Let me ask you – how often do you find yourself lost in the Logic mixer?
Let’s say you’re in the middle of recording or mixing. You’re in a complete flow state. Ideas are popping into your head faster than you can move the mouse. And your Project is chock full of tracks.
And if you’re like me, sometimes when you open the mixer you find yourself like a deer in headlights.
“What track was I looking for?”
“Where did that reverb channel go?”
Oof! Instead of letting the ideas flow, you’re wading through a haystack of 100 channel strips.
Finding channels in the Mixer doesn’t have to be this hard. In fact, Logic Pro provides several ways to help you find the channel you’re thinking about:
- Switching the focus of the secondary channel strip in the Inspector to your preferred Send or Output
- Holding Shift and clicking on Send and Output assignments to quickly find Auxiliary Channels
- Using the Single signal flow tab in the Mixer to narrow the Mixer to your chosen track
- Digging into Sends on Faders to find all Channels sending to a particular Aux
These 4 features can save you a lot of time wandering around the mixer.
So check out today’s video above for more. And get back to you what you do – creating awesome music!
Thanks, Chris. This has been driving me crazy, as my track counts have increased. Two questions:
1. In mixer view (Tracks), after you’ve shift-clicked from a track to the bus (highlighted 3x at the right edge of the screen), is there a key command to get *back* to the track you clicked from (assuming it’s gone off-screen)?
2. I’ve used sends on faders a lot. Is there a way to *filter* the view, so that you only see the tracks with the send you’re interested in and don’t have to scroll sideways to find them?
Really appreciate all your work. Thank you again.
Thx Chris – what a time saver ! Cheers
The “4 Ways ” is a very handy episode. Idea for the future-how to use the automation in FCP-how does it work, best practices, and the same for sends on faders.
Keep up the good work.
David Hill
Ft. Worth, TX
One additional way to quickly identify track or groups of track in the mixer and in the arrange is to fully color the channels backgrounds according to the color assigned to the track like in ProTools.
Check this post on vi controls:
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/colorized-logic-pro-mixer-channels-lpx-colorizer.105770/
Hey Chris, I cannot seem to display the “Sends on Faders” option on the mixer view. It’s just not there. There’s just a blank space.
I’d really appreciate finding out how to get it because being able to see what tracks are being sent to a buss is going to be so useful to my workflow.
Hey Robin, absolutely! What version of Logic are you working with? And are you working on a smaller screen like a MacBook? And do you have the Advanced Preferences/Settings enabled?
The Sends on Faders drop-down is sometimes not visible due to lack of screen real estate. You can also find the Sends on Faders option at the bottom of the drop-down menu by clicking on a Send knob.
Hi, Chris, is there a way to “activate” the mixer without having to open/close it with the “X” key-command or click on it with the mouse? The use case I have is that I want to be able to cycle through mixer modes to take advantage of your tip above to set the mixer mode to “Single” by creating a key-command macro for my MCU control surface (the SSL UF8). The default key command to cycle through the Mixer Modes is Shift-X. If the focus is on the Track Main Window and you hit Shift-X, however, you just get the bright white no-can-do flash. For the cycle to work, you have to change focus to the mixer. The only ways I have identified to change focus to the mixer is to either click on it with your mouse which partially dilutes the benefit of boiling the maneuver down to a single sequence triggered by a single button press on the control surface, or you have to open a separate mixer window or, possibly, have a screenset with just a mixer window. You can also hit “X” to toggle the mixer on and off, but the problem with that is that the macro sequence wouldn’t “know” ahead of time what the state of the mixer is, i.e., open or close. I could force the issue by creating two macros: one that goes: E > X to guarantee that focus is on the Mixer and that it is in fact present. And then a macro for Shift-X to cycle through the modes. I’m hoping that there is a reliable keystroke or command that simply changes focus to the mixer every time.