From the course: Logic Pro X Essential Training

Spatialize with reverb and delay - Logic Pro Tutorial

From the course: Logic Pro X Essential Training

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Spatialize with reverb and delay

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- [Instructor] Some mix processing, like EQ and compression, work well when they're inserted directly on track channel strip, as we see here. A hundred percent of the lead vocal track is going through the channel EQ. But other mix processing effects, like reverb and delay, sound better when we hear a blend of the effect and the original sound from the track. In this movie, we'll learn how to use a send to set up this type of signal processing. So let's add some reverb to the lead vocal track. I'll go into the mix window to demonstrate this command two. The lead vocal track is this sort of, bright pink track channel strip, and let's actually filter out some other track types, so we can hone in on this channel strip. Take instruments away, take outputs away. Okay, so we're going to create a send on the lead vocal track in order to split the signal off, so it'll send to what we'll see is called an aux track. So right here in the sends area, we'll open this little sub menu, and we'll choose a bus. A bus is an internal mixing pathway that can be used to send a signal from one place to another in the mixer. Let's choose bus one, the first available bus. And when I choose this, you'll notice, that another thing popped up in the mixer, an aux track. And if you follow up to the top of the aux track you'll notice that it's input is set to bus one. So we've just created a send on bus one from the lead vocal track, that's going to this aux track. Now, if we want to be consistent with our naming, we can go ahead and double click here, and let's name this reverb, and this is where we're going to actually put our reverb. because it's yellow and because it has the yellow aux symbol we still know that this is an auxiliary track. Now, the next step would be to add a reverb plugin to this reverb auxiliary track. So let's go up to the audio effects and let's insert Logic Pro X's flagship reverb, chromoverb, and we'll make it a stereo reverb. So mono to stereo means we're converting a mono aux to a stereo aux. We want our reverb to be nice and spatialized, so we'll choose a stereo reverb. Now here is chromoverb, now we're going to call up a preset, this is an amazing reverb, you should take some time to explore some of the possibilities here, but there's lots of awesome presets as well. So I'm going to go ahead and go into the halls preset and we'll do vocal hall, it's a nice obvious vocal preset. And you can see this, an EQ gets set up, a bunch of settings get set up. The one most important setting that I want to point out here, is that this reverb is set to a hundred percent wet. Which means it's all reverb, there's no dry signal. And why is that? Well, we've got our dry signal from the main track, this is why we're setting up a send, because the main track will send the dry signal to the stereo output, but now we have control via the bus, over the amount we're sending to be a hundred percent wet, over our aux track. And that's our signal chain, we've got our main track sending the dry signal to the stereo output. Now over the send, over the bus, we're using this to send the signal to this a hundred percent wet auxiliary track, and combine as much reverb as we want, and it all meets up back at the stereo output. Okay, so I'm going to solo the vocal track, go ahead and play the song. Now I haven't turned the send up at all, so what we're going to hear first is a dry signal, that's the original track playing out. And as I increase the send, you'll hear, and also see the amount coming in to the aux track. And you'll start to hear the reverb, here we go. ♪ You say you love me but you won't come down ♪ Click retry, now click right in here. ♪ So I'm leaving tomorrow ♪ Start increasing the send. ♪ You say you love me but you will come down ♪ ♪ So I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm a traveler ♪ And now we're getting a wet signal. ♪ Making my way around the world ♪ As it's being sent to the reverb track. ♪ Airplanes and automobiles carry me away ♪ And I can control how much I need. Let's hear it with the song to get the right amount. (guitar music) ♪ You say you love me but you won't come down ♪ ♪ So I'm leaving tomorrow ♪ Okay, somewhere around there feels good to me. ♪ You say you love me but you won't come ♪ Of course this can be automated during the song to add more or less. So that's a pretty classic reverb send set up. Now the other cool thing, and the other advantage of doing a reverb effect this way, is now I can also add as many tracks as I want to this same bus and have them combine into the same reverb. So if I want the background vocals to also enjoy this reverb with maybe a different amount. A lot of times we do more reverb on the background vocals for example. I can put the background vocals on the same bus, bus one. It tells me where it's going, it's going to the reverb aux track, set that up. And now, if I go back to the part in song, let's just hone in on where the background vocals come in with our cycle range, grab the outside edge. Here we go, back to the mix window. Now I can introduce however much send on bus one of the background vocals as I want. (gentle music) There we go, I've got a lot more, but it sounds cool. So I have different amounts, and I can put any track I want on this same bus. Now one more thing to note, the send level is currently downstream of the level of the track fader. It's said to be post fader. I should also say it's post Panner as well. Now, if we want the send to be pre fader, so that it has a completely independent volume and pan of its own, we can click back into the bus and we can choose pre fader. Now it's completely independent, notice it flops around and we get a blue send instead of a green send, that's an indicator that we're pre fader. And what this means is like if I solo up the background sub mix track here, I can set the volume fader even all the way down, and the send will have a level of its own and be independent, so I can get all reverb. It's going to be a hundred percent wet. It's kind of cool sounding, right? And this is the dry signal blending back in. ♪ Love ♪ So if you want your send to be independent, you can always go in and say pre fader, but by default most sends are post fader and post Panner, so that's the typical default setup when you create a send. So using sends for time-based effects, like reverb and also delay. Those are pretty classic studio workflows that really put the magic in your mix and gives you a lot of flexibility and control as you mix. One other bonus point, is it conserves processing power. We're only using one chroma instance of reverb for two or more tracks.

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