Logic Pro X tutorial in this video I'm
going to break down everything you'll
need to know about Logic Pro X whether
you're a music producer or a
singer-songwriter like myself I'm going
to break this video down into sections
so you can reference the video at a
later time or come back to it whenever
you want whenever you have questions
about Logic Pro X also feel free to
leave them in the comments and I'll be
sure to answer them let's get right into
this video though Logic Pro X tutorial
here are the sections we're going to
cover in this Logic Pro X tutorial we're
going to do a quick lesson on the
general layout and main view of Logic
Pro X we're going to get into the loop
library and all the sounds that Logic
offers we'll talk about how to set up an
audio interface recording with
microphone like your guitar or your
vocals and then we'll get into recording
with MIDI and software instruments how
to use the loop browser and drum
machines well build a song arrangement
from scratch we'll talk about some
helpful shortcuts to make your a session
in Logic Pro X more effective and
efficient and then we'll export our song
Arrangements as an mp3 so we can listen
to it later on just a quick mention I
put a free download link to my Logic Pro
X tutorial session that I'm going to go
through right now and it has this song
arrangement that we'll make - so if you
want to follow along with that you can
download it for free there is a link in
the description so let's get started
with this Logic Pro X tutorial the Logic
Pro X application lives in applications
inside our Mac finder window so let's go
to a Mac Finder window under
applications and reference Logic Pro X
here when we double-click Logic Pro X
we're going to get this window and this
window is just asking us what type of
project we want to start because we're
not getting into the more difficult or
advanced topics of Logic Pro X yet we're
going to keep it simple and just start
an empty project so click empty project
and then the button on the bottom right
here choose the next window we get Logic
Pro X is asking us what type of track we
want to start is it a software
instrument audio drummer external MIDI
guitar or bass to keep it simple we're
just going to start
audiotrack which is already highlighted
in blue for us don't worry about the
audio input and audio output sections
yet we're going to cover out how to do
this in another section so just click at
the bottom right here at create now this
is what a Logic Pro X empty window looks
like and if you have Logic Pro X you've
probably already seen this before let's
just go over a couple of the main icons
just so we can get comfortable with it
just to note here you can reference that
you can see this green bar popping up
left to right that's because I have a
microphone plugged into the computer and
as I talk it's referencing my voice
don't worry about that right now we'll
get into that in a different section
let's talk about some of these main
icons the first icon I want to mention
is this question mark here which is an
information bar and this is super
helpful at the beginning it also can be
quite annoying so you can turn it on on
and off depending on how you feel but
this button is a Help button so if you
hover over anything it's going to give
you a little bit of information to tell
you what it is
for example even this play button or
this metronome here it literally will
give you a bit of information on
anything you're looking for inside Logic
Pro X so I do recommend just to keep
this on for the first few weeks as
you're getting your feet wet with Logic
Pro X just because it's going to give
you a lot of information but yes it can
get annoying because it does put a
little yellow pop-up on everything so
you can turn it on and off as you please
let's do a quick left-to-right pan on
the Logic Pro X window and we'll touch
on all these main icons very quickly
this first is the library icon and this
is where it hosts all the Logic Pro X
preset channels and not to worry too
much about that right now but let's just
give a quick example if I wanted to sing
some songs and record my voice in this
audio channel I could use a preset vocal
that Logic Pro X is giving me to make my
vocal sound better maybe it's a bit more
crisp as a better EQ and I could pick
any of these preset vocals that Logic
Pro offers me bright vocal classic vocal
compressed vocal dance vocal so I don't
have to have much knowledge on how
to compress a vocal or EQ a vocal
because I already have these nice
presets that Logic Pro X gives me so
this is great if you want to do
something quick or you don't really want
to get in too deep on becoming an
engineer yourself the next icon on the
left here is our inspector button when
we click that another window will open
right here this window is a bit more
detailed and I can just click the
library button here just to expand that
in to get a bit more space so as you can
see this yellow thing is going a bit
crazy so I'm just going to poke it off
there now this inspector window gives us
all the information that we need that is
in reference to the track that is
highlighted so we only have one track
here called dance vocal and it's
highlighted and so that means all of
these little blue things are all the
effects that are on this one dance vocal
so remember when we were in library
let's go back to library and let's just
change it our dance vocal to a classic
vocal you'll notice that these blue
things have changed keep your eye on
them again and I'll change it to bright
vocal they're changing again because
they're in reference now to bright vocal
and so don't worry too much about these
and what they do you can click on them
and see that each little effect here has
their different things going on don't
get too overwhelmed right now let's go
back to a simple just straight audio
vocal with no effects and how we'll do
that is you just want to go up to right
here where it says bright vocal and
we'll go down to reset channel strip now
we're on a vocal with no effects as you
can see in our inspector window no
effects all it has now is an audio tab
that we can go up and down and you can
see that right over here this is also
going left and right when I put this
volume tab going up and down so it has
our volume tat of the audio coming in
the volume tab of the audio going out
stereo out oops stereo out and that's
all we really need to know for the
inspector window right now let's click
these two off to make some more space
here we have our question mark
information bar and here we have our
toolbar menu this just goes up and down
here with
extra toolbars that could be valued to
you when you get it a little bit more in
the advanced sections of Logic Pro X
here we have the smart controls button
this will pop up a window at the bottom
and will give us information on the
track we have our mixer window this
pulls up a big window from the bottom
and gives us a big view of all the
tracks that we have inside our project
and then we can just put up the volumes
up and down to mix the track and also we
can go to the effects on each track and
tune those as needed
let's click the mixer off here we have
an editor's button and this is going to
pull up a window from the bottom as well
and this is where we can do some quick
cutting and copying and pasting of the
track and we get a nice zoom in view of
that here's a simple fast or sorry
rewind fast forward stop play record
button and a cycle button this button is
quite useful
when we want to loop tracks and hear
them over and over again I'll get into
this a bit later here we have our main
project window and I usually like to go
the drop down here and do a beats
project large this is something simple
and not too much to worry about now
a good thing to note though is the tempo
and then right now our tempo is at 120
we can double click on this and change
your tempo to 90 if we want a slower
song changing the song tempo is really
helpful when we start working with drum
tracks and loop browsers and I'll get
into this in a later section let's get
into the next three icons quickly
replace button tuner and solo tracks I'm
going to skip over these because you
probably won't need to use them very
much and I'll show you a better way to
do them later on counting and metronome
these two buttons are very helpful when
you start recording because it will help
you be able to count in so you know when
to start playing your guitar for example
also the metronome button when you have
it on and it's purple that means you'll
be able to hear the click metronome in
your headphones when you're recording
obviously the master volume slider which
is a great tool but you can also raise
and lower at the master volume on your
audio interface or your computer as well
next few icons is a list editors button
not a very important icon just for
beginners notes and I think this is
really great for songwriters because you
can start writing your lyrics on the
side here songwriting session next icon
is loop browser now
is really great because Logic Pro X
comes with hundreds of loops that you
can use to start writing songs or start
making music right away so example we
have this 12 bar blues bass and you can
go up to the top instrument genre
descriptors to find loops that are right
for you we're gonna get into more of
this later and the last icon is
obviously your media and files and
project space or if you want to upload
other audio from GarageBand or iTunes
for example and put that into your Logic
Pro X session and so that's the last
icon we're going to click the
information bar off here and before we
go on we're going to want to save our
project talk a bit about the settings
and then let's get into the further
sections of the video so to save our
project we're gonna click command S on
our Mac we're going to save this as
Logic Pro X tutorial YouTube save and so
the last thing we want to talk about is
under settings and we can quickly go to
settings at the top under Logic Pro X
preferences or we can also click command
, on our keyboard and this will bring up
settings I don't want to talk about all
these settings because now we're
starting to get into the more advanced
topics of Logic Pro X but the things I
do want to mention are the output device
and the input device and so the output
device is where the sound is coming out
of your computer and the input device is
where your sound is coming in and so if
you have an audio interface and you
plugged it into your computer it will
show up here for example my audio
interface is the apogee 1 V 2 and so my
1 V 2 is the input and my output device
is my built-in
output because I have my headphones
plugged directly into my computer right
now
some other popular interfaces are the
scarlett for example so for example if
you have a red scarlet and you've
plugged it into your computer it should
say scarlett here and sometimes your
output device will be your scarlet as
well because you could have your
headphones plugged into your scarlet or
you could have a pair of big studio
monitors and that could be your output
device so you have to ask yourself
where's the sound coming in from is it
coming in from your studio microphone
and where's the sound coming out from
this is coming up from your headphones
or your studio monitors the i/o buffer
size I briefly want to mention on and
don't worry too much about this it's
really more important as you become a
more advanced in Logic Pro X
but really this is the buffer size and
the standard buffer size that logic
products gives you is 128 so you can see
with 128 selected we have eleven point
four millisecond round trip and you can
see if we if we move this down to 32 now
it's a 7.0 millisecond trip now if we
bump this up to 1024 it's a 52 bill and
second trip so the higher we go the
longer the latency will be so if we're
recording vocals for example we want a
low latency because latency means the
amount of time it takes my vocal signal
to get into the microphone and to start
recording on Logic Pro X so we don't
want a long latency because then we
won't be able to hear ourselves as well
if we want to hear ourselves inside our
headphones don't worry about that too
much but one thing to understand is the
lower you go in buffer size the harder
it is on your computer because you're
asking your computer to do more work so
a good average is 128 I'm going to go
down here and click apply changes and
then X settings window great now we're
ready to make some music so let's get
into the second section of this Logic
Pro X tutorial where we talk about loop
sounds and the Logic Pro X sounds and it
briefly mentioned this already but in
this top right icon we have this loop
browser and so here we can browse all
the sounds that Logic Pro X offers us
and Logic Pro X gives you hundreds of
sounds so we can quickly filter by genre
let's say we're interested in modern R&B
so right away we get all these loops
here that are modern R&B and let's say
we just want an instrument well actually
I'm actually just looking for bass so
let's click bass here so for simplicity
sake let's just use this one at the top
I'm going to click and then drag right
over to our session and let go it's
going to say the added audio file
contains tempo information do you want
to import this into the project you know
what that's fine we can also import that
and you can see our tempo was 90 but now
it's 129 and if we actually wanted to go
back to 90 we can go double click here
go back to 90 and it's going to change
the tempo of the audio track that was
given to us throughout the video as well
I'm going to mention some
shortcuts here and there but I'm also
going to put all these shortcuts in
their own section at the end of the
video so we can have them all in one
place if you want to reference them at a
later date for example we can hit
spacebar right now to quickly hear what
this sounds like so not so great but you
know we're starting to make some
progress we can also zoom in easily if
you have a trackpad by doing the typical
zoom or you can just go at the top right
here and slide this to zoom in or zoom
out so after I listen let's see we
didn't like that all we have to do is
click in and press the backspace button
and then we've deleted that track and we
can go over to the loop browser and
start clicking loops so I'm just going
to go quickly through some of them now
see which ones I like and then I'm going
to paste them into our session
[Music]
now remember we also filtered just base
at the top so if we don't want base at
all we can click out of base and let's
say we just want piano let's go piano
let's choose breathless piano it's quite
nice so I'm going to click that and
paste it into our session for this time
let's not import tempo let's keep it at
90 so now we have our loop browser kind
of awkwardly in this middle here we can
click on it and drag it anywhere as we
please alternatively we can click on it
and click semicolon and that will bring
the track to where the cursor is a quick
way to do this if I go back whenever we
press ENTER the cursor will go back to
position number 1 this is a really nice
quick shortcut so if you press Enter
we'll go back to play head for number 1
and then then if you press Enter
semicolon the track will go to 1 so
that's a great quick shortcut that I use
a lot to get everything back to position
1 so let's have a listen to this kind of
sounds a bit creepy a bit eerie and if
we don't like it we can always go to the
side here and find other tracks that we
might want to add in but for simplicity
of the video I'm going to keep that
there and then I'm gonna go look for a
drum loop so what I'm gonna do to want
to get to drum loops is I'm gonna want
to go back to all genres and then I'm
going to want to go to all drums so here
inside of all drums you can see I have
tons of available loops and I can play
through a few so you can see what I mean
and then if I keep scrolling I have some
in yellow here than some more in blue
some more in yellow so what does that
mean basically the ones in blue means
they're actually audio files which looks
like the one we have in our project here
and then the ones in yellow are actually
drum files and we can change those a
little bit and I'll show you how to do
that now so let's say we want to start
building our song and let's say we like
this one down here
eight inverse so I'm going to
click-and-drag
inverse into our project and as you can
see it's already created a new track for
me called Portland Aiden but if I go
back to the right here and I look at
Aiden verse the tempo to this track was
100 and as I pasted it into my session
here the tempo has automatically changed
to 90 so if I press ENTER to get the
playhead cursor back to position 1 and
play through it will all be synced up
nicely because the tempo is at 90 and
everything is automatically snapped to
the tempo of 90 so let's have a listen
[Music]
great that sounds actually pretty cool
well you'll notice is the drums keep
going and our breathless piano here
stops so there's a couple things we can
do we can either loop the breathless
piano to match the length of the drums
or we can shorten the amount of drums
and in this case I'm actually going to
just loop the breathless piano and so if
I hover over the top right you'll see
this little arrow circle and I'm gonna
click that and drag it and it's gonna
snap to the end of position 9 then I can
drag my cursor anywhere I want press
spacebar hear it out so it sounds pretty
good so let's say I want to change a
little bit of the dynamics of the drums
for this breathless piano I don't
actually have much availability to
change that because it's an audio file
but as I was saying these yellow files
you do have the option to change but the
dynamics and that's the flexibility of
Logic Pro X and one of the big benefits
especially for songwriters and producers
that want to change the dynamics of
preset drums so let's click into the
drums and you'll notice the bottom has
changed and it has this little grid here
simple loud complex soft and we can
actually see a drum set we're gonna have
to click this icon to make total space
so now it's a bit cleaner and you can
see I have all these options of beat
presets on the left
and then I can click and drag this big
yellow thing to make the drums more
complex and loud or I can go down here
to make it more complex and soft or over
here to make it simple and soft and
you'll notice if I leave it down here
look at the dynamics of the drums now
look at how much space is between the
beats and the kicks if I go over to
complex and loud look what will change
the signal is louder and there's more
things happening and so let's listen to
that so that is much more complex let's
go down here to simple and soft now
let's take a listen much more simple
much more soft so that's exactly what
this does we can find a nice happy
medium in the middle here but let's say
we're missing something let's see we
want to clap well we simply press this
clap let's say we want a tambourine it's
as simple as adding tambourine I do like
a clap so let's click clap and see what
that sounds like
[Music]
so that's sounding pretty groovy
we can also add these cymbals we can add
toms we can change the style of Tom hits
we can also change the style of kick and
snare hits so you can get quite custom
into how you want your drums to sound
without being a drummer by just clicking
and seeing these different patterns that
you like and then having a listen to see
what it sounds like so that's kind of
sounding a bit jungly so I'm going to
add the high hats back I can do a
different pattern may be a pattern 3 on
kick and snare
that's turn to sound more groovy so I
like that so now that we got our drum
track in place in a breathless piano
that we kind of like you can go you can
extend this quite far and you can bring
as many loops as you'd like to into this
project you never even have to play an
instrument to make a song we can always
be going to the top right of each track
and hovering to make these tracks longer
or shorter
for example this as well and if we want
to add more loops we just go to the top
loop browser and let's say we want to
add some since well let's say we want to
add some acoustic guitar you know it's
as simple as that I'm gonna add some
vibes let's just launch fives what does
that sound like well we just click and
drag it's going to automatically change
to our tempo of 90 let's have a play and
see what this sounds like obviously this
is starting to sound a bit outrageous so
if we don't like that let's just double
click hit backspace ok let's go back to
here and let's say actually you know we
want some bass I want some bass and
let's say this subsonic bass is in the
key of F sharp well our key is an E
minor so that's not really going to work
for us we want to find some key in E
minor so we can go here and we can type
press key and that's going to filter our
keys for us alphabetically and so we can
go scroll down to E and we can scroll
through bass that might work for our
track and part of the fun is going
through a lot of these loops and seeing
what might fit free track and sometimes
it does take a long time so I'm not
going to go through all these but let's
just say we want this agile funk bass
let's click and drag that in you'll
notice it's all quite shorter I'm going
to zoom in and I'm gonna do our little
shortcut I'm gonna press enter and then
semicolon that's gonna flip our track
right to the beginning let's see what
that sounds like
[Music]
kind of cool right let's loop this to
the end let's press ENTER to get back to
one and let's have another play and then
we're actually starting to build a song
and if you want to do these quick mix
things you can do that as well and
that's just a little tidbit that I like
to do while I'm building a song as you
can see all these volumes here are the
same and so typically we want our bass
not to be so loud so I'm going to lower
this a little bit you know it drums
might just be a little lower and I'm
gonna put the piano quite low like this
let's hear it that sounds like maybe the
basis yeah the bass could probably be a
bit louder because it's kind of quite
intense and upfront and I like that but
I'm not going to get into mix
engineering so much that is basically
the section of loop browsers and how you
can build a track without really playing
anything and you can go and add more
loops of more different types of
instruments and build your track from
there but that's it for this section the
next section I'm going to show you how
to add guitar real guitar and real
vocals to this track we're building so
we can take it even further so let's
move on to section 3 of this video which
is setting up an audio interface and in
brief you need an audio interface to use
a microphone like this one and to record
good audio vocals if you're going to
record an acoustic guitar if you're
gonna record anything out of a good
microphone you need an audio interface
and what an audio interface does is
basically it takes the audio signal and
converts it digitally so you can
actually record inside something like
Logic Pro X hopefully for the purpose of
this video you do have an audio
interface for me I'm using a very basic
simple audio interface it's called the
apogee one so how do you set up an audio
interface so we're going to need to
connect our audio interface to our
laptop or computer and you can do that
through USB so plug it into your
computer right away Logic Pro X is smart
enough to notice that there is an
do you interface connected to your
computer so like we briefly did mention
at the beginning we can go to Logic Pro
X preferences or we can type in command
comma to bring up our audio preferences
and so when you plug in your audio
interface to Logic Pro X it should
identify inside this drop-down for
example my apogee 1v2 is noticed and it
is my input device right now if you have
a Scarlett
Pro or something else the name that
audio interface will be here now you
want to do is click on that name and
that means whatever is plugged into the
inputs of the audio interface will be
coming out so you then you want to go
and plug in a microphone to your audio
interface your output device will be
likely your studio monitors or your
headphones in my case isn't the USB PNP
audio device which are my studio
monitors ok the audio interface is set
up the next thing that we're gonna want
to do is plug in our microphone to our
audio interface and we do that using an
XLR cable so we have our microphone we
have our XLR cable and we have our audio
interface we're gonna want to plug one
into the microphone and then one into
the audio interface and then we'll be
able to start recording inside Logic Pro
X with our microphone ok so now we're
back inside our Logic Pro X session and
so we now we want to start recording a
audio whether it's an acoustic guitar or
vocals and so how do we want to get that
track is we want to go up to the top
here where it says track and new tracks
you can either click new tracks or we
can simply you see below here it says
new audio track and because we actually
know we want an audio track we can click
audio track and that's made a new audio
track called audio 3 for us and in order
for us to record and want to arm this
track by putting by pressing R and now
we can start recording right away either
pressing this red button here at the top
or we can press R on our keyboard before
we record I don't want to hear the other
tracks in place so I'm going to press M
here to mute all the other tracks and
now I'm quickly just gonna want to
record a quick example of me talking so
I'm gonna press R on my keyboard and now
I'm seeing a few words and the signal is
coming up
I know I'm actually recording so cool
now if we go back and hear what that
sounds like and then I'm seeing a few
words and the signal is coming up and
now I know I'm actually recorded cool so
now I know that I can start recording
vocals if I have my lyrics ready and I
want to do a take right away what I can
do now is highlight this press backspace
to delete it it's going to ask me if it
wants to keep a file referenced in their
artists entries to the right or if it
wants if I want to delete this
permanently and for me because I'll
likely never want to use that again I'm
just going to leave this permanently
press ok then let's say I want to start
recording vocals right away and I'm
ready and I want to hear the other
tracks in place well I can unmute the
other tracks and I want to make sure the
sound is coming out of my headphones
instead of my studio monitors if I'm
gonna want to hear the other tracks for
example if I start recording audio right
now where the other tracks are coming
out of my studio monitors it's gonna
sound pretty bad for example see the
sound of my studio monitors is picking
up in my microphone and I don't want
that so how I'm gonna fix that is in
quickly gonna delete this
I'm gonna go back to my audio
preferences and I'm gonna change the
output to my built-in
output which are coming out of my
headphones now apply those changes I'm
going to X here and then I'm gonna
record again and now the sound is coming
out of my headphones and a microphone is
only picking up the volume coming from a
voice so I'm going to show you a couple
of ways that you can troubleshoot if
your audio is not coming through your
microphone so obviously first off make
sure that's plugged into your audio
interfaces that it's plugged into your
microphone a couple issues could be that
you're not having the right input setup
so let's click this inspector window
here and we're gonna want to go to this
section where it says input you want to
make sure the input you put on your
audio interface that that number
corresponds to this number so if you put
your XLR cable into the input number 2
into your audio interface then you
wouldn't want to make this input number
2
if you put it into number one then you
wouldn't want to make this number one
one problem could be if your audio is
not coming through is you put your XLR
into your input number two on your audio
interface and it says input number one
here so that could be one issue that
you're going to resolve quickly by just
checking the inputs another issue could
be that your gain level is just too low
on your audio interface so what I mean
by that is every audio interface has a
gain knob where you can increase the
amount of signal that you're getting
from your condenser microphone so if you
don't have enough signal then sometimes
the microphone is not picking up any
sound at all and I'll give you a quick
example so let's say I start recording a
vocal here I'm going to arm the channel
on audio number three and now my vocal
is coming through I'm going to meet the
other channels right now and I'm going
to press R on my keyboard of record so
now the signal is coming through and you
can see I'm talking and the vocal is
coming through my microphone but if I go
over to my audio interface here and I
turn the gain knob all the way down
let's still talk I'm still talking I'm
still talking and now I'm not getting
any signal from my vocal but it's still
connected and I've got my inputs and
everything's right so let me just clean
slowly turn up the gain knob and as I
continue to talk the vocal will start
coming in checking checking checking
vocal taking a bit of time now it's
coming in and continuing to raise it now
it's getting quite loud and now it's
starting to peak and this is bad I mean
it's not bad but you don't want it to be
this intense because it's actually
coming in too hot
and you can see on the left side here
it's starting to yellow so you want to
find that sweet spot where it is around
I'd like to record it around negative
eight so you have enough Headroom that's
a good volume that I like to record at
so I do think recording vocals around
negative eight DB just to have enough a
Headroom is good for your vocal
recording so you can increase it later
if you need to don't worry too much
about DBS and level of recordings the
most important thing is that you're
getting signal from your micro
from and that you don't want it to be
yellow or red so as I'm talking you can
see it's negative 8 it's green and that
means it's getting enough signal for the
microphone but not too much and so
that's exactly where we want that to be
so that's how to record vocals and how
you set up the audio interface with your
microphone in Logic Pro X let's quickly
show you how to set up an acoustic
guitar and with Logic Pro X and how to
record guitar so now I'm going to
highlight this delete this and use the
same channel to record like an acoustic
guitar audio so delete this and you go
back to the beginning and now I'm going
to change this input to input number 2
because that's where my guitar input is
and I can right away because I just
changed that input I can start playing
my acoustic guitar which I can grab it
right now here so I have my acoustic
guitar I can press our start recording
my acoustic guitar so as you can see it
starts recording and stop picking at my
vocal anymore which is great which means
I have my inputs correctly I can start
strumming my guitar
make sure my volume is up on my acoustic
guitar
and make sure the gain is up on the
audio interface increase the gain a bit
more and there comes the acoustic guitar
so let's get into section 5 of the video
where we're gonna talk about software
instruments and recording MIDI and this
is probably the biggest value of any
digital audio workstation especially
Logic Pro X if you're a music producer
or a singer-songwriter well we'll talk
about how to record MIDI how to quantize
MIDI how to use it with other loop
browsers and and drum loops to build a
song arrangement let's get right into
that what we're gonna want to do first
is add a new track and to do that we can
go right at the top and add new track we
see new software instrument track I also
want to point out right here we have a
little shortcut it's called option
command s and that's actually how we can
add a new software instrument track as
well and I just point this out because
this is how I learned all my shortcuts
as they point them out everywhere I
recommend looking into the shortcuts
especially if you're doing tasks over
and over again it will save you time so
let's just do that now option command s
to add a new software instrument track
and you can see we've added a track here
so in our inspector window we have open
here click open great we have alchemy as
our main software instrument that we've
added this is just a default software
instrument that Logic Pro X gives you
and you do have the option to change
this so let's look at changing this if
we want a different instrument right now
alchemy is a synth so whatever we're
going to play on a MIDI keyboard we're
gonna get the synth sounds so let's look
at adding a different instrument when we
hover over alchemy you can see these
little two arrows we're gonna want to
click that and we can see all the
different software instruments that
Logic Pro has a stock plugins that we
can get so we have alchemy drum kit
designer sint all these since es 1 ES 2
synths an EVOC all these a lot a lot of
options I'm going to do the standard
alchemy as we have because it is a
standard ecent stock plug-in to use and
so I'm gonna have this stereo and well
we'll use alchemy as
standard synth so inside each software
instrument you have hundreds of
different sounds available for example
if we click in the middle of alchemy
we're gonna pull up a window of all the
sounds available to us under the alchemy
synth and so we can we can filter here
by category and subcategory and then we
have all the synth sounds on the right
here if I scroll down you can see there
are hundreds and so there's just way too
many to go through right now so I'm
gonna do a simple filter
I'm gonna go keys piano and pop so right
now I filtered there's much less there's
28 here that I can that I can filter by
so 80s digital piano is good enough and
I have my MIDI keyboard plugged in here
and I'm gonna can test out what that
sounds like
[Music]
so kind of cool and if you have your
MIDI keyboard plugged in it should also
be working just like mine is working now
if you don't have it plug it in by USB
and Logic Pro X will recognize that it's
a MIDI keyboard and you should be able
to get up and running without a problem
so let's say we do want to record with a
DS digital piano then all we have to do
is close this down you can see that it's
reference Eadie's digital piano here i
can arm my track I can put the cursor
wherever I'd like to start recording I
have the other tracks muted now I can
keep those muted let's just start
recording some notes just to see them
come through
[Music]
just a simple example and I can zoom in
here by pinching my trackpad and I can
also go up to the top right and I can
make these tracks fatter if I want them
to be just so I can get a better image
of what I just recorded but I want to
pull up the smart controls here I'm
going to click on a E's digital piano
and you can see that this has come up
this is the same thing of pressing the
scissors in the top left here so I can
press the scissors or I can just double
click on the track where I'm going to
pull this up so we can see it a little
better and zoom in here so this is what
I've just recorded and I just want to
hear it back separately I always have
the option to press s and what s does is
it solos the track and it will only play
out of all my tracks just the one that
have the s is on so I'm going to solo
this track and see what it sounds like
[Music]
so cool I mean terrible composition but
you see what I mean and so I have the
option here to do whatever I want with
these MIDI notes I can click a MIDI note
drag it anywhere I want I can extend the
mini note I can delete the MIDI note I
can bring it back if I want so you get
you see what I mean MIDI gives you the
flexibility of basically drawing musical
notes so if you made a mistake you can
if you had actually played the note here
you just move it back instead of
actually having to play the whole
composition again so the biggest
powerful tool with MIDI is quantization
and so if I didn't play this in time
which you can see I haven't because this
note for example here does not fall on
the grid and that would be locked in
time if everything's on the grid and
that's the great thing about MIDI is you
can lock in everything after the fact
you don't have to play everything in
time just remember when we were doing
our browsers if I go back up here and we
were dragging things in from our browser
window from our loop browser everything
was locked in a tower
Tembo of ninety and so now we want to
lock in our MIDI notes as well so let's
write a better composition for our track
and then lock it in with quantization so
now we want to record a better composed
track with our loops that we have so it
sounds a lot better we're gonna mute our
digital 80s digital piano and let's just
have a listen to what our track sounds
like right now kind of groovy right it's
still basic very much in the early
stages of the creativity of our song but
it's worth pursuing a little bit to see
how far we can get with this and I think
that goes with a lot of music producers
and musicians don't quit at the
beginning obviously nothing is gonna
sound great at the first step so let's
continue with this we're gonna want to
find something better inside our 80s
digital piano and I'll show you after
once we would get the MIDI recording
down then we'll have the option to find
any sound we want using the same MIDI
recording so it doesn't really matter if
we if we don't like the 80s digital
piano sound once we have that MIDI
recording of the right composition we
like then we can change it to no any
sound we actually want in the world
really so let's quickly record a better
MIDI recording using our 80s digital
piano so I want to get rid of this one
by highlighting it deleting it well
unmute the track and we're going to play
along with the recording and it doesn't
matter that the sound is coming out of
my studio monitors because MIDI is only
collecting the digital signal from the
MIDI keyboard so you can see here our
keys in E minor so I'll be playing in
the key of E minor on the keyboard let's
count in at the top here 1 2 3 4 we're
gonna want to count in so I'm not rushed
as soon as I press record that I have to
start playing so I wanted to do a count
in of one bar I do have the options if I
find that I might need some more time to
do up to 6 bars but you really rarely
will ever need that much time so let's
record a 1 bar count in
playing our eighties digital piano so
that's kind of cool I'm gonna work with
that right now let's have a let's put
our cursor back and have a listen back
[Music]
alright so as I was saying before let's
double click this track and bring up the
editor here zoom out just so we can see
what we're working with and let's start
cleaning things up taking things out
moving things back and forth depending
on how we like it but the most important
thing we can do now is quantize and make
sure everything is locked into place
with our drums and our base and our
breathless piano here so what we're
gonna want to do to quantize is by doing
command a or we can do double click
select all which is also command a here
and then we can go over to time quantize
here and go quantize by one sixteenth
note and you can see how everything just
moved over slightly well that's exactly
where we want it in place so you can see
that I was off time and now if i zoom in
you can see just let me go to the
beginning here everything is on the grid
perfectly so everything comes in on beat
to those notes that see note comes in
perfectly sorry that II minor no it
comes in perfectly and then the C note
comes in on beat three we have a little
bit of a note of a triad here which is
nice and they're all landing on the
grids perfectly in time and then we have
back to the E minor you have the option
here if you want to remove this and only
have the beginning we can also loop it
if we want to continue looping and
you'll see that the MIDI has gone
forward and I can go up here
in you to loop my bass continue to look
at my drums and so on and so forth
but right now I'm gonna just keep it all
in the standard little section here what
I like to do sometimes if I am running
low in creativity and I just need to
play over and over again to find some
new ideas you can use the cycle option
which is clicking this bar at the top
will put everything in yellow and that's
just gonna loop everything when it comes
to the end here it will start right at
the beginning so now that we have our
80s digital piano quantized we're
basically ready to start experimenting
with other sounds we can start recording
more MIDI we have a lot of options what
I want to mention now is how to use MIDI
and Logic Pro X to use for other sounds
what I mentioned earlier is we don't
actually have to use this 80s digital
piano sound and over here we can go back
to alchemy and we can open up alchemy by
pressing in the middle again and we can
already choose 80s pop electric piano we
can even go as far as not even choosing
keys anymore and going back to the
category all and going to bass strings
let's try strings for example let's go
strings pop as a category and let's do
this ocean flow and we can click out and
we can see what that sounds like even if
we want to solo this to see what ocean
flow sounds like loop at the top see
what that sounds like
[Music]
kind of cool gives it a cool vibe now
let's take solo off and listen to the
whole track
[Music]
so it's it's you know it's not great but
we're starting to get creative and so if
we don't like that let's go back to
alchemy and choose something different
we could spend hours going through every
little sound here and figuring out what
we want that to sound like going back to
the guitars anything we want we can go
as so far as choosing a completely
different synth instrument if we want
something more acoustic something more
natural we can use the exs24 sampler and
we can go to stereo and this will bring
up a sampler that has acoustic pianos if
we just click this top part here this
little green three green dots we can go
down to all these instruments that this
sampler has one one I really like is the
yamaha grand piano so we choose yamaha a
grand piano let's just X that out and
now we have a Yamaha grand piano well
that's what it sounds like the solo this
easy as that we didn't have to record
anything else and we just have our MIDI
in place so we can try out tons of
different sounds let's say we really
like this Yamaha piano sound right then
we want to leave that in there cool so
let's just make some space by clicking
up this scissors at the top let's make
our tracks a little bit less fat take
out the loop browser and so let's say we
want to leave this yama actually a
little bit more fat just so I can see
some things let's say we want this
Yamaha track in place well let's just
add another software instrument track by
going track software instrument or you
can go option command s another option
to quickly add a track if we want the
same track so we want this Yamaha grand
piano again we can do command D and that
will give us another Yamaha grand piano
so now we have another Yamaha grand
piano and we have another alchemy track
but we want the same MIDI all we have to
do is click this midi command C or edit
copy and then click to where you want to
paste it in what track let's say we want
this down to another alchemy track go
down to our another alchemy track paste
it to where we want the cursor to be so
let's say we want it on the same spot at
beat 2 command V and we will have that
MIDI going there as well so we can solo
this track and start shopping around for
new sounds I want to use a completely
different synth you know I want to use I
want to even design my own sound and
this is something possible as well and
this is the very popular thing with
Logic Pro X is it has decent stock since
that you can use so let's go to back to
the exs24 sampler and right here we can
start using a synth and the oscillators
on a synth to start making our own
sounds so let's just see what this
sounds like right now if we solo it
let's loop at the top just lower the
volume
[Music]
so it doesn't sound good at all right no
that's the beauty of creativity get in
there and start changing dials I mean to
properly make a good synth sound takes a
lot of work so that's why there are
stock plugins so if you don't like that
let's go open the the ESX 24 again click
on the three green dots
we tried acoustic pianos out we can go
bass go drums keyboards Orchestra wow
you know what let's do Orchestra let's
go strings let's do a string ensemble ah
see what that sounds like
that sounds quite nice and I think that
could sound quite nice with this ATC
doodle Pierrot even
cool instead of having the string
ensemble doing the exact same thing as
the yamaha grand piano what am i do is
open this up by pressing the scissor
window or double-clicking on the track
and I might just clean this up a little
bit might take away these three notes
just so it's not exactly the same and I
might extend these notes just so it's a
nice underlying tone across the track so
I'll do that with the same other little
notes here and delete these and I'm
gonna bring this track these notes if
you want to extend them over just so
they elongate a little bit and fill up a
nice and fill it the sound nicely so you
want to mean a second let's just delete
these little notes
[Music]
so let's just solo this for a
second-stringer samba
okay so let's see what this string
ensemble a sounds like with a restaurant
track without the digital's piano so
let's take it this s off here we can
also take it off at the top here with
this s let's mute our a T's digital
piano and see what this sounds like so
it definitely gives it a different vibe
it contrasts you with the strings and
the bass so we'll have to spend a bit
more time coming up with the right
composition and instrumental but this is
the part where creativity comes into
play and where you can really put the
logic procs tools to power with your
creativity so take some time and go
through all the instruments and use your
MIDI keyboard or paint the notes in with
MIDI as you please but that's section 5
on the power of MIDI and software
instruments inside the Logic Pro X ok
let's move on to section 6 of the video
which is talking a bit more about the
effects inside the inspector window and
Logic Pro X and also we're going to talk
about loop browsers and drums I did
already take more of a deep dive into
loop browsers that I thought I would in
the earlier section so I'm not going to
go too much further into that but I am
going to talk about drums and how you
can record drums using MIDI as well so
let's first dive into that we're going
to want to start another software
instrument so we have our tracks here we
can continue to add more tracks with our
shortcut option command S with a new
software instrument and we'll pull up
obviously the alchemy and so we're going
to want to change this instrument into a
drum kit designer drum kits designer
stereo great so it's going to pull up a
drum kit designer here and now we have
the option to choose through different
drum kits so we have this blue Bertram
kit we have Brooklyn kit a detroit
garage kit and you can see things are
changing we can also go to the left
right here to change different kits and
so let's find a kit that looks cool
let's just go quickly just for the time
sake let's just say this one here and so
this it's called neo-soul kick and so we
can exit down now we have this neo-soul
kick so we can actually start
according drums with our MIDI keyboard
and so how to do that is we just go over
to our MIDI keyboard pressing things and
so that's the snare and so obviously
that's a snare so I'm gonna pull up our
scissor window here and you can see
everything on the drum kit is labeled
here and it's attached to certain key so
this low-tom is this this mid tom is
this key and so all I have to do is find
those keys on my MIDI keyboard so I'm
pressing this pin Tom here if I go down
I'll start pressing this kick and this
snare kick snare and so if I just want
to record a quick kick and snare these
are I know these are the two keys and I
can do that let's mute our current drums
come down here arm the track with the
red make sure our cursors at the
beginning press are on a keyboard or
this red dot and let's start recording a
quick kick and snare
[Music]
obviously I'm not a drummer and that was
terrible so but this is the beauty about
MIDI is no matter how terrible I just
did that and it was completely off time
and sounded very bad actually I'm gonna
go in and clean that up and fix it with
MIDI so these are the notes that I
actually just recorded so we can solo
that and go back to the beginning and
see what that sounds like so as you can
see it's a very off time and there's
really no drum pattern at all so what
I'm gonna do is quickly clean this up
[Music]
we're gonna quantize these and delete
this so what about if I just want to use
this it's kind of cool right so let's
say we just want this beginning section
[Music]
we only want that first bar so let's go
let's put our cursor two bar two and
we'll do command T to cut the track then
we're gonna want to backspace this track
then we can simply go to our original
bar and we can actually loop this across
like so and now we have this one kit it
sounds like this so it's not great it's
not super creative but it's in time and
that's what's most important now so if
you want to unsolo that and see what it
sounds like with everything else let's
do that
[Music]
so it doesn't sound actually too bad and
that's because everything is locked in
and in time and that's a great thing
about logic products I mean any other
digital audio workstation you work with
is the the beauty about quantization and
making sure everything is locked in
because that at the end of the day
that's what's gonna make things sound
great so now that we've quantized our
drumbeat we have the option to use this
neo-soul kit or this Portland Aden that
we've originally put at the top so let's
just have those side by side each other
and what we can do with that is just
click on the neo-soul click this kit
sorry click and we'll drag this up to
the top and pop it just underneath or
sorry above Portland Aden and then we
can you know as we listen back to our
track we can mute one see which one we
like we can also continue to go back
into Portland Aden and reject this drum
kit as we want so we have options let's
go and talk a bit more about the
inspector window and what we can do with
effects on MIDI so let's go back to our
string ensemble here inside there's
inspector window we have options here
under audio effects to add different
effects and I'm not gonna go too deep
into the effects because it starts to
get a little more advanced with Logic
Pro X but for beginners some great
things that you might want to add
especially on vocals are like channel EQ
and reverb so let's quickly talk about
channel EQ there's a quick way to put a
channel EQ on anything by just pressing
this EQ and this will pop open an EQ
window we can also do that by going to
if I'll just take it off here we can
also do that going to audio effects and
pressing channel EQ but you can see
inside Audio FX you have a lot of these
our recent ones I've done you have a lot
of effects delay distortion dynamics EQ
imaging pitch reverb so reverb and
channel EQ are definitely staples and
ones you probably should use as a
beginner especially on your vocal
recordings vocals that are EQ properly
and that of reverb on them sound
better than just dry vocals so let's
quickly talk about a channel EQ and
reverb that you can use as a beginner
with Logic Pro X so let's just press EQ
here and that will pop open our EQ and
that's a standard EQ that you can use in
Logic Pro X it's very it's great it does
everything you want it to do and at the
top here you have different filters and
when you press on these filters you can
drag them across the spectrum here
clicking this filter on and I'm dragging
it across I'm dragging it back like I'm
dragging it up I'm dragging it over and
so you get what I mean
clicking this one clicking it down and
so watch when I play this 80s piano when
I solo this track and when I have the EQ
on watch the eighties piano signal come
through
[Music]
this is the actual decibels of signal
that is coming through the EQ and so we
can see when we play again there's a lot
of action happening around this area and
that's the decibels of what that sorry
the strings are coming through and so if
we didn't want so much high signal or so
much mid signal or so much low signal
and the EQ is our option to take those
signals out watch what happens when I
slide this across when the piano is
playing or sorry when the strings are
playing
[Music]
it's becoming so much lower right that
means all this area I'm being I'm
cutting out all the signal and so only
the signal is happening here as soon as
I start dragging this up the full signal
will start coming through
I can do the same thing with this filter
[Music]
and I are only starting to hear the hive
it's now this is quite a drastic eq and
normally you would never take that much
low end or that much high end out of a
track but you still you want to start
dissecting the EQ especially when you're
doing like audio recordings with audio
guitar vocals because in with MIDI it's
not perfect when you're recording audio
sometimes you say something too loud
sometimes there's an awkward frequency
somewhere in your voice that you want to
pitch down a little bit so you can see
what I mean
you can start getting quite surgical
with the EQ for example I can type in
this mid EQ here and just bring down
certain signals I just don't want this
signal at about 500 you can really bring
that down and now we can hear that you
don't really notice the huge sound
different but let's say there was a
really annoying signal at this level we
could bring that down and so that's kind
of as far as I want to go with channel
EQ without getting too advanced you
don't really have to get too much into
this as a beginner what you want to do
on your vocal with channel EQ is to
bring the low end down a bit around
whether this number says about a hundred
and fifty depending on how low your
voice is it really depends on each
person for me it's about 150 160 and I'd
like to pitch down the mids a bit
because my voice is heavy in that 2k
zone so I'm gonna pitch these down
because when I sing high those those
waves really start to peak and it
doesn't sound great so I want to just
push those signals down of it so that's
how I'm gonna channel EQ my vocal let's
get on to reverb reverb is simply found
under channel EQ you can click this
little shut shadow here under EQ and you
can pull out pull up more effects and
then you go down to reverb and Logic Pro
X has a few stock plug-in reverbs that
are really quite good the one I
recommend is using this space designer
and you go space designer stereo
an inside space designer instead of
designing your own reverb I would
actually use one of the stock plugins so
you can go user default and you can
click under large spaces medium spaces
small spaces depending on how big you
want your reverb I like to add a large
reverb and a small room reverb and so
you can see that I've added some saved
reverbs here as a big old church and a
small space and so you can go through
and try out different reverbs on your
vocal and you'll notice they all sound
quite different but that's all you'll
really need to do as a beginner in Logic
Pro X you won't have to get too deep
into designing reverbs and that kind of
thing just just pick one that you like
and put it on your vocal and see how it
sounds one quick thing that you that is
easy to do that will make you look like
a pro is to actually buss out your
reverbs instead of putting them on the
channel and so what I mean by that is
instead of actually having the reverb
effects right here you can just have
them over here where it says audio
effects and the difference between in
the inspector window the difference
between this left side and there's a
right side is that this left side is
anything going on the track you can see
string ensemble oh down here and this
right side is anything going to stereo
out so it's being pushed out so we can
put the reverb on the stereo out and I
realize as I'm talking about it now if
you're our beginner this might sound
more confusing than it actually is so
what I will just say is you can same
thing go and add the reverb here using
the same space designer if you're a
beginner don't worry too much about this
but we want to send a percentage of
reverb to the stereo out and how we're
gonna want to do that is send to a bus
we're gonna want to click an empty bus
all these buses are empties consider it
like there's actual yellow bus that's
that's going to another place and you
have to decide how many people you want
to put on that bus so we need to click
an empty bus bus five is an empty yellow
bus and we're going to want to with this
with this green wheel here we're gonna
want to decide how many people we want
to put on that yellow bus let's say we
want to put point zero nine people on
that bus
we're gonna want to choose our space
designer and we're going to want to
choose the reverb we like let's say jazz
vocal room that sounds warm so now this
yellow bus is driving over to this space
designer and then it's collecting the
reverb and going to the place and the
benefit of using a bus to send reverb to
it is it's not going to muddy up your
track it's only going to put the reverb
on the stereo out and that just helps
being clean with your mix so the main
things you're really gonna want to stick
to our channel EQ and reverb don't worry
too much if you got lost with the whole
bussing reverb section just stick to
channel EQ reverb and have a go at the
other effects and the best way to learn
I find and how I've actually learned
most of this is just going around
clicking things and figuring it out
along the way so I do recommend getting
getting getting your hands dirty with
all of this let's move on to the next
section
a couple brief things I did want to
mention with the editor window you have
mostly the only things you need to worry
about here are the piano roll and that's
where you're gonna see your MIDI notes
the score the step editor and the smart
tempo aren't something you need to worry
about right now as a beginner really
stick to the piano roll and that's where
you'll see your MIDI notes and that's
when you can start dragging things
around if you did want to get a little
more serious with this you can start
looking into these function windows and
this MIDI transform where you can start
for example humanizing the MIDI a little
bit or fixing velocity where that means
how hard the notes are and that would be
my next step as an intermediate to take
a look at and then if we look at the
editor window with an audio track for
example this funky bass or if this is
your vocal track one next step if you
want to get into the intermediate
section would be looking at automation
you can actually start dragging these
waves a little bit if something is a bit
out of time you can start tuning these
waves and transposing them if need be
that would be my next suggested step as
an intermediate and you can do that in
these functions view and these
automations buttons here but don't worry
too much about that right now as a
beginner the focus should be really on
just recording audio putting some reverb
channel EQ on it but let's move on to
section seven where we're actually going
to take the arrangement we've built
already and extend it and break it up
into verse chorus sections where we can
actually start seeing the song come
together and so how we're gonna want to
build our arrangement is basically by
leveraging the color tools in Logic Pro
X and also the loop functions and the
loop browsers to bring new ideas in so
let's start just pretending we only want
the track to start with this agile base
for examples so let's solo this and see
what this sounds like again so let's say
we just want the track to start like
this because I think that's kind of a
cool little lick to start and actually
let's say at the second bar or sorry
third bar to start at the beginning of
the third bar we want our drum kit to
sound so let's see what that sounds like
and let's loop it at the top sever we
can also drag this at the top is a quick
shortcut by clicking and dragging this
and extending this or lengthening this
is a great way to loop that section and
all you have to do is place it over at
the top extend it to where you want it
to stop and finish and then no matter
where the cursor is you can just press
the spacebar and then it will play at
the beginning so that this will start
playing at number one cool so our drum
kits gonna come in here
maybe let's start having let's see what
the breathless piano sounds like coming
in at bar five let's just start here at
bar four so that's kind of sounds cool I
want some organization here so I'm gonna
go
option C and that's going to bring up
these colors and I want to organize that
it's a great way for Logic Pro X users
know what I mean it's a great way to
organize so I'm gonna just turn that
into orange I'm gonna make these all
very unique colors to keep some good
organization and I'm gonna meet that
actually yeah that's pretty cool okay so
that's what I have here you know what
I'm gonna mute I'm gonna keep Portland
Aiden muted right now I might bring that
in later at a chorus and start making
that sound better but I don't want this
video too much to be about the creative
side at my other rather what Logic Pro X
can do so let's let's loop this our
breathless piano and are our main
instrumentals for the whole track and we
do want the string piano I do like that
so I'm going to mute that here and then
I'm going to unsolo everything and we
can see what it sounds like from the
beginning let's have the digital piano
also come in probably bar seven let's
just see what that sounds like
[Music]
so doesn't sound too good with the
strings but I'm just gonna mute them
right now it does sound good with what
we have here it is very the same thing
throughout so what we're gonna want to
do now is add some more loops or create
some more MIDI ourselves if you would
like that you can continue having that
but I would recommend spending some time
for me myself I'm just gonna bring in
some new loops quickly right now to get
a bit more peaks and valleys in the
track and not having it the same thing
throughout so I just spent a little bit
of time here and for simplicity sake I
just used all the loop browsers
available in the right window here and
to make it easy I know my keys in E
minor and so I can filter by anything
here and select the scale of minor and
the key of e here on the right and I can
go to anything and it's not all the time
I'm gonna fit perfectly because if some
vibes are different but if you're in the
same key a lot of the time it does work
especially if you're in if you're making
if you're in the genre of music of like
low five beats or hip-hop you can
actually blend a lot of these sounds
together and so here's what we have
right now is skip it up an idea
[Music]
I just lowered the base there a bit kind
of Bobby as you can tell a quick idea
but something that's you know along the
way I'm sure to something if we put more
effort behind this as well if we put a
vocal on it or if we're wrapping
something over it
and and what we'll want to do now is put
a vocal on it and so how we would want
to do that is just by going to track a
new audio track making sure everything
is set up correctly
we're armed and ready to go we can put
the cursor right at the beginning making
sure our inputs are set up and we would
record our vocal over that and some
other things we can do quickly here now
are just we could take all these tracks
highlight them all by doing shift and
click and then we could just delete
these tracks here and okay delete those
tracks what's a bit cleaner and as you
notice as I was playing this song
everything was really not mixed properly
and that's okay but what we can do right
now and what I'll show you inside Logic
Pro X is the mixer window and you can do
a quick premix just so when you want to
export this song and bounce this song
sorry to your friends it will sound a
bit better and you don't have to be an
engineer or know much about mixing to
actually do a proper premix and so let's
do that now we'll want to open up the
mixer window and we can do that by going
up to window and open mixer or we can
also do command two which says right
here so let's go do command two and this
is our mixer window we're gonna extend
this to open it up and so just like an
old analog
mixer would be in a studio is exactly
how it's looking right here and so we
have the I mean not exactly but we have
the options too
you can see my vocals coming through
this track so I'm just going to disarm
this so it doesn't come through right
now and so we're going to want to play
the song and see levels come through
each of these channels so we can do
command W to close this window and bring
us back to our main window we can press
ENTER to get the cursor back to number
one and then we'll press play to play
the song and then we'll open up our
mixer window with command two and we can
start leveling things out by just
pressing the volume tab so I'm going to
open them at the mixer window right now
why don't we see the signals coming
through you see these buttons here
they're all at different levels we can
play them for example right here as our
drum kit right here was our yellow drum
kit if we want our yellow drum kit
louder just make it louder once softer
just make it softer so with the premix
to really just focus on the volumes of
the tracks and don't worry too much
about whatever is up here right now and
we can kind of touch on that in just a
second so let's just focus on the
volumes so let's go so let's go command
W to close this window let's press play
and then open up our mixer so that's
quite loud lower the drums a bit
[Music]
it's the bass guitar stay on the piano
[Music]
it's not so bad
a bit left is the other piano over that
a little bit bring these drums up a bit
[Music]
so you can see that's a quick premix
that we just did obviously I'm no
professional mixer either I wouldn't
call my I'm myself a mixer at all but I
do know that when I can hear things
louder and when you can hear things
quieter and I've had enough experiencing
mixing my own demos that I know what
should be quieter and what should be
louder one thing to keep an eye on as
well is your stereo out track which is
right here and we're hitting a negative
4 DB which is which is good and we don't
want to go over anything if that hits
yellow while we're playing our track
that means we're starting to peak and
that means eventually when we play our
song and big speakers and we turn the
volume up high it's gonna crack and it's
gonna distort and sound really bad so we
want to make sure we're at that nice
green green area and eventually if we're
still at that green area at the end we
can use effect plugins to race the whole
volume of the sound and that's when
engineering comes into play and people
who are really good at mixing and
mastering to get everything out of the
song that your song deserves another few
things if you want to get into the next
intermediate stage of Logic Pro X would
be taking a look at all your effects and
making sure you have the right reverbs
and channel EQ is on everything because
that's when you'll start really getting
to mixing and at each track level here
vertically you can see there's a channel
EQ and everything so we can bring that
up and change the cue for example on our
audio channel or on our drum channel or
on our you know on our piano channels we
can we can add an EQ and simple as that
and we can add a reverb we can add
delays and effects
we can do that all from our mixing
window you wouldn't want to go so deep
if you're just in the creative stage yet
save a lot of that stuff for after but
do it here and there so you can clean
things up and you'll know kind of in
what direction you're going for so we
can close down the mixer again with
command W and now we have our song
arrangement in track nicely color-coded
we kind of know what sections are what
and for the beginner level of this Logic
Pro X tutorial that's how far I would
want to go for this section so let's
move on to the next section we'll talk
about some more quick shortcuts that you
can use as you're building your tracks
and then let's export this arrangement
as an mp3 so we can share it to some of
our friends section 8 of this Logic Pro
X tutorial are some shortcuts and I'm
gonna go over 10 or 11 of my favorite
shortcuts that I use every day but
mostly what I recommend is just getting
your hands dirty and by clicking around
you'll be able to see what the shortcuts
are for example I'm just under window
here and I can see what the shortcuts
are on all the sides like I was saying
earlier in the videos as well not to
mention put the information bar on time
and again I know it is annoying but it
is helpful with understanding what
things are and where they are but let's
get into 10 or 11 of my favorite
shortcuts that I use quite often so the
biggest one I would say is I would press
ENTER a lot if the cursor is over here I
first enter to bring it back to number 1
and the second biggest one is I use
enter and then colon to get the track in
place to the cursor and that is great
because if you're recording something
and it's over at where it is at 9 and
you want to get it back to 1 it's a
clicking and dragging it over you can
just go enter and then semicolon and
that track will slide over
obviously simple shortcuts like command
Z for undo command X command C command V
I'm not going to mention those but
obviously I use those a lot as well solo
and mute are really valuable shortcuts
instead of just pressing s or pressing M
you can just press S or M on the laptop
and you can use the down arrows to go
through different tracks so I want to go
quickly up and mute the drums I can do
that or go over and you
Audio doesn't doesn't really matter I do
use those often I'm switching back and
forth between my keyboard and mouse but
it's still valuable shortcuts to mention
the next big one I use is command-comma
a lot to bring up the audio outputs and
inputs that I'm using because sometimes
I'm changing between different studio
monitors and speakers and different
inputs I'm constantly doing
command-comma
and then command W to bring the window
down instead of going to logic profile
preferences audio it's much quicker due
to command comma and then command W to
bring that down another big one is just
pressing o will open the loop browser
from the side here and as we saw most of
this track is actually just done we're
using loops so we couldn't constantly
just be pressing o to open that loop
browser open and close and as we saw our
arrangement is nicely divided into
different colors and how we did that was
just option C and that brought up the
color window nicely where we can just
drag that around and have it here by
clicking the track and putting different
colors if we want to the next big one is
mixer and instead of going open window
open mixer I'd use command to alot to
open that mixer and then command W to
close it down because I'm usually mostly
on just one window and I don't have to
big screens all the time sometimes most
mixers would have mixing window on one
complete separate computer screen and
then the main window on another so with
that because I don't have those two
screens I'm constantly going command 2
to open the window and then command W to
close it down
the last two big ones that I'm using
often are command D to copy the same
track with the same preset channel
settings so for example if I really like
this bell bottom bass and really like
the EQ and the reverbs they have on that
I'm gonna go command D and copy that
exact same preset channel over so you
can see this bell bottom base here as a
channel EQ and two buses well I just
copied this over and then it has the
same exact thing so that's really
valuable if you're doing vocal tracking
and you want multiple vocal tracks with
the same presets on it so I use that one
a lot and the other one is just getting
new tracks and I recommend just actually
going up here and memorizing these but
simple as just doing option
and and and then choosing it up here as
well so let's move on to the last
section of the video section 9 where we
actually want to bounce our project and
bounce our arrangement from start to
finish as an mp3 so we can share it to
our friends and this is quite simple
just because we're not using the tracks
at the bottom here I'm just gonna go
ahead and delete those just to save up
some space and you'll see when I move my
cursor over you'll see right here at
this bar you can see the bars are going
up so our song ends around bar 23 beat
one actually exactly that so we're gonna
want to bounce bar 1 to power 23 and how
we do that is we're going to save it
just so we have it locked in and so
we're gonna go file and bounce it's
actually not export we want to bounce as
an mp3 so you can bounce project or
section you can also do this by doing
command B so let's go to the shortcut
way let's cut it out let's go command B
and this will bring up our bounce window
and we want to bounce it as an mp3 file
not as a PCM we're gonna want to start
it at bar 1 so we can go up here sorry
up here down to bar 1 to bar 21 why did
it start at bar 9 I'll show you why
because this track is highlighted and so
because that track is highlighted it's
starting at bar 9 so we want to
unhighlight that move our cursor back we
can go command B again bounces an mp3
and you'll see it starts at bar 1
however now it's going to bar 129 why is
it doing that because it's going that
because that's you see this little grey
the difference in color of grey here
that's where bar 29 is so we can drag
this all the way here or we can leave it
there and we can highlight it with our
yellow bar here at the top and do this
so let's say that let's bounce this and
as you can see we have bar 1 2 bar 23
which is just enough and so we want to
keep this don't worry too much about
this offline is good is good because we
don't want to hear the track as we're
bouncing normalise we can keep that off
24-bit is fine you could even go down to
the 16-bit to save some space if it's
just a simple demo and we're gonna want
to press ok so where you gonna save it
well just go to your desktop save it
there as your brand-new song
and bounce it's a small file so we
bounced it quickly so we're gonna want
to go to open a new Finder window and we
can go to our desktop and we can see a
brand new song press spacebar to check
it out there we go there's our new song
all done within Logic Pro X so that's
the Logic Pro X tutorial for beginners
let me know if you have any other
questions or you want me to go and
explain something else I will reply to
all the comments please let me know have
listened to my music I'm a
singer-songwriter myself I record all my
demos inside Logic Pro X so I'd be happy
to answer any more questions you have
I'll leave a couple links to my music in
the description as well feel free to
subscribe to I make a lot of videos
every week on music entrepreneurship and
my personal growth as a
singer-songwriter so I hope to see you
in the next video