Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 01 - Getting Starting in Logic X Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

[Music]
hello this is music tech help Gaea
welcome to my brand new video tutorial
series on Logic Pro 10 after using logic
10 for a few months I found that I
really liked it even more than I like 9
and I decided to just make a full video
tutorial series from beginner level
things like we're gonna do today just
getting started and logic all the way up
to more advanced features like sampling
and drum replacing and things like that
so I hope to do about 1 to 2 videos
every week and within a year I'll have a
complete video series in logic so after
we opened up the software we'll get the
startup window here and we're just going
to create a new empty project and then
the arrange window will load and then
shortly after that this is the new
tracks dialog so for this video we're
gonna be using software instruments and
audio tracks so let's just click on
audio to create a new audio track and
make sure our input is set to input 1
that's what we're gonna plug our mic or
instrument into right now and down here
you can check your audio interface
mine's an Alesi interface but this could
be anything like an EM box or something
similar and then down here if you want
to you can actually create multiple
tracks so if I wanted to create two
audio tracks I just type in two here but
we're just gonna stick to one for now so
click create and you'll see on the left
side we've created our first audio track
now our audio track header over here as
a few options on it
we have mute solo record input
monitoring we have volume control and a
pan control we'll get to these later but
for now let's just double click where it
says audio 1 and let's rename this track
guitar because well I'm gonna record
guitar another thing you can do is you
can zoom your track header to make it
larger or smaller so you basically just
hover over the bottom of the track and
then pull down or pull up you can also
hover over the right side and pull right
or left to make it wider or narrower so
earlier I said that we'd also be using
software instrument tracks which are
MIDI tracks which allow us to play
software
cisors so let's create a new track by
clicking on the plus sign here and this
will open up the new tracks dialog again
and then what we'll do is we'll choose
software instrument
now again software instruments are MIDI
enabled tracks what they do is they
allow you to put a software synthesizer
or sampler on the track and then you can
control that instrument with a MIDI
controller like a MIDI keyboard so after
we create our track here let's go ahead
and zoom it just like we did it the
audio track and on this softer
instrument I'm gonna create an electric
bass so I'm just gonna go ahead and
rename this bass guitar for now so I'm
gonna go ahead and click on my guitar
track because that's the first
instrument or the first track we're
gonna record on before we do that we
need to set up our audio interface
before recording properly for recording
so what we do this is go up to Logic Pro
10 go down to preferences and then go to
audio now the audio preferences dialog
lets you choose what input and output
device you're using so right now mine
says Alesi firewire so I'm using it as
an input and I'm also using it as an
output so in order to hear my session
and have to plug my speakers or my
headphones into the Alesi firewire
interface another thing we can do is we
can choose built-in inputs and outputs
this allows you to monitor through your
computer's built-in the output so you
can just plug your headphones into your
computer or you can plug your microphone
directly into your computer's built-in
input and some Mac's actually come with
built-in microphones that you could
choose here as well so I'm gonna set
mine back to a lessee firewire and then
make sure that your buffer size is set
to like 32 or 64 to like a low value and
essentially what aisle buffer is is it's
the amount of information that logic and
your computer will process at once and
if this is too high it'll actually cause
latency issues which will cause a
noticeable lag in your signal so we'll
come back to i/o buffer a little bit
later in another video so just set it to
32 hit apply changes and after that
loads
can just close out your Preferences
window and we're ready to start
recording so I'm gonna record guitar on
this audio track here and in order to do
that I have to make sure that the input
that the guitar is plugged into in my
interface matches up with the input on
the track so the way you do this is use
you what you do is you select the track
and then you go down to the channel
strip associated with that track and
you'll see the input section here that
says we're receiving signal from input 1
so I just have to make sure that my
guitar is plugged into input 1 on my
interface then I'll just click on the
input monitoring button on my track and
play a few notes on my guitar
[Music]
all right so we're getting signal from
the guitar but it's kind of bland so
let's use a channel strip setting to
enhance the the sound of the guitar make
it sound like an amped guitar so what
you usually click on the track go back
to the channel strip here and find your
channel strip setting tab here and you
click on that and in logic 9 typically
you'd see just a whole list of channel
strip setting presets here but in logic
10 you have to go to legacy logic and
then find your logic channel strip
settings so I'm gonna go to electric
guitar and then I'll go down to distort
and then distort dry and what I'm
looking for is dangerous distort and so
it loads up a whole set of plugins that
enhance the the sound of the guitar so
let's try that out
[Music]
all right so that worked out fine I'm
gonna turn off input monitoring and go
down to the channel strip here for just
a moment there's a bunch of plugins here
that we can mess with if we wanted to
one in particular I want you to look at
is the tuner and the tuner is its own
plug-in but it comes with a lot of the
guitar channel strip settings and it
just lets you tune your your input
signal
[Applause]
[Music]
all right so you can use the tuner to
check to see that your instruments in
tune and I know my guitars in tune so I
don't really need it so I'm just gonna
turn that off and on my guitar track I'm
a turn off input monitoring and then
turn on armed for recording and what arm
for recording does is it lets that track
be recorded onto so the key command to
record and logic is just the R button on
your keyboard I should have mentioned
before that spacebar plays and stops
your session as well
now I didn't record anything there
because it was a little too fast I want
to make it a little slower so I'm just
gonna hit command Z to get rid of that
recording and then up at the top of the
window here you'll see that the BPM the
tempo is set to 120 beats per minute I'm
gonna change that to a hundred just to
go a little bit slower and now what you
can do is you can hit the return key to
set your playhead back to the beginning
and let's try that again
[Music]
[Music]
all right so that worked fine as I
mentioned before this white line here is
called the playhead and what you can do
is you can grab it and you can move it
around and you can put it wherever you
want and when you press spacebar to play
it'll start from that point and then as
I said before you can hit return to go
back to the beginning and another thing
you can do is you can simply click on
the ruler up here and it will put the
playhead right at that point in the
ruler so there you go all right so now
that we got the guitar down we are ready
to record a software instrument and what
we're gonna do is we're gonna record a
bass guitar we're gonna find a software
bass guitar but first let's save let's
do a save as file save as the problem is
if we don't save well the entire logic
session is running off of RAM which can
cause some issues so by default what it
does is it puts your tries to direct
your session to admin music logic
there's a logic folder in there but I'm
gonna save mine to the desktop and said
so I'm gonna click desktop give it a
name I guess I'll just call it logic
project 1 and then down here it says
organized my project as a you can say
package or folder folder creates a
folder with other folders inside of it
with all of your source files and
package makes your entire session one
file so I actually prefer the folder way
you can also say what what do you want
to include with your project and for now
we'll just say audio files we'll talk
about some of these other things later
ok now that we've saved we are ready to
assign a software instrument to our bass
guitar here so you just click on it and
as long as it's armed you'll be able to
hear the instrument that's on it so
since we're not recording guitar anymore
let's unarmed the guitar
let's also pull down the volume on the
guitar so it doesn't bury the bass
guitar when I try to record it so just
like with the audio track I can assign a
channel strip to my software instrument
track here and it
sign a bunch of plugins as well as a
software synthesizer so what you do is
you just make sure you select the track
go to the setting tab again and just
like we did before go down to legacy and
then to logic and we'll see a whole list
of different instrument presets and I'm
going to use one called session base and
after the instrument loads as long as
the track is armed you can play a few
notes on your MIDI controller and you
should be able to hear what the
instrument sounds like alright so I'm
just going to hit R to record just a
basic quarter note baseline
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[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
all right so we recorded a MIDI region
there with our bass and you can tell
it's many because there's dashes and
dots for notes individual notes as
opposed to a waveform which you'd see on
an audio track so with MIDI it's just
like musical control values stored in a
clip one thing you might have noticed
during the recording is that my stereo
output was clipping here by 0.7 dB
so to prevent that digital overload what
we can do is just pull the volume down
in some of our tracks to give us a
little more Headroom one great thing
about MIDI tracks is that we can
quantize them which means you can
correct their musical timings so in
order to do that we go up here to this
area it's called the inspector actually
this whole column here is called the
inspector and you can hide it or show it
right here or you can hit I on your
keyboard will also do the same thing and
the parameter we're looking for is this
quantize parameter right now it says off
and when it says off it means that the
notes have not been quantized to a grid
so what you can do here is choose a
musical grid value like a quarter note
eighth note sixteenth note and whatnot
I'm gonna choose a quarter note because
that's what I played and what it does is
it snaps every note in that region to
the nearest quarter note in this case so
I'm just gonna free up some room here
for some more tracks and one thing I
want to add to this are some drums and
one way we can do that is with logics
apple loop browser and it comes with
about 30 gigabytes of additional
downloadable content and a good chunk of
those are loops so you come up to the
upper right corner here click on Apple
loops and you'll see your loop browser
here with a list of all the loops that
you can pick from there's also some
search parameters up here you can narrow
down what you're looking for so I'm
going to narrow down my search by just
looking for drums and then you can come
down to the bottom here and you can
scroll through the list and look for a
whole bunch of different loops and when
you find you like you can actually just
click on it and it will play for you
[Music]
and then you can just click again to
stop the playback of the loop so since I
like that one all you have to do is drag
and drop it out into your arrange area
and just put it below your lowest track
and it'll automatically make a new track
for it
so let's just increase the size of the
track header and then let's also get rid
of the loop browser and one thing you
can do is if you hover your mouse over
the upper right corner of a loop you'll
get this little loop icon and it allows
you to loop the loop basically so you
just click and drag to the right and you
can make as many copies of the loop as
you want Apple loops will actually
conform to the tempo of your project so
let's see what this sounds like
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
all right that works I'm just gonna go
ahead and pull the guitar down just a
hair and pull the bass up a little bit
just so they sit a little better with
the drums okay
so earlier I showed you how you can
create a new track by just going up to
the plus sign here and choosing the type
of track you want another quick way to
do is to click on a track that matches
the type of track you want to create and
then just double click at the very
bottom of the track headers and it'll
actually create a new track of that same
type so for our last track here I want
to create sort of like a like a
synthesizer sound like a synth lead or
like a synth pad or something let's go
up to our channel strip settings go back
to legacy legacy logic I'm going to go
to synthesizers and then go up the synth
leads and what I'm going to use is
called the classic trance lead the
classic trance lead is actually a
monophonic synth so you can only hear
one note at a time
[Music]
alright so that's fine I could go ahead
and just play every note I want
individually in the recording just like
we did at the bass guitar but instead
I'm going to take advantage of one of
the new features in Logic than 10 and
that new feature is the MIDI effects
insert on the software instrument
channel strips and what this does is it
allows you to create various different
MIDI effects one in particular that I'm
going to use is the arpeggiator now the
arpeggiator allows you to just hold a
chord on your MIDI controller and then
it automatically arpeggiate that chord
for you so for this I'm just going to
use one of the presets up here and the
preset I'm going to use is called
classic cycle oh one
[Music]
all right so that sounds fine I'm think
I'm going to use that and once you're
done that you can just close out that
plug-in window and what I'm going to do
is record some chords with the
arpeggiator behind my pre-existing
material but before I do that I want to
show you how to zoom because I want to
be able to optimize what I'm seeing so
one way you can do this is if you click
in the background and then just hit Z
it'll auto zoom everything to fit the
window so everything is a lot bigger now
the other way you can do it is there's
two zoom controls up here in the upper
right corner there's a vertical zoom and
then just to the right of that is our
horizontal zoom so you can adjust
everything so it's a little bigger and
not crammed into one little spot so now
that I can see everything I'm just going
to go ahead and hit R and record my
arpeggiated synth
[Music]
all right that works just fine what I'm
gonna do next is actually pull the
classic trance instrument its volume
down just a little bit it's a bit loud
so I'll pull that down a bit and then
the only thing we can do is just like
with the bass guitar track we can
quantize it to the grid so for this one
I'm going to use a 1-1 note which is the
same thing as a whole note since all I
played were whole note chords after
you're done with your project you might
want to render your whole project into a
single file into like a WAV file or mp3
something you can take with you put on a
CD or put on an mp3 player the way we do
that is called bouncing so to bounce is
to essentially to create a mix down of
everything that we have so to do this
you have to create a bounce range so
we're basically designating a boundary
of where we want to bounce from and
where we wanted to bounce to so the way
this is done is up here in the upper
left corner you'll see that measures 1
through 4 are kind of grayed out looking
and the reason why is this is actually
the the locators here if you click on it
it turns yellow you can grab it and you
can set a left and right boundary for
your bounce another function of the
locators is called cycle mode and when
they're yellow like this you can
essentially loop everything that's
within that range and so if I were to
press play right now just hear what's in
between that range and it would
continuously loop itself until I stopped
the playback so after we select our
bounce boundary you go down to file
bounce and then we go to project or
section and then you or you can memorize
the key command command B so we choose
that and this brings up the bounce
dialog we're gonna stick with a PCM type
file which is essentially a WAV AIFF or
CAF file and these other options don't
worry about them for now we'll come back
to these in a later video another option
we can change is whether or not we want
a real-time or offline bounce what a
real-time bounce does is it bounces
during playback it's more accurate but
takes a takes the length of the file to
bounce so I recommend doing that
like final mixes we're gonna do an
offline bounce which is a lot quicker
but as not as accurate so here it tells
us we have to name our bounce and by
default it creates a bounces folder
within your logic project so we'll save
it there and I'll just call this simple
rock song
so now the bounce
done I'm just gonna hit command s one
more time to save and then I'm gonna go
and quit logic and you can also do this
with the key command command Q so we no
longer need logic open let's go find our
logic project folder we created earlier
here it is inside there is a bounces
folder that it automatically created for
us and inside there is our wav file that
we just bounced so I'm just gonna click
on that file and hit spacebar to see if
it sounds all right
[Music]
all right so there we go we were able to
create our very first song from scratch
with very little knowledge about the
software so I hope you enjoyed the video
hope you learn something and I hope it
was easy to follow like I said at the
beginning of the video I'm going to
continue continue to try to do these
weekly until I basically run out of
material to to work with so so again I
hope you enjoyed the video and thanks
for watching