Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 26 - Intro to MIDI; Recording MIDI; Basic MIDI Editing Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 26 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series
in this episode we'll start working with
MIDI and over the next several episodes
we'll get pretty in-depth with MIDI
recording programming and editing I
would like to just say up front that
there's a lot of talking in this video
because I want everyone to have a basic
background on MIDI and how to set up
MIDI devices before we start working
with MIDI more in depth so if you're
already if you already have a good
understanding of MIDI in the history and
how to set devices and things like that
you can pretty much move on to the next
video or maybe just skip to the latter
part of the video before we start
working in logic let me give you a basic
introduction to what MIDI is and some
MIDI history MIDI stands for musical
instrument digital interface and it is a
computer language that was developed in
the late 70s and early 80's by
sequential circuits founder Dave Smith
sequential circuits was a company that
developed synthesizers and the reason
why you don't really hear about them
much anymore is because they were bought
out by Yamaha in the 80s the late 80s
and MIDI was commercially released to
the public in 1983 so back in the
eighties MIDI was originally intended
for keyboards and other hardware devices
and it allowed you to send musical data
from one device to another such as notes
or controllers controller data going
from a MIDI controller to a hardware
synthesizer however in the mid 80s a
computer based sequencing applications
started to be developed these computer
based sequencers allows us to program
and compose musical information and
store that musical information on a
computer rather than having to do it in
real time or with a hardware device and
then what you can do is you can take
that stored MIDI data on your computer
and you could send it out to a hardware
synthesizer one of those early software
sequencers from the mid 80s was actually
called was
creator and this is actually a
predecessor to logic crater was
developed by a German company called C
lab and was available on the Atari ST
system they added they eventually added
music notation functionality to it and
then they changed the name to notate ur
now in 1993 some of the Sealab
programmers left the company to develop
a new program which was called note ater
logic and it was developed from
basically the the note ater creator
platform and they started their own
company a new company called a magic now
later in the 90s the name note ater
logic was shortened just logic and
eventually audio recording and editing
functionality was added and then later
on in 2002 a magic was purchased by
Apple and the underlying programming for
logic was used to create Apple's free
music app that we all know garage band
while logic has basically been
maintained as a pro app ever since keep
in mind that back in the 80s software
synthesizers were pretty much
non-existent and even in the 90s
hardware since were still more prevalent
it really wasn't until the 2000s in the
late 90s or software synthesizers really
took over as the main type of
synthesizer used in studio applications
however some people still prefer to use
their hardware since I have a few myself
that I like to use from time to time so
not only does logic have a great
selection of stock software synths
especially for the $200 price tag but it
also has the ability to send messages
out to hardware since you can get the
best of both worlds and you can do that
via a MIDI connector of five pits called
a 5-pin din connector or like a USB
connector or another connector like
firewire or even Thunderbolt so at this
point in the video I'm just going to
give you a basic introduction on how to
start working with MIDI and we'll go
over most of them they learn more
advanced functions in later videos the
first thing we want to do is we want to
make sure that our connected MIDI
controller is being recognized by our
Mack if the computer doesn't see that
your MIDI controller is connected logic
isn't going to see it either so the way
you check this is you go up to your
spotlight up here it's the little
magnifying glass thing and what the
spotlight does is it lets us search for
files on the computer and search for
apps on the computer and things like
that without having to go search through
other folders so I'm going to do is I'm
going to search audio MIDI and we'll
eventually see this that says audio MIDI
setup so we're going to click on that
and basically what the audio MIDI setup
is is it's a it's a utility that allows
us to see connected audio and MIDI
devices now for mine it didn't the
window didn't pop up but usually what
will happen is this window will pop up
your audio devices window we don't want
that we want the MIDI devices so the way
you view the MIDI device is you just go
to window and go to show MIDI window and
here's our MIDI window so I'm just going
to close out the audio window so as you
can see here I have three different MIDI
devices shown the ones that are kind of
grayed out here and here are ones that
work devices that were connected at some
point in time but they are now
disconnected or not being recognized and
this device the CM e UF MIDI device this
is a 88-key MIDI controller keyboard
controller that I've connected via USB
cable so if your device isn't showing up
here and mine is if yours isn't showing
up here usually there's what's one of
two things one of two problems the first
is that you if it's not showing up you
probably don't have the proper and
drivers installed for the device some
devices you can just plug it in and
it'll work right out of the box others
you'll have to install the right MIDI
drivers for the device
my CI me keyboard is pretty old it's
from like 2000 to 2003 and I had to go
to the cme website to download the
drivers so if you have that if you don't
see your MIDI controller here first
thing to do is go to the manufacturers
website download the correct drivers
install them and then restart the
computer in and then check your your
audio MIDI setup one more time to see
that it's there if that doesn't do it
the second thing is that sometimes you
can have the most current driver
installed but the device is still not
shown this usually means that the
company that develops your MIDI
controller does not have the the correct
driver available yet for the operating
system that you're working on this is
one of the main reasons why most audio
pros always stay one version behind on
their OS although OS X 10.9 Mavericks
came out earlier this year I'm still
actually running Mountain Lion because
some of my devices and software aren't
fully compatible with Mavericks yet one
of the big issues with mac OS X was that
when they went from Snow Leopard which
is ten point six to Lion which is ten
point seven
they went from 32-bit to 64-bit some
companies never actually develop 64-bit
drivers for their older devices so this
caused some external devices including
MIDI controllers and audio interfaces to
be obsolete there is a bit of a
workaround for this though you can
actually hold down 3 & 2 on your
keyboard and restart your what while
restarting your Mac and it'll restart
the Mac in 32-bit mode I had to use this
workaround for my old Alesi interface
until they created a 64-bit driver for
it ok now that we know that our MIDI
controller is being recognized by our
Mac logic 2 should be able to receive
messages from it so let's go back to
logic and we are going to create a
software instrument here a software
instrument track is a track that can
receive a MIDI input and output an audio
signal so these are the main types of
tracks you're going to want to use when
you're using software synthesizers
external MIDI tracks input and output
MIDI signals so these are primarily
used to send MIDI messages to external
hardware sense or maybe to rewire MIDI
data to another application such as
Ableton Live or reason so you're not
going to be able to put an instrument on
an external midi track at least not a
software instrument so we're going to
use a software instrument track and by
the way we'll come back to external midi
tracks later for now let's just create
one software instrument track now
another thing to keep in mind here
before hitting create is that if you
check open library here if this is
checked it's actually going to by
default create it's going to open up the
media library here but that's all our
the instrument library here but it's
also going to automatically create a
electric piano on that instrument so
it's a quick way to just open it up and
test out your MIDI keyboard so I'm just
going to arm the track and let's see if
we're getting sound yep so sure enough
we are getting sound if you don't want
to start with an electric piano every
single time what you can do is go back
and create a new track by clicking right
here or you can use the key command
option command N and then make sure that
open library is unchecked and what that
will do is it'll just create a blank
instrument track and it will have
nothing assigned to it so it's an
instrument track you can arm it you
could it'll receive signal but you won't
actually hear any sound because there's
no instrument on it yet so I'm actually
just going to I'm going to keep both of
these tracks but what I'm going to do on
my electric piano up here is I'm going
to remove this channel strip setting
from it and this preset from it and the
way you do that I'm just going to go
ahead and close out my library here the
way you do that is you go over to your
channel strip here go to the very top
tab here this is your channel strip
setting tab click and hold on it and go
down to reset channel strip and now we
have just a blank a blank slate to work
with okay you can use the library to
choose preset instruments most of these
are just you know preset channel strip
settings like I said before
if you don't know what a channel strip
setting is it's basically just a
combination of a synthesizer plus all of
its effects I prefer not to use the
library because it just opens up an
extra window here on the left that just
takes up more space and by the way the
library and logic 9 was on the right
side and they moved it to the far left
on the inversion 10 so if you're
wondering where that went
it's over here now so okay to test your
MIDI controller let me just choose a
preset from right here net from for now
let's use oh you synthesizer we'll use a
pad and then we'll use crystal rein
let's see what that sounds like close
the library and then arm the track and
it works now another way you can you can
check your to see that logic is
receiving MIDI is if you change your
display up here to the custom view what
you can what you'll see on the right
side of the custom view is this no in No
out what this is is it's your MIDI
monitor if you play your MIDI controller
lodge and logic recognizes the
controller you'll see the values that
you play show up in the know in option
up here now I don't really want to hear
that crystal rain tracks I'm just going
to arm the blank one for now so let me
just zoom in on that and I'll play a
note here I'll just play middle C and
sure enough it says it recognizes that
note when I play it what you're seeing
there is you're seeing the one is the
MIDI Channel you're on C 3 is the pitch
that it is the the pitch and then the
octave in logic middle C is C 3 and then
the 65 or the number appearing to the
right of it is the velocity essentially
how hard did you hit the key or how fast
did you hit the key so the cool thing is
if you play chords it'll actually
analyze the chords for you to so even
down to like seventh chords and other
weird core
so it's kind of like a you know it's not
really cheating but it's a quick way to
kind of see what chord you're playing if
you're not sure what you're playing so
so there you go okay
so I'm going to go ahead and reset this
channel strip do the same way we did
before it's now we've got two blank
instruments the way I like to choose
instruments is you click on click on the
track go to channel strip setting go
down to and by the way all these ones
that you're seeing here these are all
ones that I've made so these will be all
though like you're kind of your custom
presets we'll talk about how to make
custom presets later but most people if
you upgrade from Logic 9 you'll see this
legacy tab and you'll be able to go in
here and find any of the logic 9
instruments so let's say I want logic
synthesizers synth strings and I'll use
this one called Mayday generation it's
kind of a nice sweeping pad
and there we go if you don't have if you
haven't if you didn't upgrade from logic
9 or you're not seeing this legacy tab
down here
I believe the workaround is to go ahead
and use the library logic 10 has some
new instruments and presets and these
are all stored in the library as opposed
to the channel stripped tab but you
should see all of these different
presets these channel strip settings in
the library even if you don't see the
legacy folder down here so that's that
okay so I've chosen a kind of a synth
pad the next thing I want to do is I'm
going to create kind of a drum
instrument down here and instead of
using a channel strip setting which
again if I didn't say this before it's a
combination of the instrument and all
the effects added to the instrument I'm
going to just create a drum instrument
without using a channel strip setting so
the way you do that is you go to your
instrument tab right here and you click
on that and you choose what software
instrument you want to add to the track
now there's a whole bunch of them logic
has pretty much one of the most
impressive stock set of instruments that
you'll find especially for the price tag
and then if you're if you have any like
third-party stuff they'll usually be
down here under au instruments so like
I've got some some Native Instruments
stuff down here there's some more Apple
stuff here as well so if you have third
party and since they'll usually be down
there so I'm going to use the instrument
that's called ultra beat it is a drum
synthesizer and we'll go a little more
into ultra beat later and then most of
the sense allow you to load them in
stereo mono multi output sometimes
surround sound as well so let's just
load ultra beat and stereo and what will
happen is the ultra beat plug-in will
just show up now if you have the plug-in
window closed out and you want to open
it up again all you have to do is just
click on the tab in the instrument tab
here and it'll pull it up we can even do
that for our channel strip setting up
here you can see that the instrument is
the exs24 you just click on that and it
pulls it up in
is the instrument so that's how you can
actually open up the synthesizer window
let me just rename this track to say
ultra beat there we go
okay now ultra beat again this video is
not a not a ultra beat tutorial it's
just I want to get some quick music in
here what I'm going to do with ultra
beat is within the ultra beat window we
can choose presets from right up here so
each of logic synthesizers and each of
its effects plugins have this menu up
there where you can choose built-in
presets so let me just choose a drum kit
let's try dubsmash sure we'll use that
one what I'm going to do is I'm going to
use ultra beats built-in pattern
generator function and you can get to
that that's just a step sequencer as all
it is you can get to that by going down
to full view and then you see the step
sequencer and you can play that preset
sequence by pressing play right here
all right now most of ultra beats
presets come with multiple patterns that
you can choose from right here let me
try a different one let's try pattern
number one okay I'm going to use that
one because a lot simpler
what I'm going to do now is I'm going to
go down here where it says pattern and
just to the right of that there's a
button if you hover over that it says
drag to arrange window so what you can
do is you can just pull this pattern out
here and it automatically creates a MIDI
region for us that contains a MIDI
region version a copy essentially of
this pattern up here
so what I'm going to do now is in ultra
beat turn off the sequencer here if you
don't turn that off you'll actually hear
this sequence plus this one at the same
time and it will continue to play even
though the region even if the region
stops so now I can close out my ultra
beat window hover over the upper right
corner just to loop this out a bit I'll
loop it out four times and I'm just
going to start it on start the whole
thing here on measure 2 instead of
measure one just to give myself a little
space okay so now I've got this drum
pattern out here what I'm going to do
next is I'm going to record with just
some chords of my made a generation
instrument go ahead and pull the volume
down just a little bit on that and let's
give this a shot now to record MIDI it's
basically the same as recording audio
you hit R to record or you can hit the
record button up here in the transport
so I'm just going to play in a few
chords
and there we go one of the things that
we can do with MIDI that we can't really
do as easily with audio is we can very
very easily go in and edit the the
individual notes that we played in our
recording we can do things like quantize
or we can do rhythmic corrections we can
change pitch we can change the length of
notes we'll go over some of the more
some of the other editing functions in a
later video but I do want to show you
how to just kind of get into a MIDI
region and just do some basic editing on
the notes so what I'm going to do for
now is what I'm going to do is double
click on this MIDI region to open it up
in the piano roll editor and the piano
roll editor shows up down here the piano
roll editor is essentially a matrix
style editor that lets you see piano on
the left and then time left and right so
basically pitch is vertical and times
horizontal there's also a score editor
there's a step editor as well these
we'll come back to in future videos so
for now we'll just use the piano roll
editor the way I actually like the see
piano roll is I like to have it in its
own window so what I'm going to do is
hit command 4 and command 4 opens up the
piano roll editor piano roll used to be
command 6 and logic 9 but if you're
using the the newest key command set for
Logic 10 it's now command 4 and if you
forget that you can always get there
just by going to window open piano roll
so there we go okay now what I'm going
to do is you'll see that the piano roll
editor like all of the editors in logic
it has its own zoom controls it also has
its own edit tools over here so I'm just
going to zoom out a bit so I can see
this and actually some of the the zoom
key commands we talked about earlier
also apply here so if I click on the
background hit Z it'll actually zoom
everything to fit the window now there's
a few mistakes I made here right here
I've got two notes that are overlapping
I want to shorten this upper note so
that they're not overlapping and I also
played AC down here when I wanted it to
Bab so these are two really basic edit
functions that we can do with the
pointer tool so just make sure that your
left-click tools set to the pointer tool
the first is we can trim a note just by
hovering over the right corner right
side or left side of a note and just
pull that in and by the way when you
click on a note it plays the note for
you see here the note you're playing if
you want to turn that off you just turn
off this MIDI out button up here it's
green and when it's off when you drag
over a note you won't hear anything
and then this C here needed to be a B so
I need to lower that down a half step
you can actually just click on the note
and drag straight down but there's also
a little short little key command for
this if you hold option and press up or
down you can shift the note up or down
by one step at a time and the other
thing you can do I'm just going to hit
command a to select everything is you
can shift notes or a note or multiple
notes up or down an octave by pressing
shift option up or down so this was kind
of low I played it kind of in the wrong
octave I want it to be one octave higher
so I'm going to do shift shift option up
and then it'll shift it up an octave
alright another thing that we might want
to do here is correct the timing of our
recording if i zoom in you'll see that
pretty much all the notes are slightly
ahead or slightly behind the grid what
we're going to do is we are going to
quantize our note our MIDI notes to snap
to the nearest grid value that's what
quantization is it's essentially the
rhythmic correction of notes now we'll
go pretty deep into quantization later
but for now we're going to do is I'm
just going to quantize to a really basic
value and someone asked in one of the
previous videos hey you know how do I
know what quantization value to use for
my music well there's really no way to
tell other than understanding your here
own music and having a little bit of
rhythmic and music theory knowledge so
if you don't understand rhythm you're
basically just playing a guessing game
as to what as to what value to quantize
your music to I just happen to know here
that my shortest and you always
always quantized to your shortest value
so I know what my shortest value here
was a half note so I'm just going to hit
command a to select all go over to time
quantize here and I'm going to choose a
half note
now there's other things in here like
triplet values swing values we'll come
back to those later and hopefully I can
answer some of your questions in a later
video on quantizing so for now just to
kind of stick to this top this top area
here so I'm going to choose half note
and you'll see all of the notes now snap
to their nearest half note okay so
that's all fine there let me just close
that out in the very first episode I
also showed you that you can quantize an
entire region of music to one value by
just going over to or by opening up your
inspector going to the region parameters
and going to quantize there's no need to
do both ways if you quantize in piano
roll that's fine or if you quantize out
here that's fine one or the other works
so let's see what this sounds like and
see if everything sounds ok
you
all right that's not it okay but I I
think the keyboards a little too high
I'll pull that down and what I'm going
to do is I'm going to actually remove
this delay effect on the track and so
way you can do that is you can just turn
it off by clicking here or you can just
click on the right side and choose no
plug-in and instead of delay you know I
think I want a reverb plug-in so I'm
going to go to reverb we use space
designer add a bit of just add a preset
from up here just so let's use a plate
reverb will use a sure we'll try this
one by the way this is I was talking
about before pretty much all of logics
plugins and synthesizers have a presets
menu up here that you can choose from so
even if you don't know how to use the
plug-in the plugin properly you can
still use the presets and use that kind
of as a starting point now let's say I
want to use this because I customized
the instrument now I'm not changing the
way that preset is stored on the
computer I've just created my own
instrument now what if I want to store
this for later and save this instrument
for later what you can do is you can go
to the top the top tab here click and
hold and go down to save channel strip
setting as and what you can do is type
in the name that you want this to be
called so I'm just going to call this
I'll call it Josh's custom strings there
we go and now when you click on that top
tab and scroll down you'll see that
instruments show up in your channel
strip settings here along with my other
custom instruments that I've made by the
way you can also create folders here as
well if I do go back to save channel
strip setting as you can say new folder
I'll just say I'll just call it new
folder for now and you can save the
instrument inside that folder so you can
kind of categorize your instruments like
I have here I've got them sorted by
instrument type and then it opens up
another menu where you can kind of you
know see see all the instruments in that
folder
now in new folder I have an instrument
called Josh's custom strings so there we
go
so that concludes this introductory
video to MIDI and logic and in the next
several videos we'll start talking about
MIDI editing sequencing programming
quantizing and other more advanced
functions as well so I hope you enjoyed
the video and thanks for watching