Harness the Power of Automations in Your DAW 🎚

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One of the skills that I find a lot of beginning producers procrastinate on learning… is the ability and the skill of learning to automate things in their DAW. So it's because there's a little bit of complexity. There's a little bit of a learning curve to doing that. And so they avoid it. They end up trying to just mix everything at one level or find the right EQ and just keep it at that. And they don't really automate much in the production, in the mix of their song. And it really is holding them back.

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If you are one of those people, or if you would like to have a little review about how you can automate and some tricks on how to do that, this video is for you.

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My name is Zion and I am the founder of the Triple Threat Artist online production course, and my friend, Josh Doyle and myself teach students on how to become a Triple Threat, a singer songwriter producer. We have a bunch of tools and some free stuff on our site that you might want to check out, check the link below. And we're open for enrollment. If you'd like to join us, let us know. Without further ado, let's jump into this.

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Let's talk about automation. (Music Playing)

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So what I want to show you is a way of controlling your volume without using your main fader. And there's a reason why, and the reason why is because, well, let me show you. Let's say I wanted to automate this track here. (Music Playing) I wanted to change the volume. Okay. Let's say I wanted to change the volume. If I grabbed the volume here and change it, (Music Playing)

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I can do it that way, but let's say I wanted to automate that volume change. So I'm going to hit show automation and I'm just going to draw it in here right now. If I did that, let's say I loved this automation. If I did that now I can't control the main fader. If I try to grab this, let's say the whole thing relative to the rest of the song was a little too loud. If I try to drag it down and turn it down, you'll see that the automation turns gray. It's because I'm overriding the automation by just using the volume. And you'll see a little light light up somewhere on your DAW. It might look a little different from this, but the point is that you don't want to use this. I rarely ever automate my main fader for a track. I just rarely do.

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Sometimes I will a group like if I'm using auxiliary tracks, but I rarely do this. Instead I do this. Let me just show you, I'm going to delete the automation. I'm going to add something on here. Now there's a lot of different ways to do this, but I'm going to just grab a utility plugin and I'm going to grab this and drop it right here. And this utility plugin is just basic stuff. I can change the panning, the stereo width. I could put the bass in mono this is actually a really cool function. I have a video about that. I can change the balance. I can mute it. And I can add some gain. So if I use this knob, this is basically the volume now. This is like an extra gain stage in this track before it goes to this post fader. And this is the one I want to actually automate. So I'm going to automate this knob instead. And now if I change the automation on this, let's say I'm doing this and doing that, doing this, doing that, something like that. Now I still have this. I can control without messing up this automation (Music Playing)

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I turned it way down. The automation is still there. If I right click it and you can see it. So I can control this whole level relative to the rest of the tracks without messing up my automation. This is the way you want to do your volume, your gain staging automation. Because again, you want to make sure this is always free for when you're leveling. You're doing your final levels and you're mixing and mastering. Okay. So that's step number one, use a utility plugin, a lot of plugins like an EQ for instance. You might have an EQ on your track. They're going to have a gain stage as well. And you can automate that as well. You don't have to use a utility if you already have a gain.

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The next thing I think you should know is how to connect one of your knobs to an external midi controller.

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So I have connected this gain knob. I'm going to move my mouse to a knob. You can't see it, but it's a knob on my mini controller. And this is a, I'm using an M audio oxygen, 61. It's an old controller, but most controllers work. And this is using, what's called MIDI mapping. It's using a value that is from my keyboard to control this knob. Now how to do that in Ableton is you actually have to go into the, the preferences and I select oxygen 61, I make sure track is on, which is going to track the keys like when I'm playing. And then I make sure the remote is on and the remote is actually what controls these values. And then I actually have to map it. And I'm going really quickly here because it's going to be probably be boring for those who don't use this DAW.

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But it's the same concept applies. So if I go over here and hit edit midi-map I selected this item, turned my knob, and it, if I turn a different knob, it'll say 178 there. So now I'm going to use a different knob. And then I check this and now that knob controls this. But the point of that is if I'm going to be automating something, it might be a lot easier for me to use a real physical knob or lever or slider instead of try to do this by mouse. In fact, it's oftentimes a lot more natural sounding. So now if I automate this or let's just hit play, (Music Playing) So you now have all that control. And now if I wanted to record it, there's a way in which you can actually record. I think it's this one here. I've got a check here. (Music Playing) It's only recording the automation movements I make from my DAW. And now if I play back, it's going to be the exact same. (Music Playing)

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I strongly suggest learning how to do this because it will make your automation a lot easier and really quickly two to dial in. And you're not going to be sitting there trying to draw all these little nodes and go, okay, I want this one there. And I've done this many, many, many, many times. And it, it can be very, very cumbersome. And I strongly suggest learning how to do this from a manual knob on a midi controller. And it doesn't really matter what kind of midi controller use. Most of them, you can set up with your DAW so that it reads for that.

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Okay, lastly, I'm going to bring up this instrument. This is, this is done in Massive, and I want to actually control one of these values in an external instrument. This is the effects knob for this synth.

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And what I'm going to do is for Ableton, and again, it could be a little different in your DAW, but you see, you got to figure it out. I'm going to actually open up this area and hit configure, and then I'm going to grab that knob. And so I'm going to control that and then configure it. And then for the slider, I'm going to edit that value, using the midi-map and then tell my controller, which one to use. And now on my controller, I'm using this and now I can control the effects. And now we're going to hit record and record some effects just at the end of every line. (Music Playing) Okay. So now I added some effects in there. And then if we play that, (Music Playing) I like that. Now let's do that with a cutoff knob and let's see how that sounds. So again, I'm going to add the cutoff nod by touching it after I've hit configure. So it knows that that's the one of the ones I want to adjust. And then I'm going to hit the edit midi knob, and we're going to grab another controller. I just wiggle a knob on my midi controller. And now it's programmed to be this one and I'm going to hit the same thing. (Music Playing)

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I like that. So I had to do a couple passes, so I could kind of dial that in better, but let's see how that sounds now. I'm going to get rid of that little slope. (Music Playing)

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So let's review. The very first thing was use a utility knob so that you can always control the overall gain of, or the track volume externally in your mix without messing up the automation. The second is learn how to control your automation using a midi controller. And so it's a lot easier. You can use it from a physical knob. And then lastly, learn how to control and configure values in an external VST or AU plugin. And that way you have full control of all these things, and it'll make your life a lot easier. I strongly suggest it.

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I hope that helped guys.

Zion

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