Topics covered are mentioned below. You can also check out aplaylist of all the Q&A’s as well.
This Q&A starts out with a discussion about Izotope Neutron, and its visual Mixer feature. As the name of the feature may elude, it isn’t the most accessible and the member wanted to know how they could control playback while using it. In addition to making a few suggestions on how they could do this, we discussed alternatives to using neutron’s visual mixer, and had a conversation about accessibility and the challenges plug in companies may face when making things accessible.
We next turn to a discussion about editing spoken word, how to remove breaths, eliminate gaps in the audio as you edit, and how to crossfade/fade in/fade out. This is done with an audio demonstration. This tutorial is using the techniques discussed in the breath editing
And editing spoken word tutorials, and if this is something you are interested in I encourage you to check those out, as they go a bit more in depth and also cover things we didn’t cover here.
Next up we discuss bringing loops into a project. This centers around third party loop files and not the Apple Loops found in the Loop Browser. We discussed bringing the loop into an empty project that is set to the tempo, turning on Flextime, and then saving it as an Apple Loop so they could import it into any other project and have it snap to the project tempo. Alternatively I also explained how to Import it into an existing audio project. You can also find a tutorial on importing into a MIDI project as well.
The discussion continues to putting effects only on a specific region, and while I don’t think this is the way to apply effects like delay and reverb to a region, I explained briefly how it’s done, and sent out an email to the members with the steps to do it should you choose to work this way. At some point I’ll make a tutorial about this and when to and when not to use it, and how I’d go about doing things in the times I don’t think it’s appropriate to use.
After that, we discussed some techniques for when you are attempting to register a plug in but have difficulty clicking into the field where you should put your serial number or email address etc. Things like VOCRand setting your mouse to follow the VoiceOver Cursor are a couple of the options discussed.
Up next is a question about having a collection of fills ready to go for when you are working on a project and you need a drum fill. Instead of creating pattern regions as the member asked about, I suggested saving the fills they created as an Apple Loop.
The conversation continues with a discussion on using Command U to cycle the selected region while breath editing and how you can quantize audio the same way you can MIDI in Logic Pro, but it just may not have desired results when used on vocals.
The conversation then turns to where to begin when recording your first song. What to record first, where to start the recording (bar 1?Bar 3? Etc). Afterwards we get into an in depth discussion of why Logic Pro has the reputation of being difficult to use. I share my thoughts on why this is, and we discuss ways to approach learning this all.
We then talk about whether to use your internal computer drive or an external drive to store your projects, syncing Logic with external MIDI hardware, and why you may want to consider a Komplete Kontrol Keyboard. The conversation continues to include Mashina and Arturia’s KeyLab keyboard and their collection of Soft Synths. Also, if you are a Komplete Kontrol User who wants to see how to adjust the speech settings for Komplete Kontrol, see this tutorial.
We then talk about how to adjust the fade in or out slider in the inspector in small amounts,then follow into a discussion as it relates to [Breath Editing] and how you can use command Left bracket to get back the start of a word if you took too much off. Of course you would want to do this after you are done comping takes and that’s also when you’d apply any crossfades. We discuss other ways of working with take folders as well.
The conversation then turns to how utilitarian a De-esser can be as we talk about how to use it not just to remove sibilance from a voice, but to remove guitar pick noise from a recording.. Then it’s on to discussing creating your own reverb impulse response and why I don’t think it’s worth doing.
We then go on to talk about everything from using item chooser and tips to have better luck with it, Video Editing, Youtube, and How somethings are in Reaper compared to other DAWS. We then bring it back around to Logic Pro by talking about the proper way to delete a send.
We then discuss plug in alliance plug ins, what some of our favorites are, and a useful and powerful overlooked feature in every plug in alliance plug in.
We then turn to talking about Alchemy along with what control surfaces are. I discuss why I don’t think they are as useful as they may seem and eventually ended up on talk of the Console 1.
We Wrap up the Q&A with a chat about navigating your project as well as options for ways for the members to chat with an interact with each other. Got any thoughts, comments or suggestions on this or anything else discussed here? Then leave it in the comments below.