Great songwriting hinges on those intangible things that make us feel something. Melodies that captivate us. Snapshots in time captured perfectly in lyrical form. The push and pull of rhythm.
And great songs also are the culmination of little moments. Those moments may catch our ears for only a second but are the details we wait for and love.
Whether its a drum fill, vocal harmony, or special effect. These details transport us to a completely different place.
So it’s important to keep our ears and minds open for those little moments. But the work needed to create a cool moment can take a bit more routing and time than one would like.
Logic’s Selection-Based Processing function frees us from the heavy-lifting of making moments.
For example, let’s say we want to add a huge reverb tail to the last word in the vocals. Instead of:
- Creating a new track
- Splitting up your vocal region
- Moving your vocal region to the new track
- Loading up different plugins in search of the effect you want
- Adjusting the levels and routing of the new track
- Freezing or bouncing in place to save on CPU
Instead, just:
- Select the vocal region (or make a Marquee selection)
- Go to Functions > Selection-Based Processing…
- Dial-up your plugin chain
And once you have the sound you were after, simply hit Apply.
Selection-Based Processing will now commit your plugin chain to the vocals. Minus any plugins, you had on the vocal channel strip already.
So your original vocal chain is intact. And your musical moment is committed to a new audio region and file. No extra tracks, routing, or debating needed 🙂
If Selection-Based Processing sounds too easy, that’s because it is! So today let’s examine this awesome feature in Logic Pro.
I’m glad I found your website through YouTube. I have a couple of ditties I want to arrange my novice self until someday I suppose the professionals will climb aboard.
T’anks for being there, Chris.
Hi, Chris,
How are you? Can I ask you a question here. The problem I have below is very weird and I searched online but can’t get any answer. I have followed your channel for a long time. You are LPX expert. Hopefully you can have a solution of it.
Here it is:
For some reason, my kick bus is shown “selection based processong A”. With this setting, all of the kick audio track which are assigned to this bus can’t be soloed. For example, I have 3 tracks assgined output to this bus. They are Kick in, Kick Out, Kick Sample. I can’t sold either one of these tracks. They are all playing regardless. Even when I solo other channels, these 3 tracks continuously play, only the bus is soloed.
I wish I can post my screenshot here.
Thanks.