It would be best to have the sends on the other tracks set up this way as well. You should use the Option (Alt) key to do them all at once, but first you need to hide the D-Verb channel so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of deleting the sends from it again.

To accomplish this, open the Show/Hide Tracks List by clicking the double arrow button in the lower left corner of the screen. At the top you will see a list of your tracks highlighted in purple. Click on “D-Verb” to hide it from view. Note that it disappears from the screen and is no longer highlighted, but you still hear it working.

8. Holding down the Option (Alt) key, change the sends to Mono on the Rhythm track the same way you did the Drum track. Identical sends will appear in all the remaining tracks, but the D-Verb track will not be affected because it is hidden.

More About Aux Sends

Before we move on it’s very important that you clearly understand how aux sends operate. Following is a simple flow chart that illustrates how the Drum Track signal flows from the aux sends to the D-Verb Plug-in. The signal is then processed and returned to the Stereo mix via the D-Verb return channel.

Digital Delay

Now let’s create another aux track for some digital delay using the techniques we’ve learned. Close any open send or Plug-in windows.

1. Create a new track and this time make it a Mono Aux Input channel. Label it “Delay” and set the input to “bus 3 (Mono).”

2. Insert the “long delay (mono / stereo)” Plug-in on the Delay channel. Note that this mono channel has been transformed by the Plug-in into a mono-in, stereo-out channel. Close any send windows that might be open and drag the long delay Plug-in window to a place where you can view the entire window.

3. Hide the Delay channel as before, using the Show/Hide List.

4. Using the Option (Alt) key as before, add a new send to all channels and set it to “bus 3 (Mono).”

Before we start playing with the digital delay, I want to introduce you to the Solo Safe mode. You may have noticed that pressing the solo button on a track mutes all the other tracks. This is a very useful tool for mixing. However, when you solo a track, you still want to be able to hear the reverb and other effects associated with that track. Putting the effects returns in Solo Safe will prevent them from being muted when a track is soloed.

Use the Show/Hide Tracks List to bring the D-Verb and Delay channels back into the Edit window. -click (Ctrl-click) on their solo buttons to put them in Solo Safe. Note that the solo buttons are now grayed out.

5. Let’s set up the delay for a simple stereo delay setting for the lead instrument. The input controls should be all the way up. Set the Mix to “100%” so that no dry signal comes from the Delay return channel. Set the length of the left delay to “400 ms” and the right delay to “200 ms.” (Delay lengths are usually measured in milliseconds (ms). A millisecond is one-thousandth of a second, so 400 ms is slightly less than half a second in length.) It can be difficult to select a specific delay value using the sliders. Instead, click on the current delay value, type in the new delay value and press Return (Enter). Set the depth to “zero” on both sides and the feedback to “25%.” (Feedback controls the number of times the echo repeats.)

6. Solo the Lead Comp track. Click on the “bus 3 send” and bring up the fader during playback. You should be able to hear the delay and see some meter action on the Delay channel.

7. Now put a send on the Delay channel and select “bus 2 (mono).” This will send the delay back into the long reverb for a more ethereal sound.

8. Take the Lead Comp track out of solo and listen to the whole mix. It should be pretty well drenched in effects by now. Are we having fun yet?

9. In order to reduce screen clutter, close any send and plug-in windows that are open and close the Show/Hide Tracks List. Save the session as “Lesson Two - 3 fx.”

Leslie Effect – Insert the Short Delay (Mono) Plug-in on the Rhythm track. For a Leslie-like rotary effect, solo the Rhythm track and set the Plug-in parameters as shown below. This time, click on the first parameter you need to change, type in the new setting, then use the Tab key to scroll through the other parameters, typing in the new values as you go. As you listen to playback, try changing the rate to vary the speed of the effect. Press Return (Enter) and close the Plug-in window when you’re done.

Input . . . . . . . . 0
Mix . . . . . . . . . 35%
LPF . . . . . . . . . 22k
Delay . . . . . . . 0.16ms
Depth . . . . . . . 22%
Rate . . . . . . . . 6.00
FB . . . . . . . . . . 0