Modulate audio fx in Audio Track, sidechain midi modulation hack

tahiche

Hi!
I made a little video after successfully testing this handy hack. We love hacks on iOS, don’t we?. Can’t live without them, even on mighty “Pro” 😜

Frustrated about the impossibility to add midi modulation for audio fx in Logic. Unfortunately you need a MidiFX slot, which are available for instruments but not audio tracks. Read somewhere about using sidechain for this purpose so I though I’d try it out. I believe it’s self-explanatory, you set the sidechain to “listen” on the instrument track and the audio track audio will route through the instrument channel, where you can add audio fx and apply midi modulation. Here I’m using the stock “modulator” but you could use mLFO, Brambros, or any other MidiFX auv3 to modulate audio fx parameters

Works pretty well. Not ideal that you need an extra track and I see no reason why this isn’t possible in an audio track, but it’s manageable. For tidiness you could add both audio (source) and instrument (receiver) track to a folder or summing stack.
You can also use it as parallel processing if you don’t mute the original track.
If you wanted to do this for a group of tracks, you’d just use a bus as the sidechain input

And it just occurred to me, big one!. It could provide midi controller support for audio tracks using @klownshed ’s trick
[Logic Pro] How to use a MIDI Controller to control your plug-ins (+lots more) with MIDI Scripter.
I know you can use something like KQ Voice plugins (Loopback), but I’d rather use stock plugins and this sidechain method seems very reliable.

I see this as sort a bus on steroids, with extra powers. Lots of possibilities, really.

R_2

Thanks for the explanation & vid.

klownshed

@tahiche said:
Hi!
I made a little video after successfully testing this handy hack. We love hacks on iOS, don’t we?. Can’t live without them, even on mighty “Pro” 😜

Frustrated about the impossibility to add midi modulation for audio fx in Logic. Unfortunately you need a MidiFX slot, which are available for instruments but not audio tracks. Read somewhere about using sidechain for this purpose so I though I’d try it out. I believe it’s self-explanatory, you set the sidechain to “listen” on the instrument track and the audio track audio will route through the instrument channel, where you can add audio fx and apply midi modulation. Here I’m using the stock “modulator” but you could use mLFO, Brambros, or any other MidiFX auv3 to modulate audio fx parameters

Works pretty well. Not ideal that you need an extra track and I see no reason why this isn’t possible in an audio track, but it’s manageable. For tidiness you could add both audio (source) and instrument (receiver) track to a folder or summing stack.
You can also use it as parallel processing if you don’t mute the original track.
If you wanted to do this for a group of tracks, you’d just use a bus as the sidechain input

And it just occurred to me, big one!. It could provide midi controller support for audio tracks using @klownshed ’s trick
[Logic Pro] How to use a MIDI Controller to control your plug-ins (+lots more) with MIDI Scripter.
I know you can use something like KQ Voice plugins (Loopback), but I’d rather use stock plugins and this sidechain method seems very reliable.

I see this as sort a bus on steroids, with extra powers. Lots of possibilities, really.

Cool stuff

tahiche

@klownshed said:
Cool stuff

I added the cascade plugin with the modulator at random but it’s actually really cool!. Nice pulsing pads.

klownshed

@tahiche said:

@klownshed said:
Cool stuff

I added the cascade plugin with the modulator at random but it’s actually really cool!. Nice pulsing pads.

Using your sidechain trick with the Midi script as you mentioned above would make it easy to make a pretty good transition tool as you can use it on a whole bunch of audio and instrument tracks simultaneously via a bus/summing stack.

You could automate a MIDI cc which the script can then convert into various different parameter automations, all scaled appropriately. A bit like the new Transition plug-in from Andrew Huang and Baby Audio. Save a few as channel strips to make yourself presets.

For example: If you add say a reverb and automate the wet signal rising from 0-100 at the same time you turn down the filter cutoff in phat fx from 70 to 20 and simultaneously add some distortion to the reverb tail from 0-20.

In the MIDI script you would assign all the targets to the same source MIDI cc and just draw it in!

And that's just the start.

I could add this trick to the MIDI script template (when I get a bit of time! ) if that's OK with you? I've also added a pre-mapped Alchemy to enable you to control the X and Y parameters which you can't otherwise select in Logic on the iPad. The template could grow to include loads of these tips which can be saved as channel strips for use in your own projects.

Obviously with credits/links to the post where the tips came from :-)

richardyot

Nice! I knew about the sidechain in MIDI tracks, but as it's only available on certain plugins I didn't think it could be used universally - but this trick gets around that beautifully. Excellent.

tahiche

@klownshed said:

@tahiche said:

@klownshed said:
Cool stuff

I added the cascade plugin with the modulator at random but it’s actually really cool!. Nice pulsing pads.

Using your sidechain trick with the Midi script as you mentioned above would make it easy to make a pretty good transition tool as you can use it on a whole bunch of audio and instrument tracks simultaneously via a bus/summing stack.

You could automate a MIDI cc which the script can then convert into various different parameter automations, all scaled appropriately. A bit like the new Transition plug-in from Andrew Huang and Baby Audio. Save a few as channel strips to make yourself presets.

For example: If you add say a reverb and automate the wet signal rising from 0-100 at the same time you turn down the filter cutoff in phat fx from 70 to 20 and simultaneously add some distortion to the reverb tail from 0-20.

In the MIDI script you would assign all the targets to the same source MIDI cc and just draw it in!

And that's just the start.

I could add this trick to the MIDI script template (when I get a bit of time! ) if that's OK with you? I've also added a pre-mapped Alchemy to enable you to control the X and Y parameters which you can't otherwise select in Logic on the iPad. The template could grow to include loads of these tips which can be saved as channel strips for use in your own projects.

Obviously with credits/links to the post where the tips came from :-)

You don’t need to ask for permission! 😂
I just applied what I read or saw somewhere on the iPad. Just shared it cos it actually works and it’s a big deal for me.
Your transition trick sounds really interesting, would love to see it action. Just checked the “modifier” midi fx and it’s another example of some kind of shortsightedness. Why can’t you modify more than one parameter at a time?. It would eliminate the necessity for the Scripter. When things start getting complicated it gets annoying, specially if you come back a week after and you can’t remember what’s happening…

@richardyot said:
Nice! I knew about the sidechain in MIDI tracks, but as it's only available on certain plugins I didn't think it could be used universally - but this trick gets around that beautifully. Excellent.

Yes, it’s very versatile.
You can also use patterns to do p-locks like Elektron machines or Drambo. A lot better than automation lane if wanting to loop a motion or work with effects in time with the beat.

richardyot

@tahiche that's cool, like having Effectrix built-in.

klownshed

When using pattern regions to automate an instrument track, don’t forget the “Convert->Separate by Note Pitch” trick to make additional lanes for a track so you can have a separate lane for pattern fx automation

You might also need to apply a tick or two of -ve delay to the pattern region fx automation to make them apply just before the note for some fx (for example if you’re automating filter cutoff on a busy synth line to make the filter fully sound before the attack of the synth).