The fix is in?
2009-10-09 by Mark
Hey I just wanted to offer up a couple of ideas on the problems you're having with that vocal line. When faced with a dynamic or frequency dependent issue, a lot of us tend to go for a plug-in solution and with good reason; it is quick and usually gives good results. This however a generalized approach and it overlooks one of the central advantages to using a DAW in the first place namely - Total Automation. In the hardware world, eq and compression tend to be 'set & forget' solutions. Often times we carry this over into the DAW realm overlooking the fact that we can manipulate every singe parameter of an eq, compressor or any other plug-in parameter in real-time and with near sample accuracy. I really encourage you to dive into the automation side of Logic. It is simply, fast and incredibly powerful. Try this: Solo the part and then find the area that is being a problem. Isolate the region and set locators. Cycle the region. Next add a single band eq to your channel strip. If you already have plug-ins rolling, place it after your main eq and before any other processing. Hit A on your Mac keyboard to go to automation mode. In the track header you will see a pull-down labeled Volume. Using this pull down you can select the frequency and gain of the single band. Use automation break points to to gently dip the problem frequency only where you have the problem; literally only during the 300-400 msec that the problem is occurring. This is similar to what a de-esser would do, only here, you have total control over what's going on. If you are familiar with your automation tools, you know you can copy and paste the data from one area to the others very quickly and then tweek each spot individually. Using this method you can make absolutely transparent corrections to only the problems spots leaving the rest of the track unmolested. Once you get this down, you will quickly realize what you can do with dynamic automation of compression-eq to draw out breaths, selectively compress the tail-ends of lines or create all sorts of wild effects. Give it a shot.