EQ, filters, and FX - Logic Pro Tutorial

- [Narrator] So, I've decided to go back and start from scratch and build myself something from the ground up. Take a listen. (musical notes) It's almost like a harmonia or something. (musical notes) Or like a mellow accordion. (musical notes) I like it very much, but you know what? It could do with a little extra tweaking, and there's some things that we can do to make it come to life a little bit more because right now, it falls a little bit flat. And I'm not talking about modulation just yet. I mean some things that we can do, in terms of the overall tonality. So, first of all, just before we really get in there, let's add a little spread. (musical notes) That's going to be a nice thing to do. And then also, I'll just make sure and point out that I've added a nice velocity range for the attack time. So if I hit kind of soft, (musical notes) it's faster than if I hit it hard. (musical notes) It's not 100% apparent the entire time, but hey, it works, I enjoy it. I have the sustain all the way up. I have some nice release on there, a little material loss. What's living in the world without some material loss? Let's go down to the body EQ because this is really cool. We do have a filter, but the body EQ is super handy. (musical notes) Now, it's a three band EQ, by default, and what we can do, we can add some highs, (musical notes) we can add some lows, (musical notes) and we can add some mids. (musical notes) Don't forget, we can also attenuate any of these. We can notch things out. Now, that's helpful and everything, but what we do have, as far as the models in here, are really, really handy. So let's say, for example, I'm looking for something that's going to help me get the EQ feeling of the instrument that I'm going for. And it doesn't really have a harmonia or whatever listed here, but we can try some different things. Now what you're going to see here is that these different knobs have actually switched. They're new things, and that's because, as we bring up different models, it is actually a model of the formant structure of some of these different instruments. What does that mean? Well, essentially, we've talked about formants before, and what it's helping us do is add some resonant peaks to the sound, like the body of a kalimba would or like the body of a guitar would or something like that. And we're using that sort of fingerprint of the overall tonality of the sound to further adjust what we have going, right off the bat. So let's listen. (musical notes) That's without. That's with. (musical notes) I'd say that's pretty nice. (musical notes) Let's try something else, how about double bass? I'm willing to wager we'll get a lot more low-end. (musical notes) Oh, that sounds kind of nice because it's a little bit over-driven. (musical notes) Ooh, do not like the ukulele too much. How about semi-acoustic guitar? (musical notes) Ooh, that's nice. That has some nice harmonics popping out in it. Now, we can shift it over a little bit. (musical notes) And we can also stretch it out. So, we can pull some of those formants apart. (musical notes) We can make it more narrow. (musical notes) And, of course, we can pull the intensity down. (musical notes) And the intensity, we can flip that upside down. So, we're getting, literally, the opposite fingerprint. (musical notes) I really liked the kalimba, I got to tell you guys. We've just struck gold, right off the bat, didn't we? (musical notes) Let me put this back to where it was. (musical notes) Stretch it a little bit. (musical notes) Just to get a little more body to it. (musical notes) I like that very much, I got to tell you. I'm quite happy about it. Now, another couple of things that we have. First of all, you could hear that some of these got a little bit heavy, in terms of volume and in terms of harmonics and things like that. We're building these harmonic structures, therefore it is not that hard to overload the instrument or the channel that we're working with. This one has a cool level limiter in it. And, basically, what it allows us to do is to say, "Hey, Sculpture, keep an eye on these notes "and make sure that they don't go over." So, for example, if I have it on mono, it's going to sure that individual notes don't go over digital zero, I assume is what we're talking about. With poly, it's going to look at those groups of notes and make sure that they don't go over as a whole group. And with both, it's going to keep an eye on both. Mono tends to work okay. If you realize things are clipping pretty hard then, of course, never shy away from dialing back on the level knob, that's our master volume. Another thing that you may be thinking is that you can pull back on the strength of your object, and that is true, but the problem is that you're going to wind up throwing off the balance of your sound. This is an overall just, like, turn me up, turn me down type thing that can be very, very helpful. (musical notes) This is pretty cool. (musical notes) Oh, this is kind of sad. If we're in the final chapter of this course and it's almost like we have the graduation music going. (musical notes) Anyway, we can also add a filter in that vein if we can turn it on right here. Right now it's in low pass mode. (musical notes) We can add some resonance if we want. (musical notes) Boy, that really gives it a different feel, doesn't it? (musical notes) One of things that I want to point out is that, yes, we can take this and put it in high pass or band pass or whichever of these modes that you're familiar with, and modulate it using an LFO or all of the different great envelopes that we have in here, which we will talk about, but we can also use key tracking. And this is a very handy thing with instruments like this because some of them can get too bright as you go up the keyboard. So, what you can do, is you can say, "Hey, "as I go up the keyboard, (musical notes) "why don't you just key track with me?" (musical notes) And let's just add a little bit. (musical notes) And it can sometimes really help you to bring some balance to your instrument. Now, we also have a wave shaper. Now, this is very handy. (musical notes) So, if I click to turn the wave shaper on, it's not going to work right there. We have to get out of the release mode here to throw the wave shaper into gear, turning it on there. (musical notes) So, right now it's in soft saturation. We have a few different distortion styles, ranging from just a nice sort of sauce that we're putting on things all the way up to full-on heavy metal vibes. (musical notes) But if we push the input scale a little bit harder, we're going to get more saturation, more distortion. (musical notes) And this ones a little bit more subtle. (musical notes) And again, just like with the variation over here, the variation knob right here is very much type-dependent. (musical notes) Ooh, let's go over to release and let's turn down that media loss. (musical notes) That's really bringing out the organ vibes and you may be thinking, "Hey Evan, "I thought that was a distortion." Well, it is. Distortion doesn't just mean Jimi Hendrix. There's so much to do with it. (musical notes) And just to give you an example, we've got our scream here. Let's dial it back for a second. (musical notes) And remember, those distortions that we're using, I believe (musical notes) they are going through the body EQ there. (musical notes) So, don't forget about that. Everything does affect one another. (musical notes) That's pretty cool. Now last but not least, we have a nice delay. Simple enough to use. We have a low cut and a high cut. (musical notes) if we turn up the feedback, we'll be able to hear it. (musical notes) Now, what we can do is, we can move this node right here. We can add some spread to it if you're listening on headphones. (musical notes) You can hear that they're spreading apart a little bit. (musical notes) Create a nice ping pong. (musical notes) And we can cross-feed them, if we like, which means the feedback loops are intertwined. (musical notes) A little extra feedback. (musical notes) And then if we spread them around, we can change their overall delay times. (musical notes) Maybe that's a little bit too much feedback, but, boy, can you get wild with this stuff. You can push the input a little bit if you want, you can change the delay time, you do not have to sync if you want, you can change the overall width, the low and high cut of the input. These can all be very helpful for adjusting your sound. But just remember, with many synthesis techniques, it's sort of a chicken or the egg type thing, especially between the objects and the materials. For these types of modules, like the body EQs and the wave shapers and so forth, those are definitely the after the fact type thing. I'd say they're neither the chicken nor the egg, but they can really give that extra sense of realism and make your instruments more compelling.