Logic X Template thoughts... bouncing etc

[Creston]

So I'm about to start a new template and just looking for some tips on organising, having everything routed ready to go.

I'm new to Logic X and been on 9 for years.

I don't do typical orchestral music, it's cinematic, but more along the lines of Martinez, Mansell, Reznor/Ross etc. Strings are in there, Spitfire Mural Evos, OA Evos, Sable Ensembles, Various Pianos, Zebra, Diva, Reaktor etc.

I usually have 1 reverb and delay for each group stem. These get routed back into their bus stem ('Strings RV' goes to 'Strings' for example).

When selecting a Bus to create a new bus group, are you starting from bus 1? Wondering if I'm best working backwards for some reason I might not be thinking about?

When it comes to bouncing, I've been selected by group busses in the arrange and 'exporting as audio tracks'. This is great as I can set the file naming up. But this means I have to listen to the 'Fullmix' to check there's no bouncing errors. Another problem is if I don't want to export some bus groups, I have to move it because if 'perc' is between 'strings' and 'piano', if I hide it, it still exports.

If I recording back into Logic, I can listen as it records, but it means it takes me time to name all the audio tracks and this seems slightly counter productive.

Any thoughts before I dive in?

Click to read more...

 

[Ashermusic]

Pick your poison. All the workflows have advantages and disadvantages. For me, assign outputs of sections to busses, audio tracks with corresponding input assignment, hit record and in one pass, voila.

 

[samphony]

What Jay said

Use summing stacks for grouping groups like woodwinds/brass/strings etc

This lets you assign the summing stack used busses to audio tracks to record stems in real time.
In Logic you can also select the summing stacks and export them as stems if you want to do offline rendering.

Again Jays method of real time recording allows for creating stems in one pass!

The offline method when exporting multiple selected tracks (ie summing stacks) allows to wildcard your stems.

Since Logic 10.3.1 nearly all export dialogs allow to apply a naming scheme for multi track export.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Pick your poison. All the workflows have advantages and disadvantages. For me, assign outputs of sections to busses, audio tracks with corresponding input assignment, hit record and in one pass, voila.

Sorry to jump in on this but I've having a problem with this method. I want to record stems back into Logic in real time as discussed but it's not working properly for some reason, i.e. no sound. I have set it up as described here (before I saw this thread) but with a couple of other steps. E.g. stem 1's tracks are routed to an aux channel strip. The output from that goes to stem 1's audio track. I also have a reverb set up as a send on a separate aux channel which outputs to stem 1's aux. The output of stem 1's audio track goes to a 'Fullmix' channel strip and then to the stereo out. I've set it up like this to try and emulate a Protools setup in a mixing tutorial I'm following but perhaps it's too complicated. Sometimes I get sound and sometimes I don't. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Ashermusic]

Zip it and email it to me and I will take a quick look. [email protected]

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Many thanks Jay. I'll do that now.

 

[Ashermusic]

Problem solved.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Yeah. Much appreciated Jay. And thanks for going to the trouble of putting together a project to demonstrate this. Very generous of you to give your time like that.

It turns out I had made a mistake in the routing between the aux tracks and the stem-record tracks. I had a couple of other questions along the way but Jay got me back on track.

 

[cato]

Pick your poison. All the workflows have advantages and disadvantages. For me, assign outputs of sections to busses, audio tracks with corresponding input assignment, hit record and in one pass, voila.

Sorry to resurrect this post, but I'm trying to find the best way to export out my stems as well. The way I work in Logic is to have single instances of instruments (no kontakt multis, literally one patch per track) and assign sends for things like reverbs, delays etc.

My understanding is that I would need to create a Summing stack containing those instrument tracks for High Strings, Low Strings, Hi/Lo Brass, WW etc. and then route the output of that Summing stack to an input on a record-enabled track, hit record and I create my stems in one go correct? But what happens with the sends as I don't hear them in the tracks I've recorded? Do I need to create individual sends for each summing stack i.e. High Strings Reverb, High strings Delay and make the output point to the input of my audio stem tracks I'm recording to?

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks,

Cato

 

[VinRice]

You need separate delays and reverbs for each stem. Create those channels and then create tracks for those channels. This allows you to drag those tracks into their respective Summing Stacks. You can then just select the stacks (stems) that you need and do an 'export audio on selected tracks' to get your summed audio files with the effects applied.

 

[samphony]

Hey Cato.

Yes you can basically do that. But you don’t have to use summing stacks. You can also manually route your tracks via busses to aux tracks. You can add all aux tracks to the tracks view but don’t have to. If you create a summing stack Logic is doing that for you plus it creates a visual folder management for you as well.

If you want to create stems from your summing stacks or aux tracks you just need to select all tracks or channel strips and use the key command for export selected tracks. This way you don’t need to real-time record your stems.

Also keep in mind if you work with summing stacks and only want to export the stacks and not the containing tracks you have to command select the summing stacks because shift selecting (closed) summing stacks will select all containing tracks as well!

I highly advise to make use of logics integrated group system. It got overhauled with Logic 10.4. you can now add and remove tracks to one or multiple selected groups in the groups window via key command. That way you can create a group called stems. If you are ready to export stems make sure the group window is open (command + g) then select the group in the group window and use the key command „select members of selected group“ followed by your key command for export tracks (command + e)

Also since Logic 10.4 it’s now possible to select tracks by type via key command (you have to assign these first). Say you want to select all summing stacks or all aux tracks or all instrument tracks etc.

 

[cato]

Thank you @VinRice and @samphony these are great tips! I’ll also definitely take a look at groups, that sounds like a useful and powerful feature.

 

[cato]

You need separate delays and reverbs for each stem. Create those channels and then create tracks for those channels. This allows you to drag those tracks into their respective Summing Stacks. You can then just select the stacks (stems) that you need and do an 'export audio on selected tracks' to get your summed audio files with the effects applied.

Hi @VinRice

So, I've set things up as you've mentioned - see screenshot attached - and can export stems from my summed track stacks with the effects I put onto the Summing Stack itself. Is there any way I can 'dial in' different amounts of reverb and other effects on individual tracks within that Summing Stack?

Basically, I have a situation where I need to add effects like delay to one track within the summing stack and I'm stumped on how to do it without applying the effect to all tracks within the stack...

Thanks for any pointers.

Cato

 

[VinRice]

Hi Cato. Yes of course you can! I didn't mean add effects to the summing bus. I mean creating effects channels as per usual and sending to them via the individual channels aux pots. The trick is then to right click on the aux effect channel in the mixer and select 'make track'. This makes a corresponding track in the main window which you can then drag into your summing folder - it's output will now be summed within that stem. I'll try and set up a screen shot.

 

[VinRice]

Actually it's 'Create Track'. Here's some screen grabs. There are several ways of doing this but I find this the most visually unambiguous.

 

[cato]

Thanks for this - last question before I leave you in peace: I'm assuming the order of the buses can't be changed? I'm finding that the more I add additional effects per summing stack, the more messy the list of auxes becomes... not sure if that makes sense.

 

[samphony]

Auxes are tracks you can freely reorder if you add them to the tracks area. Busses on the other hand are fixed from 1-255.
in logic’s preferences you can set up that logic automatically assigns higher buss numbers when creating summing stacks etc

 

[cato]

Ok thanks @samphony, that makes sense. I was trying to be clever and give myself a few free bus numbers to assign each effect for the summing stacks as I went along, but as you can see in the attached screenshot, it's a mess! This is where planning and building a template comes in use I expect, although even then it probably wouldn't account for every eventuality.

 

[samphony]

Maybe you should take advantage of that auto bus setting where track stacks take numbers above 64. that way you have the lower bus numbers free for manual routings like fx etc.

Anyway hopefully the development team will implement some updates to routing in the future. I personally would like to see search boxes (spotlight style) implemented wherever a user is faced with a drop down list. I prefer to search and filter to narrow down a list instead of clicking and hovering to the right bus, plugin, output, sidechain etc.

 

[Guavadude]

Maybe you should take advantage of that auto bus setting where track stacks take numbers above 64. that way you have the lower bus numbers free for manual routings like fx etc.

Anyway hopefully the development team will implement some updates to routing in the future. I personally would like to see search boxes (spotlight style) implemented wherever a user is faced with a drop down list. I prefer to search and filter to narrow down a list instead of clicking and hovering to the right bus, plugin, output, sidechain etc.

I must have missed this auto busing of stacks feature. I need that. What magic button do I push for that?
I have the first 64 buses filled with labeled aux and sub groups that are not track stacks.

Don’t forget you can always just use effect inserts on specific parts or stacks and balance the wet dry mix. That way they are part of the bounce without having to chase the effects routing.