Modulating Effects Sends- Musically!

[fader8]

This is a neat trick for adding a little interest to those sustained guitar power chords, or anything else for that matter. (Note these instructions are for LP8).

 

To summarize what's happening in this example, the echo repeats of the kick drum are modulating (on and off) the audio feeding the reverb. But you can use this for any other effect.

 

As in the attached example, take your kick track and invoke a send to bus 10 and set its gain to unity. This will create an aux object in the mixer that you don't need, so just delete it.

 

On your guitar track, invoke a send to bus 11 and set its gain to unity. We'll need this new aux so don't delete it. Name it Reverb.

 

Now we need control of Bus 10 for this, so open the environment, mixer layer, and select New-> Channelstrip-> Bus. In the Inspector, change the Channel setting so this object is assigned to Bus 10. Make sure Bus 10 has no output assignment. Close the environment.

 

In the Mixer pane, be sure you have the view options showing audio, aux and bus. In the new bus 10 channel, insert an echo plug:

100% wet

0% dry

79% Repeat

1/8 Time, or whatever you prefer.

 

In the Reverb aux channel, insert a Noise gate in the top slot and set its sidechain to Bus 10. Keep the AHR controls fast and the threshold fairly high. -14 worked in my example. Reduction should be 100%.

 

Now insert a really wet reverb in the slot under it.

 

Play the session and adjust the noise gate threshold so that it's only letting the audio pass to the reverb when the kick echoes hit. Mute the aux channel to hear it with and without.

 

This is a basic setup, but you can now create more auxes that get their input from the echo bus 10 so you can have another effect in parallel, eg if your guitar track is clean, try a distortion plug on another aux.

 

Also, it doesn't have to be the kick that you trigger from. You can use a ghost track that only goes to bus 10, and paste a tight snare wherever you want the echo triggered. The snare is never heard in the mix directly, so you can sequence the snare hits any way you like to control the aux effect, with or without the echo. Endless possibilities for rhythmic effects send control.

 

Cool, eh?

 

The attached example once again contains some unsuspecting Apple Loops for demo purposes, and is in Logic 8 format. Of course it's a bit exaggerated to demo the effect, but this can be as subtle as you like. Enjoy.

f8_Mod_Effects.zip

[eggman]

Very cool. You can then get even crazier and use the fx channel to duck the original. Placing different variations of the same plugin on both tracks then creates the illusion that you're actually modulating the same plugin. Used in this way, you can create a pseudo-sidechain input for everything.

 

Melikes

[Waterboy]

Schweet.

 

Thanks for this, F8.

 

Very cool of you, sir.

 

-Scott-

[ChicoSatis]

Awesome. Thanks again for taking the time to do this.

 

Have a good one.