ChromaVerb - Logic Pro Tutorial

- [Instructor] Now I want to talk about one of logics newest plugins, ChromaVerb. I'm going to go ahead and bring this up on a send. Let's go ahead and I'm going to grab this harp sound from this beat, and I'm going to create a send to bus two and I'm just going to call this ChromaVerb for reference. Let's bring up the plugin. Now, ChromaVerb has a really nice interface. It's a very clean interface. It has a lot of really nice visual references here. To start out, let's take a listen to the music that we're working on. It's just a little beat I put together. (upbeat music) All right, so there we go. ChromaVerb is really easy to use. You can go through presets if you'd like. Essentially we have very simple and straightforward reverb controls, things you typically see associated with a reverb. This is the main Window that we're looking at right now. We have our different reverb algorithms here. So different characteristics, different densities. And what that essentially means is that we have different levels of coloration, we have different densities of frequencies that are represented within these different reverb types. We have different timing algorithms, so maybe they build up quickly and diffuse very slowly or the other way around. We've also got some algorithms that are a little bit more creative, like strange room and bloomy. There's a lot of cool stuff here. At the bottom we have our attack size and density. Basically attack is going to adjust the overall timing of the buildup of the reverb of that density. We've got a pre delay that we can set if we want. So that's the amount of time it takes for the reverb to sort of get going once the sound hits it. The size is going to help determine the overall feeling of the size of the space that we're working in. The density is going to adjust the overall tonality of the space in terms of how dense the reflections are. Decay is going to be the overall reverb time here. We can beat sync that if we'd like. We can freeze it if we want that can be a fun effect to automate. Distance is going to sort of emulate the amount of distance we have from like whatever reflective surface is being emulated here. We've got separate dry and wet controls. I've got this on a return on a bus, bus two over here. So having the dry all the way down makes a lot of sense, but you can also use this as an insert if that is something that you want to check out and work with. That may make sense for certain scenarios. We've also got an EQ here, and this is an EQ that's allowing us to adjust the tonality of the decay, of the reverb tail. We've got a details page here where we have a few other things that we can work with. We have an overall output EQ and is a pretty standard parametric paragraphic EQ that we can use to process the output of the signal from this reverb. We've got the overall quality here. We can use this to save CPU if we want, or make it extra pristine that can work nicely for acoustic instruments and things like that. We can do some modulation here, some pitch modulation which can be nice for creating some trip your effects, some excitement can be added to a signal that way. We've got smoothing for that modulation for the modulation source. And then we've got a balance here between the early and late reflections. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Essentially, we've got early reflections, which are going to be more like echoes and late reflections, which are going to consist of the diffusion that you're more used to associating with reverb. We've also got width here which is our stereo image, and then the Mano Maker which is super cool, as I pushed this up, it's making the frequencies below the chosen frequency, more or less Mano. Okay, enough, let's take a listen to this thing. I'm going to start out with the cool sort of harp sound that I'm working with and let's just check out some of the chambers here. (upbeat music) Okay, I like that a lot. That's a really cool sounding reverb tail. It's really natural sounding, I like it a lot. It's very alive. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to take out a little bit more of the bottom here 'cause I don't want any gunk and then let's up the pre delay. I think that'll be kind of cool. It'll give us some distance and help the live version to cut through. (metallic music) Ooh, that decay might be a lot of fun to automate. Let's see what the size and the density do to the sound here. (metallic music) Ooh, that's giving us a lot of control over the feeling of the space that we're in. And let's try having a lot of size here but lowering the density. (metallic music) Okay, so there's an interesting trick we just found. If we lower the density a lot and have a longer decay, it might give us enough room for that long decay without muddying up the mix. Let's take a listen. (upbeat music) That freeze function could be a lot of fun. (upbeat music) Let's check out a different type of space. Let's do a concert hall. (upbeat music) Ooh, that distance control could be really handy for getting stuff to sit nicely in your mix. It's a lot of fun to think of reverb as a front to back pan knob if you want to go there. It can be a really nice effect that's very audible, but it can also really provide a lot of depth for your mix, which is really, really handy. All right, cool let's, check out some other things here. I'm going to go ahead and grab this digital reverb sound. I like this. Synth Hall, oh, that might be cool. Synth Hall is a wider preset. (metallic music) Ooh, that is nice, I like that. Let's jump over into the details page and let's play with this output EQ here. (metallic music) Oh, by the way, I should mention, you can turn the visualizer on and off here if it's bothering you or if it's taking up too much CPU power. (metallic music) That top end is really nice. We can also filter down if we want to. Let's go ahead, let's see what that sounds like really darkening this thing. (metallic music) Really, really cool. Now I want to work with this modulation here, 'cause that can be a lot of fun. So I'm going to turn up the depth all the way, 'cause why not? And let's take a first spin. (metallic music) Wow, that's really interesting. So the mode source right now is a sine wave and then we've also got sort of a pulse wave and what I believe to be randomness here. (metallic music) There's a lot of interesting stuff that could go on with that, but for now we can just add some depth by going to a lower depth and I mean, depth to the sound can be added. And then we're going to use capital D depth here with a little bit of a lower percentage and a slower mud speed just to give it some vibe. (metallic music) Oh, I like that a lot. Just for fun, let's go ahead and add a reverb for this Pro Lead here because I think that it'll do really nicely with some stuff. This is from my trustee profit eight synthesizer, and I'm going to call this Proverb for profit verb. Let's grab a ChromaVerb, and let's do a, ooh, Synth Reverbs. How about big, long and distant? That sounds about right for the sound. (soft music) Wow I like that. (soft music) Let's see what happens if we push some width. (soft music) That's nice, let's pull in some of the width on the lower frequencies. Not that we have a ton of that happening. (soft music) Ooh, maybe this Pro bass could actually benefit from a little bit of Proverb. (upbeat music) Ooh! (upbeat music) I like that. (upbeat music) So the long and the short of it is that Chromaverb is a super, super versatile reverb plugin. It sounds great. It has a lot of really high quality emulations of spaces. It's not a super CPU hog and it's really handy for all kinds of different contexts. Whether it's something that's a little bit more creative and sound designing, or if it's something where you're trying to emulate an actual acoustic space.