36 | COOL WAYS TO USE CONSOLE 1 FADER
As a simple remote tool
As mentioned before, you can assign anything in your
DAW that has a keyboard command to the 3 Assign-
able buttons in Console 1 Fader. Think about it!
When you’re recording MIDI parts, various degrees of
quantizing could be assigned to those buttons.
Or, during a vocal session, you may want to assign those
buttons to “go to locator 1”, “rec/pause”, and “select next
track” respectively.
When mixing, maybe you find yourself constantly going
back to specific points in a song. You could position
locators at those points and assign the Console 1 Fader
buttons to “go to Loc 1”,” go to Loc 2”, and “go to Loc
3”.
To speed up your workflow and make navigation in a
project easier, you could assign the Assignable buttons
to zoom in and zoom out. Or you could choose zoom
modes 1, 2, and 3.
Or why not use two Assignable buttons to go to previ-
ous or next locator …
As a simpler mixer
During a mixing session, you may sooner or later find
yourself facing some real issues – a few tracks that need
special attention. Typically, those tracks are seldom adja-
cent to each other, but more likely spread out on tracks
3, 12, and 41.
Layer Mode can be a real lifesaver, when you need to
focus on a handful of tracks and manually balance them.
So moving faders next to each other is only one way to
utilize Layer Mode.
As a bass cleaner
Cool, fat synth basses can sound wonderful on their
own, but you may find it difficult to mix such a sound.
Many producers prefer using a single-oscillator bass
sound, due to its simpler, phase coherent, and solid
sound/waveform.
If you are using a fat, wide bass sound, and would like
to keep it that way, you can still clean up the low end
of your bass track with the Width control. Turning it
anti-clockwise will narrow everything below a given
frequency to mono.
Tidy up the lows, let the highs sparkle.
As a practical focusing tool
Here’s a typical situation: Lead vocals are on track 7 and
the lead guitar on track 23. You are trying to automate
their respective volumes in order to make them blend
perfectly, but their faders are too far apart. You can’t
reach them both at the same time.
You could create a layer of each of those two tracks on
adjacent channels. It’s much easier to ride those faders,
now that they are sitting next to each other.