Logic Pro X - Automate Wah and Wham Pedal Position in Pedalboard Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hey guys this is music tech help guy and
welcome to this video tutorial on how to
automate the pedal position of various
pedals in the pedal board in Logic Pro
10 I got an email a few weeks ago from
someone asking how to do this they said
you know hey Josh I'm a guitar player I
want to plug my guitar in di and use the
pedal board as well as the wah
specifically the wah pedal and whammy
pedals within the pedal board plug-in
and I want to be able to automate the
position of the wah pedal and the whammy
pedal as opposed to using an actual
physical wah pedal on input so that
that's what we're going to do we're
going to take this little guitar example
and we're going to automate the position
of the wah and whammy pedals to give it
a little bit more of a funky sound so
basically all this is is DDI guitar ID I
played in I've got the pedal board as
the first insert I've got the guitar amp
the amp designer is a second insert and
then just an EQ as the third insert so
and the only thing I've got in it right
now is this high drive just a little bit
of a treble boost so let's listen to
what this sounds like
[Music]
just kind of bright let's go ahead and
let's throw the wah pedal in here now
there's three pedals three pedals in
logics pedal board that have sort of
that like a pedal that you can move up
and down like a pedal position and those
are the two wah pedals which are right
here and then there's also the whammy
pedal right here so let's go ahead and
use the one of the wah pedals here and
so the goal here is we want to take
something like we just heard and maybe
turn it into something more like this
but the question that the person who
emailed me hat is how can I store these
wah pedal movements these pedal position
movements as automation on the tracks
that they're always there
so let's I'm gonna show you how to do
alright so the first thing you're going
to do is you're going to click on this
little triangle down here what this is
going to do it's going to pull up your
pedalboard macros and we're going to go
to macro a and we're going to go down to
slot 2 that's where the wah pedal is and
we're going to choose the pedal position
in slot 2 so basically this fader
controls the position of the wah pedal
so we're essentially just making an
assignable fader for the wah pedal
position now there's 3 ways we can
actually do this the first is just to
draw in automation with your mouse but
that's probably not going to work out so
great having something more tactile like
a MIDI controller to move the position
of the pedal up and down it's probably
going to work out a little bit better
for us so the second way we can do this
is we can assign a control of assisi a
continuous controller on our MIDI
controller to move this up and down so
you can use your modulation wheel you
can use one of the faders you can use
one of the knobs on a MIDI controller
I'm just going to use my impulse 49
keyboard which has a modulation wheel on
it and I'm going to assign the
modulation wheel to the pedal position
now a third way to do this is if you
actually have a MIDI expression pedal
assigning the expression pedal is going
to be identical to assigning the
modulation wheel
if you don't know an expression pedal is
it's essentially a like a pedal that
goes on the floor that it's kind of like
a modulation wheel for your foot so you
could technically play this in in real
time while you're playing the guitar too
so I don't have an expression pedal so
I'm going to use and I don't think most
people are going to have expression
pedals so I'm going to do this with the
modulation wheel instead so the first
thing we need to do is we need to assign
the modulation wheel to this pedal
position fader and the way we can do
that is we're going to press shift
option K and this is going to pull up
our controller assignments window now if
you have any learned controller
assignments in this little area here
you're going to want to click on those
and delete those unless you're
intentionally saving those and it says
no assignment detected or no no
assignments selected rather and we're
going to click on the learn mode button
and we're going to click on the wot of
the the modern wah pedal position fader
and it's going to say up here no message
received all we have to do now to assign
this is simply just move the fader or
modulation wheel or knob or expression
pedal to assign that fader to that cc so
I'm just going to move my modulation
wheel now as you can see it's mapped it
I'm just going to turn learn mode off
now and we can close out this window so
now I've got my modulation wheel
assigned to the pedal so this is going
to be a little bit more intuitive than
using my mouse so now I can actually
close this out completely and really all
I need to do now is pull up automation
on the track so I'm going to hit a to
pull up automation view I'm actually
going to use track automation for this I
tried doing this earlier with regen
automation it just does not like to do
it very well it gets kind of glitchy but
with track automation it was fine and
then what we need to do is we need to
select the pedal board pedal position as
the automatable parameter so typically
this thing this is pedal position right
here we'll start on volume it'll say
volume so you're going to click on that
and then I'll actually just go up to the
smart controls and then go down to pedal
position you can do that or you can
actually go to the pedal board
self and then go to modern waar or wammy
or whatever while you are using whatever
we put in slot to here and then go to
pedal position so there you go so you
can do it one of two ways there and then
really all we have to do is we just have
to turn on a live automation mode so
basically instead of read mode right
here we're going to go to touch latch or
right now I highly recommend not using
right I recommend using touch for this
because the parameter will stay at the
the sort of sitting parameter when you
release the the controller if you go
with latch when you let go of the
modulation wheel it's going to jump back
down to the starting position which we
don't want so all I have to do is hit
play now and I can move around my wah
pedal and play in whatever position I
want so let's give that a shot
[Music]
and there we go and it remembers all
that automation so now after we're done
writing in the automation just change
your automation mode back to read you
can hit a to get out of automation view
and it will interpret all of that
automation that we just wrote in now
this also works for the other wah pedal
it's in here the classic wah pedal as
well as the WAM pedal or whammy pedal
and the difference is the both of these
are wah pedals the lambing pedal is more
like a pitch shift effect so you can do
the same thing with this you just choose
one of your macros you go down to wham
and then you choose pedal position and
you can assign this to a different fader
or you could assign it to the same
controller that we used before and right
in the automation alright so that's
pretty much it I hope you guys enjoyed
the video and thanks for watching