One of the endearing and ubiquitous qualities of Rhodes sounds is the ability to use the tremolo knob to pan the sound from side to side. We’ve heard it on a million records and love it. It creates a nice wide moving stereo spatial effect that adds a sheen of polish and sophistication to the sound. For an interesting variation, why not modulate the reverb’s position in the stereo field instead of the source?

During the month of January, Creationauts is offering an exclusive 25% discount off the regular price to Logic Pro Expert readers. Instead of $39.99, you get it for $29.99. If you want to try it out first there is a full featured trial version available.

In this video, brought to you with the support of Universal Audio, my buddy Morey Richman and I put the Suhr SE 100 guitar amp and the EP-34 Tape Echo to work on a couple of guitar parts. Each with subtly unique and colorful tape delay settings. Combined they create a thick and rich unique sounding guitar tone. 

Would you like to be able to use older Digidesign control surfaces to control Logic Pro X, Cubase or Nuendo? You maybe able to quite soon We have news from Neyrinck that should make this possible.

The thing I probably record the most these past years, however, is my own voice. Doing VOs for the various videos I do here and for groove3. And after years of trying various mics of varying pedigrees, I have settled on the humble Audio Technica 4040. If I had to choose just one mic, this would be it. Not just because it suits my voice better than all my others, but it also seems to be a general all-around good sounding mic that is usable in most situations I throw at it. 

With all the virtual flyers reaching our inboxes every day, it can be difficult to block out the “noise”, and zero in on what might be of real value to us. So we thought it might be fun to ask each of the logic pro expert team to choose a single plug-in that they can’t (or wouldn’t want to) live without. In other words, to cut through to the bone of what is really important to each of us. Perhaps that might be of value to you as you are contemplating your own potential purchase choices?

UJAM has just released a line of virtual bassists. Mellow, Royal, and Rowdy. As with their virtual guitarists and drummers, these instruments ship with a fantastic library of phrases in a variety of styles that can easily conform to your own chord progressions. And, as with their other instruments, they are designed to get a variety of tones with minimal fuss. UJAM have sure got the right formula for striking the balance between complexity and ease of use. Which is no small feat! They provide just the right amount of detail. Too much, and it becomes daunting to understand. Too little, and it’s dismissed as a toy. With these, we get a library of fantastic sounding tweak-able grooves. Plus something new!

Creationauts have given us a fantastic tool with LPX Colorizer. It can be used to subtly enhance the look of Logic without changing it completely. Of course, it can change it completely too, if that’s what you want to do with it. But the more I use this app, the more I realize that I appreciate the ability to add highlight and contrast to make different elements in the GUI stand out better, without changing the overall look of Logic. 

In this video, sponsored by Universal Audio, we look at using the Lexicon 480L on a pop vocal duet. Using Lexicons Random Spaces algorithm, we use the Lexicon’s unique pre-echo, spin, and wander controls to work to craft a unique and compelling vocal space to help the vocals sit nicely in a relatively dense arrangement. 

Recently, Reverb added 2 new segments: LP and software. Reverb Software is of course, very much in harmony with our world of Logic Pro X and I would encourage you to go take a look at the offerings. Reverb’s software section does have a slew of freebie offerings much like several other sites that curate links or downloads with an additional major bonus that is of particular interest.

I love food analogies and I think it will be a fun and effective way to shine some light or at least, change the perspective of the light we see on how we record and mix today. In particular, there are 2 food trends we see a lot of today, both in the restaurant scene and in home cooking media, that I feel worthy of some discussion. We’ll then look at how this may be in an analogous manner, affecting our choices when it comes to music production.

With Black Friday around the corner, we are all no doubt salivating at the prospect of plentiful new inexpensive plug-ins to slap across all our Logic tracks in the hopes that a new shade of lipstick will make our music beautiful. It’s a rabbit hole we all fall down to some degree or another.

I’d like to share with you an article I recently wrote with some mixing tips that start from a different perspective. Rather than looking at each track as a raw unfinished piece of the puzzle waiting to be painted and made up before the whole can be considered complete, top-down mixing takes a less is more approach. It’s a different mindset where we try and use as little additional processing as necessary. rather than trying to use as much as possible.

We see lots of articles on compression techniques and feature lists for both hardware and software refer to a blend mode or a control to mix the compressed signal with the dry signal as parallel or “New York” compression. The idea of parallel compression is that a blend of the sustain of the compressed signal and the attack of the dry signal combine in manner to give a result that is the best attributes of both signals. Prior to boxes with a dedicated parallel function, the technique to do this was to “mult” (split) the signals, and then mix them back together again on separate console strips. It is widely accepted that this technique was first used in one or more reknown studios in New York. The problem is that it isn’t authentic New York compression, there’s a missing detail that makes all the difference.

e-Instruments has come up with a sample set for the classic 1974 Wurlitzer electric pianos. And in case you are wondering, yes; it feels great to play! Weighing in at a solid 4.5GB, Session Keys Electric W is more than just a stunning sample set. Like their other keyboards, there are two sample sets to choose from. In this case, one is sampled from the instrument’s direct output. The other is captured from the instruments built-in speakers and recorded with various microphones.

It’s much easier to fire up Logic, or whatever your DAW of choice is, and play around with some new plug-ins than thinking about the larger questions that are constantly there in the background. Nagging away at us, even if we are not really consciously aware of them. The more time we spend denying these realities, the more time we waste not being our best creative selves and getting the most out of the time we put in in front of our workstations.