Groovizm

Using External Gear with Logic Studio

I wanted to use my hardware synthesizers with Logic, but could not find a step-by-step guide that explains what you have to do and what the dependencies are. I think I’ve got it figured out now and like to share this with anyone having the same problem.

There are three steps involved. These are configuring Audio MIDI Setup, adding your instruments to the Logic environment and using the External Instrument plug-in on your tracks in Logic.

The Audio MIDI Setup help and the Logic Manual explain clearly how these individual steps work , but the way these steps depend on each other is not mentioned. Below I describe how the tree steps interact, but I won’t go into the details of setting everything up. You should refer to the documentation for that.

Audio MIDI Setup

If you have not yet defined your hardware setup in the Audio MIDI Setup application I advice you to do so first. The reason why you should define your setup here, is because the information you supply here is displayed in the next steps in Logic.

Note that you can define more than one setup, you could put that to good use if you work in more than one studio, or maybe in a studio and on stage.

This application also makes it very easy to test your connections, so you know absolutely for sure you’ve got things right, before you continue to the next step…

Logic - The Environment

The next step is to tell Logic the instruments you want to use. This is done in the environment. All you have to do is switch to the Instrument layer and create instruments for every piece of gear you want to use. You have a choice of Standard Instrument, Multi Instrument and Mapped Instrument.

For every instrument you have to set a port. This is the MIDI-port your hardware is connected to. Now, if you’ve setup your hardware like I told you in the previous step, you can simply pick the names of the your instruments from the list, instead of the portnames from you MIDI interface.

Next define which MIDI channels your instrument is receiving on.

There is no need to connect cables to and from the instrument in the environment. The manual explains you can, but that’s only needed if you want to process or re-route things. Simply creating the instruments and assigning a port is enough for Logic to send MIDI from your track to your hardware.

Now, because we have changed the environment I suggest you save the current project as a template, otherwise you’ll have to re-do this step every time you open a new project. If you want to use this in older, existing projects you could import the instruments layer we just created.

The External Instrument Plug-In

The last step is to create a software instrument track and insert the External Instrument plug-in.

In the plug-in you select a MIDI destination and (audio) input. The MIDI destination does not simply list the ports of your MIDI interface. Instead it lists the Instruments and the MIDI channels you created in the environment, so if you skipped the previous step, you will not be able to assign a destination for the MIDI from the regions on your track.

Now you choose the audio input your hardware is connected to. At this point you should have a working set-up. (You may need to turn local control off on your hardware.)

Finetuning your workflow

Additionally, now that you’ve set up the External Instrument plug-in to send MIDI to an instrument and route the Audio back in on a certain input you should save this setting and give it a name like ‘Synth A Midi ch 1’.

I suggest creating settings in the External Instrument plug-in for every combination of instrument, the channel you send MIDI on, and the and audio input you want to use. This allows you to simply pick a setting from the library to load the correct instrument, midi channel, midi output port and audio input in one go.

You might even save the whole thing as a channel strip with added effects.

Conclusion

Well, this is it. I hope this has been of help and please let me know if I got things wrong or incomplete!

A new track is for download on soundcloud.

Deep Waters by groovizm

This I went for a really dark, eerie mood. This could have been the soundtrack to some Sience Fiction.

Native Instruments’ Komplete 6 arrived on my doorstep last week and I have been diving into Absynth 5 every spare moment since. For those who consider buying this software I’d like to share a few thoughts on Absynth here.

Preset machine
First and foremost I’d like to say that Absynth is a really great source of fantastic sounds. Like Kore, Absynth 5 has a library-view where you browse your library by attributes like ‘piano’, ‘dark’, ‘electric’. This is a nice way to explore the 1.700+ sounds that come with Absynth. These sounds are mostly experimental in nature but Native Instruments succeeded in making them very playable and easy to use.

Architecture
Basically Absynth’s routing is modular but simple. There are three oscillators that can be routed through modules like filters, waveshapers and effects, and there are (of course) envelopes and lfo’s to modulate various parameters. What makes Absynth depart from well known analog-like ground is the flexible nature of those modules.

The oscillators have a wide variety of waveforms to choose from, plus you can draw your own, use samples, or morph existing waveforms into new ones. The oscillators offer a dual mode with FM and ringmodulation capabilities.

The filters have low-pass and high-pass modes, but also highpass, comb, notch, band and allpass filters with different db/octave characteristics to choose from.

The waveshapers can use all waveforms that are available to the oscillators, but can also be set up as, amongst others, frequency shifters and grainbased effects. That is a lot of raw material to begin building your own sounds, before you even started applying modulation.

Modulation
Modulation in Absynth is possible via lfo’s, macro control’s (midi) and envelopes. The envelopes are Absynth’s strong point. You can set up a new envelope for every new parameter you want to modulate and create up to 68 breakpoints, apply different trigger and loop-modes and sync it all to tempo. So one key can trigger whole soundscapes, basslines or rythmic sequences.

The LFO’s are flexible as well, with tempo sync, phase, and again, all wave-forms available to the oscillators can be used by the LFO’s as well. LFO’s are not created especially for the parameter you want to modulate, like the envelopes are. Instead there is a fixed number of 3 LFO’s. If you want to modulate something by LFO, you have to assign it in the LFO-view.

This is the other way round, compared to the envelopes, which is a bit confusing. That you have to look up the desired parameter from a long list makes matters worse. That the list does not contain every parameter I’d like to be able to modulate and sometimes appears under another name than in the rest of the application is downright irritating.

Performance mode
If you want to control parameters of a software synthesizer with performance controllers like modwheel, after-touch, or knobs and sliders you normally would assign  a controller on your hardware directly to a parameter in the software via it’s button or slider. Due to Absynth’s enormous amount of parameters and lack of knob’s and buttons (most parameter values are edited directly in a value-field), Native Instruments decided on another approach.

Instead they created a performance-view in which a fixed set of sliders called ‘macro controls’ can be assigned to one or more of Absynths’ parameters. This way you can create complex control-setups. By assigning the controls on your hardware to the sliders in the performance-view you could have real-time control over many of Absynth’s sound shaping capabillities.

It is a pity that in the vast soundlibrary most sounds have no, or only a few parameters pre-assigned to the sliders. I also would have liked to be able to assign hardware controls to these sliders globally, so that with every new sound I load I’d be able to fiddle some knobs and explore the possibilities of that sound to evolve during a performance. Now every sound has to be set up manually, and that my friends, is a LOT of work…

Conclusion
Pro’s:
- Vast and very usable, easy to navigate, soundlibrary with a unique character.
- Immense programming possibilities will keep any sound-designer up till the wee hour’s of the morning ( or is that a ‘con’ ? ).

Con’s:
- Assigning modulation sources and macro-controls has it’s anomalies.
- Library could have been prepared better for hardware control
- Awfull color-scheme, some tiny fonts here and there, and a bit too much eye-candy for me.

Listen to a little demo of Absynths softer side here.

Absolutely by groovizm

For both oscillators, both filters and a distorion unit the next unit in the signal chain can be set freely. This allows the filters to be used in series or paralel, the oscillators can be sent to filter 1 or filter 2 independently, and the distorion unit can put anywhere in the signal chain.

This way a wide variety of sounds can be created with both oscillators, and they can be mixed in various ways. This allows for sounds not easily created by synths with a fixed signal path.

For most modulation destinations one or two sources and positive or negative modulation amount can be set.

In the ensemble I added two instruments I created from effects in Jonathan Styles excellent Slacker synth: a chorus and a delay. Furthermore I used his graphics from Reaktor Ready set 1. So thanks to Jonathan for the much needed uni-directional knobs!

Any comments, suggestions or sounds are welcome!

Head over to the reaktor user library to download the ensemble here.