Blurch Injector effect - record automation of muting/ volume

n-Track Studio Discussion Forum
1

So, the “Apolstolic Blurch Injector” was a console of buttons that could be pressed to briefly activate a channel in a recording console. This was used to great effect by Frank Zappa during the recording of “Were Only In It For The Money”, where there were three buttons (panned right, center, and left) that could be pressed to momentary activate a channel during playback and mixing.

I want to recreate this effect. Near as I can tell, I need to map a midi key to an envelope, set it to toggle, and then record the action. Problem is, I can’t find the “Record automation” button anywhere in N-Track version 10 for Windows. I’m not even convinced this would work as I stated it, so if someone has a better way to briefly activate a track in the volume envelope, I’d like to know. I would like to hit record, and then randomly and repeatedly press a key on a keyboard or trigger finger and have that instantly take a track to full volume and then back to off.

Thanks!

2

You could do this by using hardware faders to move the volume of a track. If you don’t have hardware faders available you should also be able to configure note keys to set the volume, for example create two events in the MIDI control box, one for note-on, and one for note off, and wire both to the volume of say track 1. This way as long as the note is pressed the volume would be proportional to the velocity of the note, when you release the note the volume would go to -Inf.

Flavio

3

Thank you, where is the “record automation” located in N-Track 10? I have spent quite a lot of time looking at my screen unable to find it. Or does it have a different name now?

4

The button to record automation is the 2nd from the top left in the screenshot below.

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Flavio.

5

Thank you, I was looking at documentation from an older version and it looked different from this.