Automation refers to any mix control that
moves automatically during the course of the song.
In this movie, we'll look at how to view, draw, and edit automation in Logic.
Automation controls are not seen by default.
Too see automation controls, you can click the show/hide automation
button or you can simply type A on your keyboard.
You'll notice that the track headers change
their normal look to reflect automation controls.
You also notice that
the Automation Show-Hide button appears in each track.
However, in this case, it acts less like a
Show-Hide, but rather just an automation enable, or disable.
When it's yellow, it's enabled for the track.
Now here in our lead vocal track, let's pull down
the Automation Parameter popup menu, to choose our automation type.
We'll go into main, and let's look at automation volume for this track.
Let's make the track nice and big so we can see what we're doing.
Now at first right now,
it doesn't look like much.
That's just because automation hasn't been written for
this track and it's in its default state.
Let's click once to enable Automation, and let's click again to create a Node.
We just made a node.
Nodes are automation breakpoints in Logic.
We can click this node and drag it up and down to change our volume.
And as you can see, we get a status indication underneath
our cursor telling us where we are in the track fader.
You click anywhere else on the line
to create another node. You can pull that node up and down.
So as you can see, underneath we see the wave form.
And we can start creating automation moves based on what's happening in the song.
To erase a node, you can double click on the node.
So with our main pointer tool, we can do quite a bit here.
We can create nodes, drag them around, delete nodes.
We can even pull nodes back and forth.
And as I do that, it erases nodes in its wake.
And when I move it back, the nodes show up again.
There's also some other tools that are helpful.
If I type T to get our Tool box, I can always grab the pencil
tool and draw in our automation moves that makes a bunch of nodes as I go.
I can also get the eraser tool to erase a group of nodes as I go.
I'll make a few more nodes with our pencil tool here.
Now in the toolbox, there's also an automation curve tool.
This allows you to go between two nodes, and if
I drag left or right, it creates an S curve.
If I drag
up or down, I get a more linear curve. There's also the automation select tool.
This lets us grab a selection around a bunch of nodes, and
then I can use this to pull those nodes up and down collectively.
It's also possible to select a bunch of
nodes and Opt+Drag those nodes to another location.
That way it made a copy of what was here and
I was able to drag it over to a different location.
So now that we've made a bunch of nodes, let's see how it
works when it hits play.
As it's playing through, you can listen to the volume of the track changing and also,
notice the track volume fader is going to move
up and down to reflect these volume moves.
(MUSIC)
The cool thing is that you can automate so much more than just volume.
If I open the disclosure triangle next to
our automation menus I can see another automation link.
In this case it automatically set itself up to be panned.
So right now I'm looking at volume at top and I'm looking at pan animation below.
And of course i can go in here and make it whatever I want.
Logic just automatically went to the next automation control down from volume.
But actually I'd like to automate some panning.
So again same deal, click once to enable it and
panning shows up on a green line by the way.
And I can start making panning nodes.
In this case for panning, at the top of the track is our left pan
and if I make a node at the bottom of the track is our right pan.
So this going to sound a little crazy but just for demonstration purposes I can
make the track panning go from left to right over these first couple lines.
I'm going to actually go up to our volume and turn
it down because it was quite loud before.
So now I'll play this little section and watch both the volume
fader and the panning now that I have automation written for both.
(MUSIC)
So to create another automation lane, I can just click this plus button
below the pan, and here I have another lane that I can set up.
I want to go into this menu and show that
it doesn't have to be main controls for the track.
You can actually go in and automate other things, like for
example, the compressor threshold or the compressor plugin that's on this track.
Let's do that.
Click in there and let me open the compressor.
So I'm actually using this automation lane now to control this
plug in that's on the track and it showed up as an available
option in our automation pull down menu because it's inserted on the track.
Open up that compressor and here is the compressor threshold.
Now let's see if I automate this to move down
during the course of that first line again for demonstration purposes.
Watch the compressor threshold as playhead moves over.
(MUSIC)
So now we have three automation lanes written for the lead vocal track.
And we can collapse them all by posing this disclosure triangle
and you can see it, you get a nice visual update to
show you that Right now we're looking at volume in this lane,
but you can see, that there's other automation, kind of hidden beneath.
And that's, just a nice visual indication that,
you know you have other stuff going on.
And then, once you're done using automation, and you've written
all the moves you want to write, you can close the automation view
by typing A, or the Show hide automation button at the top here.
And your tracks go back to looking normal.
So once you start getting into writing automation, you enter a
whole new level of logic you might not have known existed.
But if you master working with automation, you'll
be able to breathe new life into your
mixes making the mix stage of your project
as creative as the recording and arranging stage.