- Product: Automator
- Developer: Boz Digital Labs
- Version: 1.1.0
- Format: VST, VST3, AU
- Requirements: macOS 10.13 or later
- Source: bozdigitallabs.com/automator
Automating EQs gets complicated fast, especially once you’re trying to move multiple bands at once. Hitting a specific shape with automation means staring down a wall of lines, and that can be a genuine slog. I’m one of the maniacs who will fully automate every band in an EQ and spend the time placing all the little dots to chase a shape, but Boz Digital Labs just put out a plugin, Automator, that makes a lot of that simpler.
The idea is states. You set up a handful of states, each holding a target: this could be state one, that could be state two. Instead of drawing out every parameter by hand, you automate the transitions between states. Trigger a state and it fires a transition that carries everything toward that target over however much time you give it. One automation curve, and that’s the end of it. It takes a lot of the pain out of automating while mixing or being creative.
To demo it, I pulled up a retro track built entirely from Atari 2600 sounds, with a short intro on a square wave before the melody comes in. I wanted the intro a touch more interesting with some filter movement, kept thin right at the start, so I set a low shelf for state one. Copying that to state two, I raised it and moved it over; copying to state three, I brought it back down. Moving three bands like that across specific states isn’t something you’d want to try with plain automation. The frequency wasn’t the only thing shifting, either. I made the Q a little broader on state five too.
Once you’ve picked your states (and good luck doing that with plain automation), you go into the plugin’s browse parameters, find the state parameter, right-click it, and create an automation clip. That part’s FL Studio-specific; other DAWs handle it differently. From there, placing points lets you jump between states. In FL you can right-click a point and choose “hold,” which locks it to a specific value; other DAWs have something like a selected-amount option that does roughly the same thing. I set state one, two, and three all to hold notes, then moved the playhead to where the lead comes in for a state-two point, and to the very end for state three. Wherever the playhead sits, the plugin shows you its current state — that holds true in pretty much any DAW. Play it back and it just moves straight to the target.
From there it’s easy to stack on more under the same states: narrow width right at the start, still narrow but a little wider by state two, opened up (not all the way) by state three, a bit of random pan movement, even a touch of gain riding along with the filter as it opens. There’s one automation lane. The session looks significantly simpler, and you’re not touching the automation itself anymore, just adjusting the states.
I added a fourth state for when the saw wave comes in, mostly pulling some lows out, keeping the transition on whole notes because it felt right, and dropped a point at the very end to hold that state through to the next section.
The saw wave and bass got the same treatment: a general mid-high cut that dips harder once the bass enters, this time built on a long transition time rather than tied to note values. State one got tuned with a bit of gain riding it; state two took some trial and error to get the timing right; and I added a softer alternate state with a slight pan and narrower width to sit next to another sound doing something similar, widening back out once the bass lands. I tried an exponential fade curve on one of the moves too, which brought it up a little quicker and read as a nicer motion.
On the bass channel, I built out five separate EQ states: notches, band-pass sweeps moving down, a tilt that boosts the low end while taming it slightly, with mostly quick transitions, some pushed close to instant. For moving between them I used “smooth,” or single-curve, mode rather than jumping straight across, so it mingles between states instead of snapping. It starts clean, sweeps through the more chaotic states, then locks to an instant transition right as the drums come in.
I ran the same bass processing in parallel at a 50% mix to keep it from getting too extreme, and went back and forth between broader, slower moves and longer transition times to dial in how aggressive it felt. I also A/B’d crossfade against morph on the bass (morph’s usually my preference, but crossfade got a listen too) before settling back into a state that just holds for the rest of the song.
The track itself just kind of stops where it stops for now, but it’s a cool track, and as a demo of what Automator actually does, cutting a pile of hand-drawn automation down to a handful of states and one transition curve, it gets the point across.
