After reading the comments on my last post it appears many of you enjoy the technical end of audio production like I do. This is an Ableton Live technique that is not useful in a wide variety of scenarios, but in a select few it is very useful. You should be able to translate these sonic principles to your own DAW with a little bit of thought, time, and effort. I'm trying to post only stuff that I came up with and not stuff that I learned elsewhere so that I'm not repeating stuff you guys already know.
The problem: You have an effect (a beat repeat in my example). This effect has a randomized parameter. You want it to affect different groups of tracks at different points in your song, however you want them all to be affected by the randomized parameter in unison
Possible solutions that didn't work:
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You can group the tracks and put the effect on the group. This works nicely unless you want to change the grouping mid song. Also keep in mind that for some god awful reason Live does not let you group in layers (i.e. you can't group a group).
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You can just put the track on a return and send the signal when you want the effect to happen. This is a problem because you either have to set the track to "sends only" and can't use it dry (effectively defeating the purpose), or you have to leave it at default and as a result will always have some dry signal
My solution: Put the effect on a return. Highlight the effect and hit Command + G. Open the chains and add a blank chain. On this blank chain put a "utility" plugin and activity the phase inversion for the left and right channels. Make sure your effect is set to 100% wet (or INS in the case of the beat repeat)
Viola! Now, when you send a track or group of tracks to your return, you will get only the wet signal. You can automate the send knobs and have as many different groups of tracks as you want at any given moment affected by your effect!
Why this works: Any audio signal added to an inverted copy of itself will sum to silence. When you send the signal to the return it is split in two. The first part adds the effect, while the second part with the utility plugin subtracts the dry signal.
It may be a bit hard to follow if you are just starting out, but give it a try and post any difficulties or questions here. Also, if you have your own solution to this problem (especially if it is more elegant or efficient) let me know as I'm always looking for alternatives.
I hope you find a good use for my "phase bussing" technique
NTPLR
Submitted August 27, 2016 at 06:15AM by NTPLR https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/4ztikx/a_little_trick_i_like_to_call_phase_bussing/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Saturday, August 27, 2016