How To Use the LFO Tool like a Pro

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Today, I want to talk about the LFO tool. This is a tool that a lot of EDM producers are using, a lot of DJs, and it's basically to control that pumping effect.

The first time I'd heard about it, I was using a different tool completely. I was watching a masterclass of Armand van Buren and watching what he does and making his tracks. And he's incredible producer, if you have a chance to check it out, but he uses the LFO tool like on every single track for something to give movement, to give all kinds of different effects. A lot of it is that the pumping effect for synths and bass, but he uses it in some really clever ways. So I downloaded it and I've been exploring it. And it's kind of a go-to now for me as well.

And I think if you haven't explored it, you're going to love it.

My name is Zion ,and I am the founder of the Triple Threat Artists online producer course. And this is a course to teach singer songwriters, how to become a producer as well, to become a singer songwriter, producer, a Triple Threat. If you'd like to check out our course and check out some of the freebies and some of the different solutions that we have found for singer, songwriters, producers, click the links below.

We have a couple of freebies as well. I created a template a while back. I called the red zone production timeline, which is actually just a timeline to help people that are beginning to produce, to kind of get an idea of the different stages involved in a music in producing a song. This is not a one-stop solution, but it might help you. And if you are new to producing, you might want to check it out. And there's a link below.

Okay. Without further ado, let's jump into this tool and let's explore the LFO tool together.(Music Playing) I want to add something either a swell or synth or something. That's kind of a cry or scream. So I added this cool sound. This has made in Exhale, which is made by Output, and it's got some really cool sounds in it. And it sounds like this.(sounds playing)

And I love that portamento fall and rise at the beginning and end of those notes. So I recorded a couple of notes and I put them down here and I grouped them together and together they sound like this. .(sounds playing) And so in the mix, it would sound like this.(sounds playing) .

So I like that, but I want to add some movement to it. I want these things to sound a little bit more interesting, and they're going to be kind of background effect things. Now you could use an LFO tool or something to give it a pump. In fact, there's a a program called Kickstart, which I often use or used to use all the time, which does this simulated side chain effect without actually having to side chains, just pumping volume. So it sounds like this,.(sounds playing)

And it's cool. It's great quick solutions. Got a mix knob. You can set just a couple of rates here in discussing preset curves, but you cannot go in and actually dial in the curves, which sucks. And I don't like that. So LFO tools, this is where they solve this. This is where, why a lot of DJs and EDM producers use this LFO tool looks like this. And it's great because you can maximize it down here. Thank you so much for making that happen, Mr. LFO tool company, and this is our graft. We can actually change the values with these nodes in here. And I'm going to go over some of the basics here. There's a lot more to this then I'm going to go into, but I want to give you some of the basics right off the bat.

So right off the bat, it's defaulted to control volume. And over here, you can see the volumes right here. A hundred percent means it's going to use this graph to a hundred percent of its value. If you put it in a less than zero, it would be backwards. It would use this same graph, but be backwards. Zero means it's not using it at all. Depth down here is all of these values using these curves, depending on what graph you're using. And it's like the overall mix of this tool. So this is, think of this as like the mix knob. So the main thing you need to know is that there's these different graphs and we're going to be using the first graph to control our volume. And these, all these routings here, you can, the LFO tool allows you to route and control the cutoff knob for the filter over here.

And this is a, like a filter. You have all kinds of different types of filters in here, but it also has, you can control the resonance knob and the panning and stuff like that. So down here, this is where you're going to control the rate. It defaults at quarter note and that synch to your DAW. This is the sync button. You turn that on and off. If you don't want the sync, it'll automatically just be going at its own rate at a quarter note intervals. If you turn that off, you can actually create a, you can determine how fast you want this rate to be based on Hertz, but we're going to turn that back on and we're going to just start at a quarter note. So if we started in just use this as the quarter note. There we go. I'm going to sync that to my DAW. And we're going to just see here that, how that sounds .(sounds playing).

Okay. It's kind of the same thing as the other tool and it turned that down..(sounds playing)

All right. I want to shape this a little bit differently and I want it to, I don't want to just a pumping effect. I want to do something different. Let's be more creative. I'm going to go to two bars for my rate, and I'm going to start off this by having a node that goes right up at the top and then comes down and then I want it to come back up and then I want it to come way up and then trail off at the end. So we will do something like that..(sounds playing) And I'm going to adjust that..(sounds playing)

So it's kind of like I'm using this as sort of an LFO now, or I'm sorry, an envelope like a volume envelope. I'm kind of using this first instance of, of what I'm doing as that. I like that. I think that's cool. But even if, if the note continues in cycles, it'll just constantly cycle. You're probably looking at this going, this looks a lot like an envelope, like an ADSR envelope and it does. And so why don't they call this the ADSR tool instead of the LFO tool? And it's because this is actually what makes this an LFO is that it's constantly cycling. If we put this over back up to like a eighth note intervals.(sounds playing)

That "ADSR" is cycling, which means it's a low frequency oscillator LFO. So it becomes an LFO. It's kind of like combining like tweaking an LFO cycle so that you can control all the bits and nodes of the cycle, but it's still really is an LFO. So that's confusing to you. It was to me as well. But just think of this as a pattern, normally, an LFO, if you've had a synthesizer, it would look probably like a sine wave and which is just gonna sweep up and down. We're going to use that in just a second. So I've used this. Now,I want to add some more variation, but the problem is, is if I'm using this to add two bars here, which I like.(sounds playing)

If I'm using this at two bars, then if I want to use a graph for something else and use a different rate, it won't let me, unfortunately. So you can, you could do a variation of the two bars, but I actually want to control this rate. And I'll show you why in a second.

So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to open another instance of the LFO tool. So I'm going to control something else on this side of it. And let's open that puppy up here and this I'm going to control completely different. And we're going to start off looking at the cut. This is a low, low cut or a high cut. I'm going to turn it on over here. And we're going to have instance … well, let's just do two just to, so we're not confusing ourselves with the other one. And we're going to do a different shape here. Let's choose a sine wave, and it's going to just cycle like this, and we're going to control the resonance of this filter, which looks kind of like this at this rate. .(sounds playing).

So currently this graph that looks like this, the sine wave is using the cut-off knob of this filter, which is over here to go way back and forth. You know, it's super obnoxious. So I don't really want to do it at this rate..(sounds playing)

Okay. I kind of liken this and we can adjust this a little more over here..(sounds playing) And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the knob on my I'm going to attach this parameter to my DAW so that this is being controlled. And I'm going to do that using the, this thing here. And actually not that knob. I don't want that. I want this rate and we're going to now control that using we're going to mini-map that to this value here, and I'm ready to go. So now when I can do this on my DAW I can control it. (sounds playing).

And we can look at the view over here, and I'm going to record this parameter in. So I'm going to record the actual MIDI of this automation here..(sounds playing).

Okay. So I've recorded that automation. If you wanted to see it, it would look like that. And now it's going to follow that automation, and I've got a nice, cool thing going on there. Now. Let's see how that sounds in the mix. .(sounds playing).

Now I can hear a little bit of clicking in there. So if we can actually change that by adding a little bit of smoothness to this, and it'll help take out some of the clicking..(sounds playing)

Now, I think I want to do the same thing to the pan knob. So I'm going to change this so that this is being controlled by the sine weight as well. And we're going to start adding some panning in here..(sounds playing)

I really liked that. So as you can see, it's pretty powerful. And the reason I don't have to have a third LFO tool open is because my pan automate my pan controlling, being controlled by an LFO. And my cutoff is both it it's both being dictated by the same rate. That's it!

So, yeah, this is the filter area. This area over here is actually, you could use mini notes and key triggers to trigger the beginning of the LFO starting and all kinds of other parameters over here as well, the rate and stuff like that.

I hope that really helps. I love this tool, a lot of DJs and a lot of producers like this. If you use this tool, or if you have a suggestion on how on something, I didn't bring up, please send me a note back or comment in the comments below in YouTube.

All right, guys, that's it for this week.

Zion

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