Stereo imaging

Stereo imaging

I've been putting the imaging plug-in on the stereo out of a mix, when it's unnecessary on anything already panned. So it occurred to me to put it just on its own bus and to put all the channels that need it through that rather than directly to a stereo mix. Basically, anything centred other than bass and kick, but mainly vocals, synths, guitar solos and reverb channels. In terms of settings, use the mid and high preset, and increase the order parameter a little.

DnB style "distressed timestretch" in Logic Pro X

At the start of the 90s in Drum n Bass there was a "distressed timestretch" effect that was widely used but has since fallen out of favour. An example can be found on the Flirt With Danger track, Dr Manhatten. I found out how to do this from a web page which I've been unable to find again, otherwise I'd give the author the credit for this.

Select an audio area in the song you wish to use; only short areas will work due to a limitation of the Exs24 sampler. Click on it while holding down the ctrl key and select Convert to new sampler track.

  

 This will give you a new track with the audio region loaded into the Exs24 sampler and a midi region to play it. The original audio region will be muted. Open the midi region in the editor window, it should look like this:

Now shorten the single midi note and duplicate it until you get something like this:

 If you play this region now, you'll get a Paul Hardcastle style stutter. Next open Midi draw in the editor and pick a midi control that you never normally use, in this case I chose #13. Set a point with value 0 at the start of the region and 128 at the end. This will give you steadily increasing values of control #13 throughout the stuttering, though I find it sounds better if it increases rapidly to begin with then slower, to do this, click somewhere on the diagonal line and raise this point upward.

 
 Next open the Exs24 sampler and assign a controller with the source as Ctrl #13 and the destination to Sample start. Set the 'via' part of the controller to any used midi control, you can use the same control as the source. This splits the little arrow head: keep the bottom half in the centre and move the top half all the way up, so that it looks like this:

You should now get the "distressed timestretch" effect. If it remains as a stutter it may be the original audio region is too long - if so split it into 2 or more pieces and stretch them separately.

Zero Day

Zero Day 28/2/2016

Genesis

Played in the 'Bo Diddley' called & response basic rhythm on drum pads then used Logic Pro Drummer to create a drum track based on it. Next came rhythm guitar; other instruments were added around it. Words came from a sci-fi novel I'll probably never get round to writing.

Instruments

Drums: Brooklyn kit. Kick on intro separated out and used to duck the opening chord to allow it to sound through.

Bass: Rickenbacker 4003SW

Rhythm guitar: Squier CV Tele

Lead guitar: Gretsch Champagne Sparklejet with some LogicPro clip distortion added
Verse synth: Retrosynth Berlin Xperience with some ringshift effect added
Chorus synth: Alchemy Canyon Clouds
Intro/outro synth: Alchemy Atmospheric Phenomenon
Vocal samples taken for 'zero day' and 'don't sign up' with plenty  of tape delay, plus flanger on "don't sign up"

Track 

Zero Day

Video

 Zero Day