Automation

But what if you need the organ track to have a lower level during the vocal choruses and a higher level when the organ takes a solo? In the old days, producers used to make that type of change by hand, riding the physical faders on the mixing board while the multitrack tape was “bounced” to a two-track stereo master tape. A vocalist’s cough could be removed by pushing a channel mute button briefly, and so on. In a complex mixdown session, four or five people might be clustered around the board, all of them making adjustments at key points in the music.

Today, such adjustments are made quickly and easily using automation. When a mix is automated, track faders and other controls (usually on a computer screen) move automatically while the music plays, producing whatever changes you’ve programmed. Many hardware recorders have some form of automation, but this feature tends to be more fully developed in computer-based recorders, so we’ll focus on them.

RECORDING YOUR MOVES

The most intuitive way to record automation moves is in real time, while the music plays. You do this by arming one or more tracks for automation recording, then starting playback and moving the track controls with the mouse. If you have a dedicated mixing surface, MIDI slider box, or a master keyboard with programmable sliders, you’ll be able to record automation for several tracks without having to stop and rewind.

Many recorders have several modes for realtime automation recording. In “touch mode,” for instance, the setting of a control won’t change when you start playback: New automation data will be recorded only when you actually “touch” the control by clicking on it with the mouse button. When you touch the control, the new automation data will overwrite the old data for that control until you stop playback. In “relative mode,” the adjustments you make will add to or subtract from any previously recorded data rather than overwriting it. For details on how automation recording works in your recorder, you’ll need to consult the owner’s manual.

EDITING & ENVELOPES

When automation data has been recorded, it will appear in a separate track or overlaid onto the existing track as a multi-segment envelope (see Figure 1). If the move you recorded wasn’t exactly right, you can edit the envelope using the mouse. Again, you’ll need to consult the manual for details, as the envelope editing features are not identical on all platforms. But you’ll find most or all of the following functions in some form.

• Dragging points. Each point in the envelope is called a breakpoint. Click on a breakpoint with the mouse and you can drag it up, down, left, or right. If you’ve activated the snap grid, left/right movements will snap the point to the nearest rhythm value, such as eighth-notes.
• Adding and deleting points. After clicking on a point with the mouse to select it, you’ll be able to delete it, either by hitting the computer’s Delete key or perhaps by right-clicking on the point. When a point is deleted, a line segment is drawn smoothly between the point before it and the point after it. Adding new points may be done by double-clicking or control-clicking, for example. If a fade-in seems to start too slowly and then rush at the end, adding a couple of points in the middle of the fade-in and dragging them upward slightly will produce a convex curve, thus giving you the desired fade shape.
• Copying and moving envelope regions. After selecting a number of adjacent points, you’ll probably be able to copy them to the computer’s clipboard and paste them at another point in the music. Copying a fadeout from one track to another is a quick way of insuring that all of the tracks fade at the same rate. By copying a two-measure envelope shape and repeating it along the track, you can create rhythmic changes in the music, such as regular panning from left to right and back again.

AUTOMATION IDEAS

The uses of automation are pretty much unlimited. You can automate the sequencer’s tempo for a ritard or accelerando, automate effects sends to add big reverb during a dramatic pause in the music, automate EQ to bring out the overtones in a few notes where the original sample was a little dull, duck the guitar behind a vocal, or bring out a spiky electric piano chord by reducing the compression for a moment. Using automation can be a bit tweaky, but the results will be worth the effort.

JARGON JOCKEY

• EQ: Equalization. The EQ section of a mixer is used to change the tone of a signal by increasing or decreasing the levels of selected frequency ranges.
• Compressor: An effect processor that smooths out the changes in the loudness of a signal.