To fade in or out in Logic Pro requires you to first select the region you would like to fade and then use the “Fade In” or “Fade Out” sliders in the inspector.
Selecting Regions From The Track Header Area
When you navigate to a track in the track header area, you will in turn select all the regions on that track. Since doing a fade requires you to first select just the region you’d like to have the fade affect, if the track has multiple regions you will want to select the region to work with first. This can be accomplished by using the left and right arrows to move to the previous and or next region on the track respectively. As this action doesn’t speak with VoiceOver, you can move the playhead to the start of the selected region with Control Home (Control FN LeftArrow on a laptop keyboard) or to the end of a selected region with Control End (Control FN RightArrow on a laptop Keyboard). VoiceOver will announce the start and end measures or bars when the playhead moves to them.
***note**** when you move to a track in the track header, all the regions on the track are selected. The first time you press the left or right arrow it will unselect all the regions on the track. The second time you press the Right arrow it will select the first region on the track. Alternatively the second time you press the left arrow it will select the last region on the track. So basically when you first navigate to a track, press the right arrow twice to select the first region on the track or the left arrow twice to select the last region. Once you have a single region selected, the right arrow will select the next region, and the left arrow will select the previous region. As mentioned previously you can use Control Home and Control End to move the Playhead to the start or end of the selected region and have it announce the position.
Putting it all into Practice
So once you navigate to the track you would like and select the appropriate region, you can then navigate to the Inspector. (See the YouTube tutorial for a handy way to do this that minimizes on the amount of interacting required). Once in the inspector, you can navigate to the region inspector table. If this isn’t visible you will need to VO Space on the collapsed button just before where it says region to expand it. Once you interact with the region inspector table, you will need to navigate down past the more option to see the fade in and out options. If the more option is collapsed, use VO+\ to expand it.
After adjusting the appropriate slider, you can press the SpaceBar to playback the project and hear your handy work. Adjust and playback till satisfied with the results.
You can adjust the Fade amount in large increments with VO and Shift with Left and Right arrows, or in small increments with VO and Left and Right arrows.
While in the inspector, you can still move the playhead (with Comma or Period or other navigational methods ) to wherever you would like to start playback from without affecting your selection, thus allowing you to better hear your fade in context with parts before or after it.
Also you may need to split the region to have better control over the fade. Once a region is selected you can split it with Command T. Keep in mind that when you split a region, what is to the right of the playhead is now what’s selected, so you may first need to press the left arrow to select what’s to the left of the playhead before being able to adjust your fade again. Once again see the YouTube tutorial to see this process in action.
Wrapping Up
Once you have the fade sounding the way you like, that’s it. Stop interacting with the Fade slider you were working with and you are free to move on with whatever is next in that particular Logic project for you.
