If you’re a producer or engineer, and you think your mixes are taking too long, it usually comes down to a couple things. Maybe you don’t know enough Logic Pro shortcuts for mixing, you don’t have your projects set up correctly, or are finding it hard to navigate around your project.
Whatever the cause, you’re in the right place if you’re trying to speed up your mixing process. We’ve got Fabio from Noize to share his endless Logic Pro knowledge.
Shortcut #1: Auto Assigning Colors
Here’s a tip that will make a difference from the get go. Pull up your settings in Logic Pro, scroll down to View, then go to Tracks, and make sure that Track Color is set to Auto Assign—96 Colors.
Now when you drag in midi or stems, Logic Pro will automatically assign colors to each new track. So now, rather than all your tracks being the same color (which is a nightmare to manage) they’ll be assigned new colors.
We’ve also got Logic Pro shortcuts for recording. Navigate to Record > Recording Settings. Once you’re here, make sure that “Automatically color takes” is on.
Like with Auto Assign, this feature will create a new color every time you record a new take.
Shortcut #2: Customize Your Colors
You may not like the way Logic has things colored, and you want to customize the color scheme to your liking. For example, you could make all the drums yellow and other instruments blue.
If you hit Option+C, the color palette modal will appear, and you can select a bunch of tracks and assign them colors with just a few clicks.
You can also go to Functions > Color Track by Region / Cell Color. The color will appear on the left-hand side, and it’ll also be reflected in the mixer.
Shortcut #3: Grouping Tracks with a Summing Stack
If you have a selection of tracks that you want to group together and summed to the same bus, all you have to do is click on one, hold Shift and drag your select to create a group. Alternatively, you can click on one, hold Command, and individually click on the tracks you want to group them.
Once you have the tracks or channels that you want, hit Command+Shift+D. You’ll have the option to create a summing stack or a folder stack. Create a summing stack because that will assign all your tracks to the same bus. Then you can control the overall volume and effects on this channel.
Shortcut #4: Quickly Rename Busses
Need to know what’s in a bus without having to double click every time you want to rename something? Good news: If you have a channel selected, just press Shift+Enter and you can rename it.
If you still have the channel selected, just hit Tab to go to the next channel.
Shortcut #5: Gain Regional Control
When stems come in, they can often be too low in volume. Rather than just turning up the output, it can be beneficial to increase the gain of the clip.
To do that, we select all the stems, and bring up the region menu in the top left-hand corner. Here we can increase or decrease the gain for all the regions selected.
Shortcut #6: Waveform Zoom
If you’re happy with the gain, you can just increase the waveform size instead. To do so, click on the waveform symbol next to the Drag control. This won’t affect the volume, just the view.
If you want to increase or decrease the view, just click and hold the waveform button and a vertical slider will appear.
Shortcut #7: Mixer Open Shortcut
Some people are lucky enough to have two screens: one with the arranger view and another with the mixer view. But if you’re on a single screen, you’re probably going to want to bring the mixer up and down. All you’ve got to do is press X to open the mixer and then press X to close it.
Shortcut #8: Unclogging Your Screen
When you’re in the middle of mixing, your screen may become clogged up with different plugin and effects windows. You can quickly minimize them by pressing V, and then you can bring them back by pressing V again.
If you’re done with a particular plugin and want to close it completely, just hold Shift and click the red x button in the top corner of any plugin.
Shortcut #9: Creating New Auxiliary Channels
When you’re in the mixer, you might find that you want to create a new bus. Maybe you want to create an auxiliary send for effects. Or maybe you just want to group things to a bus without using a summing stack.
The shortcut for this is Control+N. Do this as many times as you want, and this Logic Pro mixing shortcut will create new auxiliary channels every time.
The one thing to note is that you have to select the bus yourself, increase the volume, and name it.
Shortcut #10: Automatic Value Reset
If you hold Option and click on faders or panning, this will reset everything to its default value, which is usually zero.
This also works if you have a selection of parameters you’re looking to reset. For example, we have these channels which all have different volumes and panning. We just hold Option and click, and they’re all automatically reset to zero.
Of the Logic Pro shortcuts we’ve mentioned, this one works for any and all plugins in the DAW, not just the mixer.
BONUS Logic Pro Shortcut: Choosing One Soloed Channel
If you have a bunch of channels that are soloed, but you only want one, just hold Option and click S on the appropriate channel. The solo will deactivate from the other channels and activate on your selection.
***
What are your favorite Logic Pro shortcuts for mixing? Let us know in the comments on YouTube.
And when you’re done with your mixes, make sure to upload them to Boombox.io and share them with your collaborators. If you don’t have an account, no problem. Sign up for free and get four gigs of storage at no cost.