Mark Goslett is a London-based music producer and member of the Music Producers Guild. His unrelenting pursuit of excellence in the studio, and decades of work as a musician has brought him to the forefront of the music industry, where his credits include: TV commercials, emerging artists, and a profusion of live sound engineering engagements.
He's an expert in Apple's Logic Pro X software, and in this segment he shows you how to get started with reverb!
Logic Pro X makes using reverb very simple, providing users with excellent stock reverb plugins as well as a number of awesome sounding presets. There are a number of different reasons why you'd want to use reverb, and one of Mark's favorites is to give listeners the impression that all of the instruments have been recorded in the same room.
Many third-party processors may be more appealing, and plenty of instruments offer more comprehensive libraries and expressive capabilities, but even though Logic's tools might sometimes require a little more work to get specific sounds or fx, with a little effort the results should be able to stand up to the best of them. SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOS: www.youtube.com/evajmusicEnroll Now: Pro X is an amazing program to use to produce music. Logic Pro X makes using reverb very simple, providing users with excellent stock reverb plugins as well as a number of awesome sounding presets. There are a number of different reasons why you'd want to use reverb, and one of Mark's favorites is to give listeners the impression that all of the instruments have been recorded in the same room. For creating a metal sound, this is one of the best available, and it helps deliver a bright and clean tone. But some of Logic's boring old stock plugins like their Autofilter and Tape Delay are pure gold - I've been using Autofilter as a creative sound design tool for almost 20 years and it still holds up against the competition, and for non-mojo, non-character compression you can't beat Logic's stock compressor in the default 'blue' (platinum) mode.
Set up your reverb using an Aux Return to which you'll Send tracks.
Rather than putting a reverb plugin directly onto each track, you'll want to use a Send. Most DAWs require users to manually create Aux Return tracks. In Logic Pro X, simply open the mixer window, select which tracks you want to Send, and choose an available Bus. Logic will automatically create a properly routed Aux Return for you!
You can then rename the Aux Return to which type of reverb you'll be using, i.e., Room Reverb. Next you'll want to turn up the Send level on each track, which is easily done by Option-clicking the volume knob next to the Bus in the Mixer. This volume knob determines how much signal is being sent to the Aux Return.
Now you can load up an instance of ChromaVerb, which has really great chamber sound right out of the box. Mark really loves the Drum Chamber preset which sounds great; don't be concerned that it's labeled 'Drum,' because it works for everything!
With ChromaVerb open you want to make sure the Wet signal is at 100%. Have a listen and start blending in the desired amount of reverb using the Aux Return's fader. You can further adjust the amount of reverb on individual tracks using the Send level.
For more on reverb in Logic Pro X, check out Mark's tutorial below!
Mastering in Logic Pro X is absolutely possible, even with just stock plugins!
Many get lost though. Not because they don't know, but because they don't know what they are aiming for. Perhaps you can relate.
This article should help you get going, so you can confidently make great sounding masters for your music.
I've broken it down into a series of actionable steps.
1. How To Prepares Your Mix(es)
There are many articles and cheat sheets out there that tell you things in absolutes like needing 6 dB of headroom and such.
In digital, that's not so important. All you need to do is make sure you have a great mix and that it's not clipping.
Now, knowing if your mix is great is a big challenge in itself. If you are confident, then just bounce it, and master it in a brand new session another day with fresh ears. Give your brain time to forget about it for a bit.
You might even to choose to take up to a week between mixing and mastering the same song, without once listening to the mix in between. Your call.
With regard to peak headroom, here is an article I wrote about it. The gist of it is that it doesn't matter, as you can adjust gain in the mastering session anyway. Just make sure there is a healthy amount of dynamics in the mix that is suitable for the music.
If you would like a general guideline, around 14 dB of difference between peak and RMS in the loudest moments in the mix is a good place to start. Peak headroom (space between peak value and 0 full scale) doesn't matter so much.
2. Calibrate Your Mastering Level
This bit is huge. Measuring EQ, dynamics, and loudness are not things you can rely solely on meters for. However, they can (and will) work as a supplement to your hearing, but nothing more than that.
This is why it's ever so important to calibrate your mastering level and stick to it. I wrote an easy-to-follow guide on how to do that using simply your ears, your amp/speakers, and Spotify.
3. Gain Stage Your Reference Track(s)
Now that you have set up your monitoring level, you may also choose to use a reference track in the mastering session.
There is only one tip you need to know about using reference tracks…
Cara download premiere pro. Turn them down (or up) to your mastering level!
That way, there is no loudness bias between your master and the reference track.
The easiest way to do this is to use a gain utility on the reference track until it's playing back at your mastering level. Do this by ear and make adjustments along the way so that comparisons are always fair.
Now you can load up an instance of ChromaVerb, which has really great chamber sound right out of the box. Mark really loves the Drum Chamber preset which sounds great; don't be concerned that it's labeled 'Drum,' because it works for everything!
With ChromaVerb open you want to make sure the Wet signal is at 100%. Have a listen and start blending in the desired amount of reverb using the Aux Return's fader. You can further adjust the amount of reverb on individual tracks using the Send level.
For more on reverb in Logic Pro X, check out Mark's tutorial below!
Mastering in Logic Pro X is absolutely possible, even with just stock plugins!
Many get lost though. Not because they don't know, but because they don't know what they are aiming for. Perhaps you can relate.
This article should help you get going, so you can confidently make great sounding masters for your music.
I've broken it down into a series of actionable steps.
1. How To Prepares Your Mix(es)
There are many articles and cheat sheets out there that tell you things in absolutes like needing 6 dB of headroom and such.
In digital, that's not so important. All you need to do is make sure you have a great mix and that it's not clipping.
Now, knowing if your mix is great is a big challenge in itself. If you are confident, then just bounce it, and master it in a brand new session another day with fresh ears. Give your brain time to forget about it for a bit.
You might even to choose to take up to a week between mixing and mastering the same song, without once listening to the mix in between. Your call.
With regard to peak headroom, here is an article I wrote about it. The gist of it is that it doesn't matter, as you can adjust gain in the mastering session anyway. Just make sure there is a healthy amount of dynamics in the mix that is suitable for the music.
If you would like a general guideline, around 14 dB of difference between peak and RMS in the loudest moments in the mix is a good place to start. Peak headroom (space between peak value and 0 full scale) doesn't matter so much.
2. Calibrate Your Mastering Level
This bit is huge. Measuring EQ, dynamics, and loudness are not things you can rely solely on meters for. However, they can (and will) work as a supplement to your hearing, but nothing more than that.
This is why it's ever so important to calibrate your mastering level and stick to it. I wrote an easy-to-follow guide on how to do that using simply your ears, your amp/speakers, and Spotify.
3. Gain Stage Your Reference Track(s)
Now that you have set up your monitoring level, you may also choose to use a reference track in the mastering session.
There is only one tip you need to know about using reference tracks…
Cara download premiere pro. Turn them down (or up) to your mastering level!
That way, there is no loudness bias between your master and the reference track.
The easiest way to do this is to use a gain utility on the reference track until it's playing back at your mastering level. Do this by ear and make adjustments along the way so that comparisons are always fair.
Remember, a slight difference in loudness also equates to a difference in how we perceive dynamics and frequency balance (EQ). It's just a psychoacoustic reality we have to deal with.
Still struggling to wrap your head around mixing and mastering? Enrol in our FREE Mix and Master Starter Guide.
4. Set The Ceiling
As you probably know, a limiter is very much a usual suspect in your mastering chain. Not because it makes things louder (because they don't) but because they allow you to adjust the gain of the track whilst retaining a peak ceiling. This means that if necessary, we can make it louder without clipping. This is the true purpose of a peak limiter.
Now, what I am going to advise here is to use Logic Pro X's Adaptive Limiter. Load it as the final plugin in your chain and set the ceiling to -1.0 with True Peak Detection turned on.
Now it's set up, you don't have to look at it again. You probably want to make sure it's not applying any extra gain by default, so make sure the gain dial is at 0dB.
5. Find Loudness
This where we start to work backwards, at least as far as the order of plugins in your chain is concerned.
Before, I mentioned how playback volume has a huge bearing on how we perceive frequency balance and dynamics. This is where we work to minimise that variable.
Earlier, I shared this article on how to set up your monitoring level.
Best Stock Sounds In Logic Pro X
Now that's done, it's time to raise the mix to your playback level. You can do this by ear now, slowly turning up your mix via a gain stage before the limiter, until you start to feel it's loud enough for listening purposes.
6. Problem Solving
Now that you are close to the goal, any issues with regard to dynamics and EQ will start to make themselves apparent.
Now you can work your way back into the chain, tackling these specific issues. Such issues could be unbalanced frequencies, dynamics, or distortion at the limiter's ceiling.
Use the tools at your disposal to solve the problems. If there are no problems, have the courage to believe that and move onto the final step.
7. Bounce/Export
This is where you actually create the master files. Simply use the Bounce command in Logic Pro X and select the appropriate formats for where you want to submit your music.
Tip: If you are uploading your music to an online distributor or Soundcloud, definitely use WAVE (.wav) as your format. The platforms will encode it to their chosen lossy format (MP3, AAC, Ogg etc) on their end.
Tip: Dither your master. Don't worry so much about which dither. Any dither is better than truncation distortion!
Still struggling to wrap your head around mixing and mastering? Enrol in our FREE Mix and Master Starter Guide.
Happy mastering!
Best Stock Sounds In Logic Pro X Pro
P.S. Telegram messenger download for android mobile. Be sure to watch this video on how to properly use reference tracks when mastering in Logic Pro X.