Question: can anyone help me create a gated "rhythmic" patter where a hi-hat or something gates out a pad sound so it "bubbles" and "percolates" in a track?
Answer: The first technique that comes to my mind is to use ES1 as a filter triggered by the drum pattern. Here's how it's done:
On a new track open an ES1. Set "Oscillator" to "EXT". Set the vertical Mix slider all way down to "Sub" ("Wave" is on top). Set the pad track to a Bus output. Mute that Bus at the mixer channel. In the ES1, chose that Bus as sidechain. In the Arrange window, copy the hihat pattern to the ES1 track.
Now the pad will play back through the ES1 with the rhythm of the hihat pattern. You can still play around with, and automate, cut off, resonance and other parameters of the ES1.
Another way to achieve what you are after is to open a Autofilter as insert on the pad track and then chose the hihat track/bus (you have to send the hihat track to a bus for this to work with EXS24 hihats) as the sidechain. Now set the Autofilter modulation to 0% and adjust threshold and modulation for the best percolation. Also have fun with cutoff, resonance and the envelopes.
Note: as of LA5, many Logic plugins have a sidechain feature. A sidechained compressor can be used to achieve the same effect (thus negating the need for the ES1 or the Platinum-only Autofilter). See the chapter on Sidechains of this FAQ.
If kicks happen several ticks before the beat, you change the feel between kick & snare.
Program a kick part square on the 8ths or 16ths. In Arrange, drag the part delay parameter down with the mouse till you get a nice feel. The kick must work with all rhythmic elements, but negative delay makes much sense for a whooMMPP kind of sound.
Once you have a nice feel for the verse, make an alias for the chorus and adjust the delay up a bit to give a tighter feel & help the chorus punch through. After the chorus you can use another alias to return to the verse feel...
"Killer Vocal" and all those other gimmicks use nothing more than simple out-of-phase techniques. You can do the same in Logic:
Any information that was center panned in the stereo mix will now magically disappear! (You may hear the rev returns or any processing of the vocal though!)
Using the Logic's Denoiser Plugin (insert from the plug-ins "Special" submenu), set as follows:
Threshold = -4dB, Reduce = -62dB, Noise Type = -0.90, Frequency = 30Hz, Time = 20ms, Transition = 0.40
Voila... R2D2 voice. Adjust the Threshold to suit yor material. I tested it with voice and a full mix. Liked both.
Try sending the track at full volume to a mono bus with Autotune. Place a delay plug in front of Autotune so the two tracks don't phase. (maybe 70ms...but I could be way off. I usually just do it by ear).
If you don't have Autotune you can also create a new audio file from the old one and perform 'strip silence' on it. In the Event Editor, quantize the part, which should provide enough timing differences to make them sound separate.
Another trick would be to put an Ensemble plug-in on a Bus and send a little bit of your vocal to the bus.
However, there is nothing that will sound as good as a truly doubled part. Keep in mind too, that for a lot of styles (pop, r&b, etc) the doubling is really more like 4-8 tracks carefully re-recorded to match the original and stacked, balanced, and panned. This is usually more for backing vocals though.
Try putting a slight chorus (try Logic's Ensemble) across the BV group to "glue" them. Then de-ess the harsh sibilants. Insert an EQ and turn up the 16-20k range by about 4-5 db and filter out below about 280 Hz (or more, depending on what else is around) according to taste. Then a bit of compression to even them. Renaissance compressor and EQ are excellent for this. Try the 2 band eq with a HPF set at 280Hhz then crank the red ball 4-5 db as far to the right as it will go.
A splitband ducker ducks (lowers the level) only certain frequencies when there is signal in the side chain. This is good for de-essing and depopping, ducking mid freqs of instruments under vocals in a busy mix and taming nasty frequencies. It's like a dynamic EQ.
Here's how you do it: 1) Send the "to be ducked" track to a bus. 2) Add these plug-ins to the bus: Noise Gate (side chain), EQ, Volume (Invert).
If you want frequency selective ducking, ie. the ducker acts only when there is a certain frequency or frequencies present in the input signal:
When there's no side chain signal the Noise Gate stays closed. When it opens, the inverted signal cancels the frequencies which are not cut with the EQ. Boosting results in inverse ducking - what's that called? Is there any other way to do this? How'd you do it with a compressor? Noise Gate has a max 300ms release time which is too short a range. Any workarounds to lengthen it?
These are described as examples of sidechain use in this FAQ's chapter on Sidechains.