If you like using multi-touch gestures with Logic Pro, BetterTouchTool will blow your mind. Developed by Andreas Hegenberg from München, this utility seriously extends the functionality of your (Magic) Trackpad. BetterTouchTool brings you about 100 totally configurable gestures by combining multi-touch gestures together with the modifier keys on your Mac’s keyboard. Best of all, BetterTouchTool lets you configure gestures that are global or application specific, so turning gestures into key commands for Logic Pro is entirely possible. The utility works with the Magic Mouse, a tablet, keyboard, regular mouse and the Apple Remote. And it’s free.

Multi-touch gestures have become an integral part of OS X since Lion. Instead of merely clicking and dragging, we’re tapping, pinching, swiping and rotating. Whether you have a desktop Mac with a separate Magic Trackpad, or a Macbook Pro with a Multi-Touch trackpad, note that some gestures work well in Logic Pro 9. Here’s an overview of those multi-touch gestures, on a mid-2010 Macbook Pro running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Metering and level measurement plugins allow you to visually analyze your audio signal. When your mix is overcompressed and too loud, your ears will get used to that squashed sound, especially after a very long mixing session. Looking at a meter that measures loudness will help you stay objective, and can help you retain proper dynamics in your mix. So what’s happening on the free metering plugin front? A lot. I’ve made a list of some free 64-bit metering plugins for measuring level, loudness and correlation that could very well replace the metering tools that Logic Pro 9 currently offers.

Whether you insert your plugins on a channel strip directly, or insert them on a Logic Pro aux bus, you are probably aware of the fact that Logic Pro organizes your saved channel strip settings by the audio object they were created on. This means that your saved channel strip settings are not interchangeable between different audio objects – unless you hold down ⌥ every time you want to recall a channel strip setting and get access to all Logic Pro channel strip settings.

This option truly shows all of them: when you’re looking for a setting for an audio track, instrument settings will show too (but the actual instruments won’t load on an audio track…). And oh yes, Garageband settings will pop up too. Yay. If you’re picky like me, and saved some swiss army settings, and forget about the ⌥ key all the time… Let’s just quickly look at how to manually organize Logic Pro channel strip settings, shall we?

Ever since Waves updated all audio unit plugins to 64 bit versions, I switched to running Logic Pro in 64 bit mode. That was my turning point. Instead of the 4 gigs of RAM available (the widely known limit set by running Logic Pro in 32 bit mode) I now have 12 gigs of RAM available. This is quite the leap forward. As a result, I’m starting to notice some workflow changes. I’d like to post these changes – hopefully they’ll inspire you. My Mac Pro has 12 gigs of RAM, powered by 2 2.66 Ghz 6-core Intel Xeon processors. That’s comfortable, but I’m sure some of my new approaches will work on less robust systems too.

If you’re a user of Logic Pro’s key command presets, be aware that there are many useful commands that have no key command assigned to them. Some of these functions even aren’t accessible via Logic Pro’s menu structure, so you may be unaware of some true gems. I’ve made a list of handpicked Logic Pro keyboard shortcuts that I think will improve your workflow, organized by category. I’ve also added suggestions for the key commands to assign to them – but that’s entirely up to you of course. I’ve added these suggestions to the Keycommander page under the category “Unassigned but Way Cool”. Found a good one you use often? Drop a comment!

Logic Pro’s Event List, the Automation Event List, the Automation Arrange Window, Fader Messages, Control Data, Region Data, Track Automation… Learning all automation features that Logic Pro offers is just plain hard. But hey, it’s Easter! So put on your bunny suit, and let’s go hunt for some Logic Pro automation tips and easter eggs.

The kind people over at Blue Cat Audio announced the release of Audio Free Pack II, a complete redesign of their free audio unit plugins bundle. From their website: “This new package includes several new plugins (dual channel EQ, stereo phaser), brand new user interfaces, as well as dozens of new features and enhancements: a new presets manager, new MIDI and automation mapping capabilities, many new presets, Windows AAX support, and much more…”

Platforms: Mac-AAX / Mac-AU / Mac-RTAS / Mac-VST / Win-AAX / Win-DX / Win-RTAS / Win-VST / Win x64-DX / Win x64-VST. Both 32 and 64-bit architectures are supported.

Get ‘m here.

See this article for more free audio units.

Suppose you are compressing a 2 bar Roland 303 bassline sample with a 4 to the floor bassdrum as a sidechain source. The resulting volume effect will depend on the length of that bassdrum, the settings of the compressor, such as attack, release, ratio, knee, and in some cases the frequency area of the bassdrum that your compressor is responding to. That’s a lot of parameters to juggle. In the end though, all you are really doing is this: you’re changing the volume envelope shape of the 303 bassline sample.

So why not just draw the volume envelope by hand, with volume automation?

What’s it with Logic Pro’s stock plugins that make me think they’re WYSIWYG? I mean, last week I ‘discovered’ that the Distortion plugin actually has a very handy Level Compensation button. I clearly forget about these Extended Parameters all the time. So, for the sake of sanity, once and for all, here’s an overview of Logic Pro’s stock plugins that have Extended Parameters, in order of appearance in your plugin menu. All Extended Parameters’ descriptions are taken from the Logic Studio Effects Manual, for this overview I’ve included them in this article. Which one did you miss? No more excuses now.

The Popular Posts list you see on the right side of this blog, only shows what’s been popular since I have made the switch to WordPress, so those stats are rather young. To close of 2011, here’s a list of the 15 most-read articles of 2011. From a place with short shadows and tall cocktails, I wish you all a kick-ass 2012!

You probably know the drill by now: You start a new project from scratch in Logic Pro. You create some audio tracks, some instruments, some MIDI tracks perhaps. Some of these you assign to aux buses for sub grouping, some of these you put sends on (and a bus is created automatically), and you may also create some aux buses for printing stems. That’s a lot of aux buses with three different purposes. Since you’ve created these as you went along, your aux bus structure has quickly become messy. And what if you decide to delete a track, rendering a bus obsolete? The bus stays dude!

Ah, ye old myth of the Akai MPC Groove. Will it ever be put down to rest? The myth goes like this: The Akai MPC Drumcomputer, first introduced at the end of the 1980′s, has a Swing or Groove timing to it that “nothing else can replicate”. Fans of these machines even went as far as to make groove templates of those ‘grooves’ for Logic Pro (or straight MIDI files for any sequencer). That must have been a time-consuming job. They’re all over the web for free. Some of those templates are just plain horrible, some are actually pretty good. But they’re all rather pointless – if you know your options in Logic Pro.

I did some heavy duty Vocal Comping this week. I worked on thick prechoruses and even thicker choruses containing 4 or 5 vocal takes for the lead vocal melody alone. It’s unbelievable how much work this used to be in the days without Take Folders, Flex Mode and Transient Detection!

Back in the day, I would basically cut up every syllable and align them by hand if I needed a tightly aligned chorus. These days I would normally put Flex Mode to Monophonic for solo vocals, but this time it was giving me too much artefacts. Flex editing certainly has its quirks. Then I thought about it: do I really need to align every syllable and consonant, and make all lengths the same too? Next time you’re aligning vocals, ask yourself the same question.

Let’s dive into programming ‘swing’ in Logic Pro. Some call it ‘groove’, or ‘shuffle’. It’s what you get when you delay every even numbered note in an 8th or 16th note pattern. Logic Pro offers a myriad of swing presets and quantizing parameters to get your groove on. We’ll quickly look at those. To keep workflow tight, we’ll also have a look at how to quickly select the notes that make things groovy, if you want to go beyond the presets…