some final issues before you finish your negative space project…
using the “advanced” logic
The lab computers have default program preferences. Make sure you refer to my previous post on preferences and project settings.
Most importantly, make sure that you’re running Logic with the Show Advanced Tools feature turned on. The default state doesn’t have this feature turned on. You will know right away when you go to open a project and the tracks window has “wood sidebars” on each side. Don’t even bother finishing the initial project creation. Cancel, and go to Preferences > Advanced Tools, and click to select Show Advanced Tools. Additional options will appear in the preference window. Select all of the additional options.
You can then create a project and work according to what I have been demonstrating in class and in videos.
have enough layers, and have mix automation
You will be graded on whether you put together combined source material from different tracks. Make sure that you have created textures that make use of more than one audio file at a time. You don’t have to always have combinations, but a significant portion of your work should have them. Also, you must have volume and pan automation on each track.
bouncing your mix
The final step for any multitrack project is to “bounce” the mix down to a single stereo audio file. To do so, you need to do some prep work, then the actual bounce.
First, play your project with the mixer pane or window visible. You want to be able to see if any audio track or output track is going over the max amplitude. Just above the volume/gain slider in each track are two windows that display dB values. The one on the left is the setting for the fader. The one on the right is the actual amplitude being sent out the track after any effects/processors and volume gain changes have been applied. No individual audio track should go above 0 dB, nor should the output track. The background colors will change if that happens (yellow for audio, red for output track). You can also look to see if any of the dB values have gone into the positive number range, which is over the max amplitude allowed. Mixing is addition, and signals that don’t distort on their own may add together to create distortion. Adjust volume automation accordingly.
Second, change your counter display to show both beats and time. You click on the icon in the left of the display to change display formats. You need to see beats (musical time) so that you can see how long your project is in musical time. The bounce dialog box uses musical time only to specify the section of the project to be bounced. Move the playback head to the end of your project and read the musical time display.
Third, start the bounce process itself. Choose File > Bounce > Project or Section… to bring up the bounce dialog box. Choose PCM as the “destination” for bouncing. Below that is the duration setting of the bounce. Start at all 1’s. Enter your end time, but add a few extra measures so that you don’t cut any audio off. Choose to bounce “offline” so that the computer will computer your bounce as fast as it can. Next, I choose WAV as my file format, 44,100 KHz SR, and 16 bit resolution. Choose one of the Dither options, as you are converting down from 24 bits to 16. Then click on bounce, name the file accordingly, and save it into the same folder level as the logic project file.
Fourth, open up your bounced file in Audition. You want to listen to it to make sure it contains the right audio and has no errors. And you want to delete excess blank audio at the end of the file. I usually leave 3 – 4 seconds of silence at the end of my project. Save the file again.
Fifth, and finally, right click your project folder, or select it and go the gear menu of the finder window, and choose compress. That will create a single zip file of your entire project. Upload that and email me the link.
Leave a Reply