To produce a song these days it is generally down with software kept together in what is referred to as a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Logic Pro X is a commonly used example of a DAW.
With Logic Pro X it is useful to ensure it has the latest update though this should happen automatically once the main programme is installed.
Advanced tools should be enabled and all the available sounds downloaded. These are done under the Logic Pro menu in finder and settings => advanced and Sound library => Download all available Sounds (this will be greyed out if you have them all)
To open Logic pro click on the logic pro icon and Logic pro should show in the top left hand corner. Open up the file and click on the top two items to create a new project and the below box should appear
Clicking on the Empty project the following screen will be brought up, click on the desired tab, on this occasion it is the Software Instrument and the open library box is checked by default. If the box is unchecked then the next screenshot is what will open
An empty track, with nothing else showing.
The orange box is the track header and the Classic Electro Piano, is what opens as default, this can be changed in the sound library. The orange arrow points towards the track, which will have music sections known as regions places in them.
The blue box shows the time, bars and the greyed out area (blue arrow 1) is where if clicked on can set a loop so that the play head doesn’t play more than we want it to play. The Blue arrow’s 2 and 3 show the expansion sliders one horizontally and the other vertically.
The red box is the Control bar with a number of icons. Red arrow 1 will open areas to the left (apart for the end icon which opens up a further toolbar underneath the arrow 2 will open areas at the bottom and the arrow three will open areas on the right.
The other icons in the centre are the normal play, stop and record buttons with a window to show timing and other useful items like key. To the right is a metronome. The s mutes everything apart from a highlighted region.
The above screen shot shows the Track Inspector which provides information on the region, the whole track and will provide the available plug ins within Logic Pro, (synths, samplers, equalisers, compressors and other tools to make and manipulate the sound). While on the screenshot it just shows the one item, the e-piano, there can be a number of items here. Also more logic pro options will be available in the drop down menu that will appear if the curser is hovers over the blue e-piano box. The bus items are mainly for the final mix and master as they will connect to an auxiliary track that will be used to polish the final playback.
The above provides us with the sound library, where we can choose whatever we want to play on the track. A region will be automatically set up once something has been recorded in the track. Logic pro once we have chosen the desired sound will provide an appropriate plug-in which can be adjusted or changed if need be. A midi keyboard is required to create the sounds which can either be played from an external midi or the internal mid which can be brough up with Command + k.
The above shows the piano roll which can be brought up with command + p a, also with the icon pointed at with the red arrow. It does have other functions. Piano roll enables us to manipulate any music playing in through a plug in, internal or external or internal, or directly entering the note wanted and then manipulating it.
The above shows the loop library opened by the icon pointed to by the red arrow. This provides a huge number of loop of various instruments and genres. Green and amber can be manipulated in the piano roll but the blue items are much harder to do so. They can also be previewed by pressing the blue, green or amber icons to the left of the sound name.
Creating Music Within Logic Pro
There are three major ways of creating music within Logic Pro. The simplest way is by using the loop library which is accessed as shown in the screenshot above. There are three types of loops available, blue, green, and amber. Blue is the most straightforward as they are not particularly manipulatable. They can be extended and shortened and moved. The sound can be changed but the loop can not.
Green regions in the tracks are created midi loops in the library. These can be changed through the piano-roll, notes added, subtracted, lengthened and shortened. They are basically MIDI loops made for the library.
The highlighted green region Downtempo funk and the piano-roll for it is shown above. The amber loops are also adjustable though different drums and pitches as shown below (Aiden Rip City).
Another way of creating a track region is by using a MIDI which can be either the internal MIDI or an external one. An external MIDI will be much more flexible and may come with extra bundled samples. A MIDI can either work like a keyboard where each key will play a separate note like A B C D E F G or a part of a sampled sound, like the crash of a cymbal being hit and then the subsequent sounds as the noise of the cymbal reverberates. It is useful when a loop can not be located that suits the piece of music being created. Also notes can be directly added into the piano-roll to create a region in a track. This Marimba region below is an example of a MIDI entered region.
In the screenshot above we can clearly see the track inspector and the blue buttons within it give entry to many different samplers and synthesisers like ES2 or Alchemy. Addons likeSylenth1 and Spire with thousands more samples ae available for Logic Pro from third party vendors.
In the above in the track inspector there is an almost flat-line graph which when clicked on produces the below pop-up with which more adjustments to the sound to see it can be made more rich or brighter.
A third way of creating music and sounds within Logic Pro is to add audio directly through a microphone. This would generally be captured as an MP3 to be transferred into Logic Pro. This can be any instrument as long as it is miked up appropriately and once within Logic Pro can be manipulated once in the mix. the final stages are mixing and mastering. see below for the final mix and mastering window. This is accessed via the icon next to the piano-roll icon.
As this is a first look for me at what Logic Pro for me, it has been easy to be distracted by checking out as much sound that I can make through the software as possible.
Reference
Perino, M. (no date) ‘Logic Pro X From Idea to Final Mastering - Marco Perino’, Prosuono.
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