Overview

The SWA Masterclass HALion 6 tutorial, led by sound design expert Walter Hunnicutt, provides a comprehensive guide to Steinberg’s powerful sound design workstation HALion 6. The tutorial is divided into several chapters covering all aspects of HALion 6, from its introduction and structure to working with macros and packaging your sounds into VST sound files.

The tutorial begins with an introduction to HALion 6, providing a brief history of the instrument and breaking down its default screen into functional areas. Hunnicutt explains the fundamental signal flow and workflow and covers terms and conventions unique to HALion, making it easy for beginners to understand.

Next, the tutorial covers the user interface, looking at the basic navigation and how to locate, activate, and use all of the sound-sculpting tools in the 26 editors. The tutorial then moves on to working with presets, exploring the basic structure of a program tree and all its associated components.

The tutorial then delves into building your own sound from scratch using each of the zone types except sampling. It also covers sampling, including the routing configuration and channel set up required to create an audio feed directly to HALion and exploring both the manual and automatic sampling and mapping options.

Finally, the tutorial covers working with macros, allowing you to create a custom control panel for your sounds using your own artwork and custom mapping. The tutorial concludes by walking through the Library Manager utility to package your new instrument into a VST Sound file for collaboration, distribution, or even sale. Suitable for both beginners and advanced users, this tutorial is a must-watch for anyone looking to master HALion 6.

Reviews

SWA Masterclass HALion 6 Review

Reviewed by Frank Gratkowski on July 19, 2021

Well done but it misses how to work with key-switches and different layers. The sampler part (building your own instrument) including key-switch layers could be much more detailed. Also nice would be an introduction to the lua script option.

SWA Masterclass HALion 6 Review

Reviewed by Magluss Musica i Natura on February 3, 2021

The whole tutorial is very good. Well explained and concrete, and it helps a lot to understand it. There are 2 things I would like to see improved. Some subtitles in another language, such as Spanish, etc. And the other that I consider very important is that the image of the Halion is often small in quality for viewing. It would be more interesting to see Halion better, even if that meant not seeing the speaker.
Thank you very much for everything. I recommend this tutorial without hesitation !!

SWA Masterclass HALion 6 Review

Reviewed by John Seoane on September 20, 2020

Walter Hunnicutt is a great instructor, thanks to HALion 6 Masterclass i now know how to get the most out of halion 6, for a year i could not find any good youtube videos that would show me how to use this instrument until i found Walters Sreamworks audio. Let me tell you the price was right and what i learned from walter is priceless and is going to take my production to the next level. This is a game changer for me. I am a cubase 10.5 user and we all know what am getting next.

Thank You Walter Hunnicutt you are god sent.... Am sold on your instructional master classes....

SWA Masterclass HALion 6 Review

Reviewed by Samuel Green on April 25, 2020

As far as I am aware, this is one of the only video tutorial series on this product that exists. There isn't really much choice in this regard, but what Walt presents here is a great start to an otherwise very unfriendly and daunting program.

As far as the content itself goes, Walt has done an amazing job getting into the trenches of this software and figuring it out so you don't have to! I can only imagine the amount of frustration and stress he must have gone through trying to learn this, especially to the point of knowing it so well he is able to teach it. He also demonstrates how to not get lost in the program accidentally, and has some neat tips and tricks to get back to a more manageable layout whenever the user might take a wrong turn.

However... The production quality of the videos are not brilliant. The entire series has seemingly all been done in one take (with breaks in between parts to introduce the new subject), and there are some slightly awkward edits in some parts to skip ahead in time or streamline a subject. The lighting and video quality of Walt talking to the camera is not good, it's more like a Skype call than what you would expect from a paid product (the mic audio is still clear, however, which is the most important part). He can also be quite dull at times, but to his credit this isn't exactly a very fun or inspiring topic to spend a lot of time on.

The information being provided is obviously far more crucial to get across than a good quality video, and Walt absolutely delivers in this aspect. It would just be nice to have both!

Overall, despite my complaints, this is an absolutely essential video series if you're even slightly interesting in pursuing HALion 6 any further than the presets that come with the software.

SWA Masterclass HALion 6 Review

Reviewed by Peter Hamlin on February 21, 2020

This is an excellent course. The pacing is just right. I was happy that everything is very well explained from the ground up -- so you don't ever feel left behind -- but there's good depth also. Walt, I like your that your expertise is presented in a laid-back and personable style.