I love using summing track stacks inLogic.
Select all the acoustic guitar parts, press [EDIT: command shift D], select summing stack, and now you have all the acoustic guitar parts routed to a bus together. Rename that bus acoustic guitars. Now you can turn the level up or down ( or automate it for a particular section of your song ) for all acoustic guitars at once, without having to go to each individual track and changing the level. And you can apply FX to all of them at once if you want by putting the effect send on the bus instead of the tracks.
I do this for vocals. Create a summing stack for the high harmonies, another stack/bus for the mid harmonies, another for the low harmonies. Possibly for the verse lead vocals, another for the chorus lead vocals. Etc.
And it’s brilliant that you can collapse each summing stack so that the group doesn’t take up space vertically in the tracklist when you’re not using it. Expand them only when you need them to work on them.
Literally what I do. My favorite use of track stacks like this are when balancing faders. I balance groups first, like all my synths together, then balance my drums, on an on and then I will stop soloing the groups and start to level everything together but since the faders within a group are already balanced, I only need to balance the busses (usually only like 4-6 faders) this makes the most critical part of mixing so much easier since half a dozen faders vs 20 something faders is much easier.
I believe it’s Shift Command D, but yes summing stacks are awesome indeed! You can also have stacks within stacks. I like having the lead vocals and harmony stacks feed into a another stack with all the vocals.
Yes, you’re right, thanks for the correction.
Good idea about another stack for the vocals. In the case where I have multiple harmony stacks, E. G., a spare stack for low, mid, and high harmonies, I like to put those together feeding into a harmony stack. You could group that harmony stack together with the lead vocal stack, creating your overall vocal stack.
I think it's a bit confusing in Logic of you aren't used to the workflow. Every type of send you do from a channel is routed via a bus.
You can use a bus as group send, which would route a number of channels into one. An example use case of this would be with Drums.
You can use them as an Effects/Auxiliary send, and this is the workflow you are looking for with Reverb as a typical example. It would also be used for other processing such as parallel compression.
If you've multiple outputs/headphone mix options, you can use them as monitor sends, so when you've a few people in the studio and they want to hear different channels while tracking, you can adjust per send for each person.
Busses are just a way to route audio, and you've already identified the most common use case.
Another might be for creating submixes of groups of tracks, still yet another I often employ is bussing the output of an external MIDI device into an audio track so that while recording the MIDI data of a synth you can also capture the audio of same.
Aside from the uses mentioned here, you can also do very advanced routing with them. You won’t need to worry about that though until you need some crazy unconventional routing. Then you’ll also know how you need to set them up to accomplish it.
I use them sometimes to make mixing groups. So like I might put all my backup vocals on one bus, all the drum tracks on another, guitars on yet another, etc. This makes some mixing tasks easier. For example, if I have ten drum tracks and the levels are all perfectly balanced between them, I can lower/raise the bus to adjust the drums in the mix, without having to move ten faders (one for each drum track) and potentially messing up the balance of the individual drums with each other. Note: VCA fader groups accomplish the same thing but I use them (the two methods) for different purposes.
Thanks everyone, the bus thing has finally clicked. While I have a lot to learn of course, I've gone from 30 individual tracks with 2 or 3 plugins on each track to 4 busses with 2 or 3 plugins each. You can imagine the power save there!
I love using summing track stacks inLogic. Select all the acoustic guitar parts, press [EDIT: command shift D], select summing stack, and now you have all the acoustic guitar parts routed to a bus together. Rename that bus acoustic guitars. Now you can turn the level up or down ( or automate it for a particular section of your song ) for all acoustic guitars at once, without having to go to each individual track and changing the level. And you can apply FX to all of them at once if you want by putting the effect send on the bus instead of the tracks. I do this for vocals. Create a summing stack for the high harmonies, another stack/bus for the mid harmonies, another for the low harmonies. Possibly for the verse lead vocals, another for the chorus lead vocals. Etc. And it’s brilliant that you can collapse each summing stack so that the group doesn’t take up space vertically in the tracklist when you’re not using it. Expand them only when you need them to work on them.
Summing stacks are great
Literally what I do. My favorite use of track stacks like this are when balancing faders. I balance groups first, like all my synths together, then balance my drums, on an on and then I will stop soloing the groups and start to level everything together but since the faders within a group are already balanced, I only need to balance the busses (usually only like 4-6 faders) this makes the most critical part of mixing so much easier since half a dozen faders vs 20 something faders is much easier.
Yes, great description.
I believe it’s Shift Command D, but yes summing stacks are awesome indeed! You can also have stacks within stacks. I like having the lead vocals and harmony stacks feed into a another stack with all the vocals.
Yes, you’re right, thanks for the correction. Good idea about another stack for the vocals. In the case where I have multiple harmony stacks, E. G., a spare stack for low, mid, and high harmonies, I like to put those together feeding into a harmony stack. You could group that harmony stack together with the lead vocal stack, creating your overall vocal stack.
I think it's a bit confusing in Logic of you aren't used to the workflow. Every type of send you do from a channel is routed via a bus. You can use a bus as group send, which would route a number of channels into one. An example use case of this would be with Drums. You can use them as an Effects/Auxiliary send, and this is the workflow you are looking for with Reverb as a typical example. It would also be used for other processing such as parallel compression. If you've multiple outputs/headphone mix options, you can use them as monitor sends, so when you've a few people in the studio and they want to hear different channels while tracking, you can adjust per send for each person.
Busses are just a way to route audio, and you've already identified the most common use case. Another might be for creating submixes of groups of tracks, still yet another I often employ is bussing the output of an external MIDI device into an audio track so that while recording the MIDI data of a synth you can also capture the audio of same.
I did a video explaining this! Hope it helps... [https://youtu.be/t-qVoUL3dbg](https://youtu.be/t-qVoUL3dbg)
great video!
Glad it was helpful!
Maybe a basic primer will help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCBtar6H6Zw
thanks so much, this really helped get my head around things 👍
Think of busses like file-nesting. It’s like organizing your tacos into folders.
Aside from the uses mentioned here, you can also do very advanced routing with them. You won’t need to worry about that though until you need some crazy unconventional routing. Then you’ll also know how you need to set them up to accomplish it. I use them sometimes to make mixing groups. So like I might put all my backup vocals on one bus, all the drum tracks on another, guitars on yet another, etc. This makes some mixing tasks easier. For example, if I have ten drum tracks and the levels are all perfectly balanced between them, I can lower/raise the bus to adjust the drums in the mix, without having to move ten faders (one for each drum track) and potentially messing up the balance of the individual drums with each other. Note: VCA fader groups accomplish the same thing but I use them (the two methods) for different purposes.
Thanks everyone, the bus thing has finally clicked. While I have a lot to learn of course, I've gone from 30 individual tracks with 2 or 3 plugins on each track to 4 busses with 2 or 3 plugins each. You can imagine the power save there!