10. Using Automation in Logic

In the early days of recording, if you wanted to capture the sound of moving one of the controls—for example, to create a wild stereo panning effect with an instrument, to have sound fade out gradually, or simply to level out the volume of a track that fluctuated wildly in level—you would need to move the control carefully by hand while the mixdown was happening. Any error in movement meant starting the whole thing over from scratch, and there was no way to exactly repeat anything. If you wanted to repeat the move for a new mixdown, the only option was to do it again manually and hope that the result was close to that of the original mixdown. In the 1970s, large mixing consoles began to offer automation—a way to write, rewrite, and save these moves in memory so that as you mixed your material, it would automatically make your move for you. This was not only more convenient, but it meant that you could audition, change, and repeat any move an infinite number of times, and it would be the same each time. This opened the door not only for more accurate mixing, but also for much more creative mixing by experimental artists who wanted to use the studio itself as an instrument.

With the advent of computer sequencers, automation has become an even more powerful tool, available to all. You can use automation to turn static effects into living, dynamic parts of a track’s sound; you can tailor the volume of a track exactly to the source material; you can perfect mixes to previously unimaginable accuracy; and you can use your DAW not only as a tool, but as an instrument in its own right. Logic’s automation system is fairly intuitive, but it still takes a while to get used to its “Logic!”