EXPLOITING SONIC CAPABILITIES IN LOGIC PRO X with Christy Carey

EXPLOITING SONIC CAPABILITIES IN LOGIC PRO X

with Christy Carey

In this Lux Cache tutorial, Christy Carey (AV Dummy, xeno_, Kai Whiston, Iglooghost and more) takes an in-depth dive into the unconventional uses of Logic Pro X’s native tools, as well as exploring new compositional approaches and third-party plugins appropriate for experimental music production.

This tutorial is available as both a Patreon text post and .pdf document format. We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.

All preview sounds/clips mentioned in this tutorial can be found in this accompanying Google Drive folder.

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Contents

- THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPOSITIONAL APPROACH

- THIRD PARTY PLUGINS

- DIGITAL ARTIFACTS & FLEX TIME

- ES2

- SCRIPTER & RANDOMIZER

- UNCONVENTIONAL USE OF TAPE DELAY

-SPECTRAL GATE

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THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPOSITIONAL APPROACH

First things first, this tutorial will be based within Logic Pro X. I can already hear some of your thoughts whilst reading this; ‘Logic?! Who uses Logic anymore?!’, or something along those lines. For everything that Logic lacks in modernity and refinement, it is still very much able to match the sonic potential of other digital audio workstations. Although tedious, a producer’s skill set should be transferable from one DAW to the next - of course we all have our favourites and get used to particular procedures, but setting your compositional approach free from the constraints of one single DAW will allow you to innovate your personal process and yield more exciting results. Hence, these tutorials are applicable to the full spectrum of compositional software - it is the understanding of process that matters, not the tools that you use.

Unlike almost every other form of music making, composing within a DAW is quite an ephemeral and near-improvisational process. The creation of a piece of music is often defined by our earliest compositional decisions; do we begin with drums? How about a chord sequence? What about a bass line? More often than not, I initially create a palette of sounds that would later be sequenced and manipulated into whatever I see fit. In the context of more abstract composition, most of a composer’s time and energy will go into creating sounds as opposed to making a piece of music. It’s always a good idea to have a ready-made bank of sounds as it’ll allow you to focus more upon composition as opposed to process - the two are inextricably linked, but it can become particularly time consuming to consistently rely upon experimental sound design as a basis for composition. Alongside some simplistic tips, I’ll be exploring some of my favourite ways to create this sound palette in the hope that you draw some form of inspiration from my process.

THIRD PARTY PLUGINS

Third party plugins are a fantastic way to boost your sonic palette, but becoming reliant on such powerful tools can hinder your creativity. A central part of my process is finding new forms of sound creation that are novel to myself - as they’re so easy to use, third party plugins and presets can strip you of this self-discovery. In an attempt to combat this, I often intentionally restrict myself to using stock plugins and/or manual audio manipulation methods (boring, right?). This forces you to devise new methods by encouraging creative thinking - whether it’s through accident or by design, this can create more organic results that could even grow to characterise your music. We can’t all sound like iZotope Trash, can we? Should that even matter? That’s an entirely different debate, but anyway…

That’s not to say I don’t adore third party plugins - on the contrary, who doesn’t?! - so here are 5 overlooked favourites of mine that are worth exploring:

- 🥁 XLN Audio’s XO: easily the most impressive drum sequencer I’ve ever used, but its magic is in the sample map - click and drag your cursor around, glide through hundreds of samples, and capture the resulting sound; voila, unique drum timbres and gnarly glitchy drum fills aplenty.

- 🎹 Madrona Labs’ Aalto: my favourite third party synth, solely for the easily accessible microtonal scales - it’s impossible to make a bad sound with this one.

- 🌀 Ina-GRM’s GRM Tools: designed by musique concrète/electroacoustic composers, the entire suite is a goldmine for anyone interested in sound design - I can’t live without these, but GRM Shuffling is the pick of the bunch (it’s a granular delay… sort of).

- ✨ Michael Norris’ Soundmagic Spectral: make sure you keep saving your work when using these as they’re quite unreliable, but you can produce some otherworldly textures with this collection - and it’s completely free.

- 🔊 Tokyo Dawn Records’ TDR Limiter 6 GE: this one bites into the CPU quite a bit, but it’s an incredible addition for anyone who loves loud masters - the high frequency limiter and the clipper module are two of the most transparent mixing tools around.

DIGITAL ARTIFACTS & FLEX TIME

This one’s for the Logic users - let’s be honest, Logic’s Flex Time is awful. Unwanted ugly sonic artifacts and poor transient recognition render this tool a total mess… or at least, that’d be the case in the conventional non-electronic music world.  Artifacts don’t have to be unwanted or ugly - in fact, Flex Time in conjunction with quantisation can create some incredibly unusual textures, particularly with any kind of drum loop. My advice would be to totally abuse this tool (for non-Logic users, I’m referring to time stretching & audio region quantisation here) - stretch the life out of any sound and you’re bound to create something interesting.

1 - Flex Time; Pre-composed Drum Loop.mov (ENABLE SOUND)

Here’s an example using a pre-composed drum loop . After activating Flex Time, select the ‘Speed (FX)’ option, and quantise at any measure you desire. The quantisation of an audio region would usually imply that pitch is maintained when rhythm is altered - with the ‘Speed (FX)’ option, quantising occurs as if a tape-reel was slowing down/speeding up from transient to transient in order for a particular rhythmic pattern to exist - hence, pitch is manipulated alongside rhythm. Following this, experiment with the ‘Q-swing’ value and manually stretch the audio to become longer or shorter, and watch the sparks fly.

This will provide you with a riveting layer for building percussive layers. After bouncing this audio in place, you can now chop it up into segments and begin sequencing and/or layering in tandem with other drum samples. Layering is a vital step in creating interesting and punchy drum timbres (big thanks to Kai for that tip, circa 2017) and this can even rejuvenate the most common of drum samples.

2 - Flex Time; Sequencing Percussive Layers.mov (ENABLE SOUND)

Although this is a somewhat cliché example, you get the picture. This process isn’t restricted to rhythmic purposes  - in fact, stretching quite literally any sound can become the basis for chords and melody via a sample based instrument. Experiment with time stretching for yourself and be as extreme or as minimal as you wish; artifacts can produce some very useful results.

ES2

There are practically no in-depth tutorials about this synth online, yet it has been my favourite to use for years (so much so that I created an entire track titled after it which consists of mostly ES2 sourced layers). Although quite simplistic, ES2 is more than capable of creating a broad array of sounds rooted in subtractive synthesis.

As seen here, ES2 isn’t the prettiest thing to look at - perhaps this is why there isn’t an incredible amount of information about it online - but it has the potential to construct ever-changing synthetic textures once you know your way around it. Most of the things within the synth patch I’ve created here consist of intermediate level knowledge - I could go on and on forever about forms of synthesis and methodology, but that’s an entirely different discussion. Instead, I’ll focus on two of the things which ES2 excels at due to its inherent limits.

4 - ES2 Router.gif 

This .gif highlights which parameters are being modulated (it’s easy to dismiss certain features of a plugin if they’re visually unattractive - but Logic users, I implore you to explore ES2… particularly the ‘router’ section!).

The term ‘side chain’ has become synonymous with sudden amplitude modulation triggered by a kick drum - many of us seem to dismiss its full capacity due to this through no fault of our own. However, side chaining can manipulate practically any parameter imaginable, both in MIDI and audio-region contexts, and the trigger for it to occur doesn’t have to be a drum sound of any kind (as seen in the top right of the image, where the selected side chain source is titled ’Speech…’). For instance, listen to this clip [5 - Side Chaining; Speech.wav] - the amplitude of a computer generated voice impacts the pitch of three oscillators, global portamento speed and global detune amount. This is just a reminder - side chaining doesn’t only refer to amplitude, so experiment with it!

One of my favourite features of ES2 is it’s somewhat limited but distinct form of wavetable synthesis. When assigned to an LFO, any of ES2’s oscillators can seamlessly glide through 100 different waveforms (select ‘sine’ on any of the three oscillator dials and right click the word itself - voilà, the titles of 100 hidden waves appear). In my patch, oscillator 2’s waveform is being modulated by LFO 2 at a synchronised rate.

Here’s a small tip - as ES2 is quite unpredictable and won’t reproduce sounds identically each time you press play, it’s a good idea to bounce tracks in place. Furthermore, duplicating any synth patch onto 3 layers - hard panning one left and one right whilst keeping the other central - can create a really colourful stereo image due to the slightest of differences upon each layer. Making use of a simple reverb bus in conjunction with Ina-GRM’s Shuffling, the following clip compares one simple ES2 layer against three ES2 layers using the aforementioned stereo method

6 - Stereo Image; One Layer versus Three Layers.wav

SCRIPTER & RANDOMIZER

In continuation with the synthesis discussion, one of the most overlooked features of Logic Pro is it’s ‘Scripter’ and ‘Randomizer’ plugins. Ever wanted your synths to sound more lively and less monotonous without having to spend time manually automating MIDI regions? These two plugins in conjunction can achieve this and much more. I don’t have to go into too much detail about these as they’re quite self-explanatory - simply load a MIDI-based instrument and underneath the EQ region on the channel strip, select Scripter and/or Randomizer. You can write your own scripts within Scripter, but I’d first suggest you have a look through the presets - it can truly breathe new life into any MIDI-based instrument. As for the Randomizer, flick through the ‘Event Type’ drop down menu and select any number which has a name beside it. The rest of the parameters simply dictate how intense Randomizer’s performance is.

My favourite Scripter presets are Harmonizer, Harpeggiator and Note Stepper, whereas Randomizer’s parameters need to be seen to be believed as it may introduce you to a deeper level of understanding in regards to MIDI modulation. I’m certain there are equivalents to these plugins in other DAW’s - they essentially manipulate MIDI data, both pre-recorded or incoming live MIDI information; they’re just as useful in a studio as they would be on stage.

UNCONVENTIONAL USES OF TAPE DELAY

Don’t worry, I’m not going to lecture you on how to use delay effects - but there’s a very specific and simple use of Tape Delay emulations that can make even the most mundane sounds come to life. As seen here, this is Logic’s Tape Delay plugin - notice how the feedback, delay time and dry parameters are all set to 0? In most cases, this would render most Delay plugins completely useless as nothing is actually occurring in regards to echo, but Tape Delay plugins are designed to emulate tape. What infamous characteristic do we often associate with the tape medium? Tape warble, otherwise known as subtle pitch modulation. Logic’s Tape Delay emulates this characteristic incredibly well and I’m surprised this feature is so overlooked - the modulation section of the plugin combined with the smoothing slider is where the magic happens. All it requires you to do is experiment with the modulation dials to your taste - the higher the value of the smoothing slider, the less erratic the pitch warble becomes… so much easier than modulating pitch manually.

SPECTRAL GATE

Spectral Gate is an unconventional and often ignored part of Logic’s plugin collection. In essence, it’s a filter that divides a signal into two frequency bands when it passes a certain threshold. The results are akin to listening to an MP3 with an extremely low bitrate, but not quite the same - I won’t go into too much detail, but you need to try this one out for yourself in order to understand what it’s capable of (note: be wary of the sub energy and super energy dials as they can seriously drive the signal to deafening levels, proceed with caution!).

Using these plugins in conjunction with one another (and by adding a touch of reverb), you can create underwater-y grainy digital textures that are quite unique to Spectral Gate. Again, this isn’t restricted to melodic/harmonic elements as you could end up with a drum sequence similar to Earl Sweatshirt’s Grief via this method (although I’m 99% sure that song is actually making use of drum samples at a super low bitrate… anyway, I digress). 

By using something similar to this simple plugin chain, you can hear how a basic built-in piano plugin can become something entirely different within three simple steps

10 - Piano -> Tape Warble -> Spectral Gate.wav

To close out this document, I’ve provided Logic users with a project of mine - the Intro track on my latest record, Stasis. It’s compositionally very simple, but almost everything you’ve read in this tutorial is employed within the project. It makes use of quite a few third party plugins - but even if you don’t have those, it relies more so upon Logic’s built-in plugins, so I’m sure you’ll take something away from it. The project is available on the Lux Cache patreon exclusively to Premium Subscribers.

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Christy Carey is one half of manic producer/rap duo AV Dummy, their new EP ‘Industrial Society and It’s Future’ is out now on TWIN / True Panther Sound

You can follow AV Dummy on Twitter @AVDummy and Instagram @a.v.dummy