time feel let's say that for some reason
we want to be able to see both the
volume automation and the pan automation
on the track simultaneously because
right now we're seeing pan and we're
kind of seeing a dimmed version of
volume in the background what you can do
is you can click on this little arrow
here now what it'll do is they'll create
an additional automation lane for us and
you know this Lane can be anything we
want it to be and you can actually if
you hover over the the lane header over
here you actually add or subtract or
take away this Lane so you can actually
add another Lane to this so I could have
pan volume and a plug-in parameter
simultaneously showing so now we can see
the volume automation and the pan
automation simultaneously so that's kind
of cool now let's say that we want to
delete automation on the track let's say
we want to just completely get rid of
the automation on our track 1 the way
you can do is you click on the track you
go up to mix up on the top here and then
you go to delete automation and then you
say delete either visible automation on
selected track that's what's shown in
the lane or you can say delete all
automation on selected track I'm gonna
do that one and it deletes all the
automation you can turn off automation
and then you're back to where you were
before another thing I'll do pretty
commonly when a client sends me a mix
that they've done or a song they've done
they want me to mix it for them as I
just like to start from scratch
sometimes so what I'll do is I will go
up to mix delete automation and I'll say
delete all automation and it deletes all
of the automation in the session so I
can kind of have a blank slate - to work
with alright so I hope you enjoyed the
video like I said at the beginning the
is in no way a complete automation
tutorial we're just working with volume
and pan here in future videos much later
on we'll talk about live automation
using controller assignments MIDI
controllers and control surfaces to
write in automation in real time rather
than having to click it in with a mouse
and so pretty much for everything we've
done here we've just been using the
pointer tool and the automate or the the
automation select tool one other quick
thing that you can do is you can use the
pencil tool as well and you can draw and
kind of flick freehand automation
although it's not nearly as accurate as
just kind of drawing in Lions with the
the pointer tool so I usually choose not
to use the the pencil tool so I hope you
enjoyed the video and thanks for
watching