Before I’ve looped all the necessary Custom Voices and Special Presets, I thought it would be wise to deliver another coffee breakers: D-85 Arpeggiator and Bass Pedal.

If you’re too curious to find out what the D-85 does with its arpeggio engine, just click the lower left picture, scanned from the nicely written, child friendly D-85 manual. I’m still unable to get over the fact they really used hand drawn illustrations back in the 1980. In electronic device manuals. Unbelievable.

The Arpeggiator is just the sampled output of my D-85’s three arpeggio instruments (that is, without the arpeggiator engine, as one can add it later on with Kontakt 4’s scripts) with modulation wheel controlling decay time of the samples, whereas Bass Pedal is probably the most descriptive title ever: just that, one octave’s worth of everything D-85’s bass department could ever produce, which, to be honest, is really not that much. Also, the Tuba and Bass 8′ sounds are missing from the package, for a reason: coffee break was over before I was finished. :-D

The samples, being such simple sounds by their origin, are quite happily transposed much more than one could ever guess. Also, owning a license of Melodyne will prove being quite helpful as well.

The Solo Synth section of D-85 is couplable to pedals as well, but I didn’t have enough time to start recording that right now, as it needs to be done properly due to its filter system. I’ll do it, though – some day, using Kontakt 4’s AET.

Download: Arpeggiator and Bass Pedal. Note: Arpeggiator needs Kontakt 4, Bass Pedal works on Kontakt 3. Consider these as raw material, not finished products. Feel free to explore and if you’ll ever come up with anything cool using this stuff, drop me a line or two.

Next: BBQ outside, it’s sunshine and summertime.

Yet another tiny set of two instruments, made of plastic building bricks manufactured by a Danish toy company for 1-5 year old kids (the larger bricks, hence the name “Dumplo”). A brilliant source of higher middle frequency percussion. Recorded with a Zoom H4n and OKM mics, no processing in the middle.

Dumplo_sml has only four velocity levels and eight round robin groups, Dumplo_lrg has 6 velocity levels and again 8 round robin groups, with the same random parameters: pitch, eq. AET is present here as well, so unfortunately no Kontakt 2 or 3, K4 only.

This one was used in Alan Wake’s level 15, by the way. A small addition, yet it provided a lot of movement, especially due to a long stereo S/H Noise IR sample used for processing these.

Download: Dumplo_sml and Dumplo_lrg.

By the way, it’s incredible how fast one can work if you’ve set up your Kontakt’s user settings (controllers, for instance) and done some templates for percussive instruments, looped stuff, whatever. A quick mouse hand helps as well.

Even though those two limestone pebbles may look like two potatoes, believe you me, they’re the real thing. I wanted to test a Zoom H4n for field recording, then create a Native Instruments Kontakt 4 instrument out of what I’d recorded, just to prove myself I really don’t need a portable 8-tracker worth 4500 €.

It turned out both the pebbles and H4n were pretty good, even though I managed to clip some of the samples. And, what’s even more positive: I think I’ll ditch the idea of acquiring myself an expensive piece of something that’ll be used twice a year.

The two instruments are called “pebbles” and “pebbles_low”, both recorded at 96 kHz/24-bit, then resampled to 44.1 kHz with Audiofile Engineering’s Sample Manager (SM for short). Some batch editing was also done in SM, but nothing drastic, though.

What really impressed me (again) was Kontakt 4’s AET (Authentic Expression Technology), used in conjunction with 8 randomly cycling round robin groups, each containing 9 velocity layers. The result may not be the greatest limestone sample, but it goddamn worked pretty well in the backing track of a certain track in the making.

Also included is a heavy dose of randomization (pitch, eq1, eq2) and some Time Machine controls, pitch bend controlling the playback rate, modulation wheel lowering the pitch two octaves. I recorded these for Alan Wake just before my deadline, by the way. They ended up in the in-game music.

Grab the both instruments, pebbles and pebbles_low, they’re free.

(Coffee break instrument = took less than 30 minutes of time to create.)

I must have been one of the many trying to figure out how to turn midi events (such as note-ons or control data) into plugin fader movements – or region automation. It’s actually easier than though at first, and can be done in a few different ways. I’m definitely not sure whether this is the fastest and simplest way (Logic being such a black hole of customising), but it’s damn effective.

First, record a few bars of random notes, one at a time (1/8ths, whatever), just keep within the C1-C6 limits.

Second, prepare a few Transform sets. The first one is meant to convert the note-ons of a 5-octave keyboard into control data (or fader data, just replace the resulting Control selection with Fader, in the lower section). Since the note-ons include also note-offs, they need to be erased from the resulting control data. Of course, it’s not mandatory to use note-ons, one could just as easily twiddle some knobs (sorry) or throw faders – or wiggle the joystick until it perishes. What I’d like to emphasize is to clean up all unwanted data by quantizing or removing all unnecessary note-ons to produce clean stream of controls. Note that this Transform Set doesn’t produce zeros, it scales the bottom C1 of the 5-octave keyboard to 1 and highest C6 to 127 and everything else in between them.

The resulting data is tidied up by another Transform Set. With this, all zeros caused by note-offs are deleted – just remember to press “Select” first, then “Operate”, or if you’re certain and confident enough, press “Select and Operate”, but be warned: my Logic Pro 8.0.2 doesn’t always work correctly. Sometimes it just decides to delete everything in the event list. A bug, perhaps? What you’ll have in the Event List are only the control data events, between 1 and 127, which you’re about to use as such, or convert into something more comfortable. You could, however, combine this and the following into one Transform Set.

Create another Transform Set and use it to convert freshly-created Control data to Fader data. If you already have plugins in any of the insert slots, you’ll probably see some parameters in the Length/Info field of an Event List. Note: on the Audio Tracks, insert slot #1 is on a MIDI Channel 2, slot #2 is Channel 3 and so forth – with Instrument Tracks, the first effect insert slot is MIDI Channel 3, slot #2 is MIDI Channel 4, etc. ad nauseam.

Next, activate a plugin on an insert slot of an Audio Track (or Instrument). Say, you’re trying to create a “random phaser”: insert MicroPhaser. If everything’s gone well, you should have a) Audio or Instrument Track with a few bars of “Fader” data AND MicroPhaser in the first insert slot of that particular track. Double click on the Fader data region, it should open in the Event List on the right hand side of the Logic Pro’s main view. If not – well… click on the region, make sure you’ve got the preferences right (Preferences – Global – Editing – Double clicking a MIDI region opens Event List) and try again. Now there should be a list of Fader data.

Select all and set the “Ch” accordingly: on an Audio Track, insert slot #1, use MIDI Channel 2, on an Instrument Track, insert slot #1, use MIDI Channel 3. Click on the “Val” column and roll your mouse. You should see the parameter list – sometimes the plugin control numbers are found in different places, with MicroPhaser, its Intensity control was Channel 3, control Num 15. If you have put an audio region onto your track, you’ll hear some random phasing going on if you hit Play. Yes, Audio Tracks can play back Midi Regions containing Fader data!

Word of warning here, though: Some plugin parameters understand restricted values, for instance, Echo plugin’s Time can be selected from 1 to 11 only, though sending in Value 127 doesn’t crash Logic… at least immediately. Saving often is recommended when experimenting and I can’t emphasize enough it’s about time Apple developers create an Auto-Save for Logic. It’s about men in Mars and we still struggle without Auto-Save! What is this, Sysmä or Oregon? Also, some plugins tend to cause clicks when changing the parameters if there’s something running thru them. Of course, glitch fans go crazy as soon as they try any of these tricks on Delay plugins. Just be careful with Delay Designer’s parameters: it was the only one causing VERY much hassle, although nothing was permanently gone, as long as your project is properly saved.

Happy Automating!

Dance music – and all its subgenres – require heavy imaging and wide-spread delays, all sorts of ambiences and reverb washes, and usually the stereo image can get a bit too crowded with every delay being totally in sync, up to the point where delay taps start disappearing. Sometimes a mono delay would be just fine and enough for a certain track. Though simple, it’s still very effective if you use a few tricks to give it some depth or width (but not too much, keep Logic’s Direction Mixer handy).

Just start with a sound and its delay on a send (in this case, Bus 4): delay1. It’s what you were after, feedback fading just before the next line etc, but something’s missing: it has no depth and changing the motif causes dissonance, although it’s not too severe. However, no matter how pleasant it may sound, it definitely should be altered, just a bit.

Enter Sample Delay. Instanciate a Sample Delay after the send’s Tape Delay. Move the other channel away from the other by just, say 240-530 samples and remember to check the mono compatibility by pressing “sum” or “mono” on your listening device or monitor switch. It would be sad to lose a few notes by phase cancellation. Now that delay is a bit more lively, yet still relatively modest and doesn’t bounce all over the place like Stereo Delay would. Demo: delay2. It’s still a bit dissonant from the bar 3 onwards, but we’ll take care of that a little bit later.

That “little bit later” meaning “now”. Add Compressor after Tape Delay and Sample Delay. I prefer the ClassA or Optical settings due to their behaviour and like to punch the signal with its own send connected to Compressor’s side chain (i.e. if send 4 (Bus 4) is going into delay-compressor, set compressor’s side chain to Bus 4 as well). This way it’s easy to avoid “overlapping” motives and dissonant arpeggios with a self-automated ducking delay. Demo: delay3. The level of the send is intact, but the send ducks everytime there’s something going on in the appropriate bus (Bus 4 in this case). Logic’s busses and sidechaining are t3h suck! :-) Just play with the attack/release controls and let the signal duck for about 6 dB, depending on your taste. If you happen to prefer dirt and grittiness, put your Compressor’s output distortion (click that triangle) into use. “Soft” is pretty much everything you will ever need.

To play more with the idea, replace the Sample Delay with a Stereo Spreader. This way, your delay pans depending on its frequency content. I think you want to slide the Lower Freq. and Upper Freq. controls closer to the necessary frequencies – I mean, why bother with something under 100 Hz if there’s not one bleep. Demo: delay4. You could, of course, use any modulation effect as well, my favorites being Ensemble (with two voices and full random modulation), AVerb and Ringshifter. The latter is exceptionally effective with its envelope follower: delay6. I used quite modest settings here, so that only the first repeat of Tape Delay is effected, after which Ringshifter’s envelope follower slows the movement down. Actually, I’m quite keen on frequency shifters. I’ve got a Bode-style freq shifter in my analog modular and I constantly use a few patches I’ve made for Nord G2X and Kyma, both of which utilise both compressors and frequency shifters. There’s just that extra sizzling, moving something you cannot describe any better.

The last trick is to use an AVerb, probably the most underestimated and undervalued plugin ever made. Using that in a send/insert chain with “unprofessional” settings – as I was once told by an older engineer – just smears the delay taps beautifully. I don’t, however, suggest anyone use that with percussion loops, the attacks are gone. I used to like to insert that into a vocal send, after any delay – I’m a fan of tape delays (both modeled and real), and that smearing effect is actually quite nice. If you add some “flutter” to Tape Delay and pump its out distortion to +20dB, raise the HPF and lower significantly the LPF, remember to insert a self-ducking Compressor to that particular send, crank the levels and – yep, you got the idea. Demo: delay5.

One thing: never let the signal spread too wide, it’s no use to use these tricks if everything is wide left and right. Most of the mix-in-a-box tracks I’ve heard lately suffer from incredibly wide pans, like people had only three positions in their virtual “mixers”: L, C and R. Use that Direction Mixer, dammit.

Summary: the order of the send’s inserts.

Logic Pro 8 files (put into ~/Library/Application Support/Logic/Channel Strip Settings/Bus): download here (Ringshifter delay send and AVerb delay send).