Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 01 - Getting Starting in Logic X

This video covers the following:
1. Getting started in Logic X
2. Setting Up Audio I/O
3. Using Audio Tracks and Recording
4. Using Software Instruments and Recording MIDI
5. Using Apple Loops
6. Using the Arpeggiator Plug-in
7. Bouncing a Project

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Closed Caption:

yeah
hello this is music tech help guy
welcome to my brand new video tutorial
series on Logic Pro 10 after using logic
10 for a few months
I found that I really liked it even more
than I like nine and i decided to just
make a full video tutorial series from
beginner level things like we're going
to do today just getting started in
logic all the way up to more advanced
features like sampling and drum
replacing and things like that so i hope
to do about one to two videos every week
and within a year I'll have a complete
video series and logic
so after we open up the software will
get the start up window here and we're
just going to create a new empty project
and then the arrange window will load
and then shortly after that
this is the new tracks dialogue so for
this video we're going to be using
software instruments and audio tracks
so let's just click on audio to create a
new audio track and make sure our input
is set to input one that's where we're
going to plug our mic or instrument into
right now and down here you can check
your audio interface minds and Alessi
interface but this could be anything
like an inbox or something similar and
then down here if you want to you can
actually create multiple tracks so if i
wanted to create two audio tracks and
just type into here but we're just going
to stick to one for now
so click create and you'll see on the
left side
we've created our first audio track now
our audio track header over here as a
few options on it
we have a mute solo record input
monitoring we have volume control and a
pan control will get to these later but
for now let's just double click where it
says audio 1
let's rename this track guitar because
well i'm going to record guitar
another thing you can do is you can zoom
your track header to make it larger or
smaller
so you basically just hover over the
bottom of the track and then pull down
or pull up
you can also hover over the right side
and pull right or left to make it wider
or narrower so earlier I said that we'd
also be using software instrument tracks
which are midi tracks which allow us to
play software synthesizers so let's
create a new track by clicking on the
plus sign here and this will open up the
new tracks dialogue again and then what
we'll do is we'll choose software
instrument
now again software instruments are midi
enabled tracks
what they do is they allow you to put a
software synthesizer or sampler on the
track and then you can control that
instrument with a midi controller like a
midi keyboard so after we create our
track here let's go ahead and zoom it
just like we do the audio track and on
this software instrument i'm going to
create an electric bass
so I'm just going to go ahead and rename
this bass guitar for now i'm going to go
ahead and click on my guitar track
because that's the first instrument or
the first track we're going to record on
before we do that we need to set up our
audio interface for recording properly
for recording
so what we do this is going to logic pro
10 go down to preferences and then due
to audio now the audio preferences
dialog lets you choose what input and
output device you're using
so right now mine says a lessee firewire
so I'm using it as an input and i'm also
using it as an output so in order to
hear that my session and have to plug my
speakers or my headphones into the
lessee firewire interface
another thing we can do is we can choose
built-in inputs and outputs
this allows you to monitor through your
computer's built in the output so you
can just plug your headphones into your
computer or you can plug your microphone
directly into your computer's built-in
input and some max actually come with
built-in microphones that you could
choose here as well so i'm going to set
mine back to a lessee firewire and then
make sure that your buffer size is set
to like 32 or 64 to like a low value and
essentially what i owe buffer is it's
the amount of information that logic and
your computer will process at once and
if this is too high it will actually
cause latency issues which will cause a
noticeable lag in your signal
so we'll come back to IO buffer a little
bit later in another video
so just said the 32
hit apply changes and after that loads
you can just close out your preferences
window and we're ready to start
recording
so i'm going to record guitar on this
audio track here and in order to do that
I have to make sure that the input that
the guitars plugged into my interface
matches up with the input on the track
so the way you do this is use you what
you do is you select the track and then
you go down to the channel strip
associated with that track and you'll
see the input section here that says
we're receiving signal from input 1 so i
just had to make sure that my guitars
plug into in put one on my interface
then i'll just click on the input
monitoring button on my track and play a
few notes on the guitar
alright so we're getting signal from the
guitar but it's kind of bland so let's
use a channel strip setting to enhance
the the sound of the guitar make it
sound like an amped guitar
so what you do is you click on the track
go back to the channel strip here and
find your channel strip setting tab here
and you click on that and in logic nine
typically its see just a whole list of
channel strip setting presets here but
in logic 10 you have to go to legacy
logic and then find your logic channel
strip settings so i'm going to go to
electric guitar and then i'll go down to
distort and then distort dry and what
I'm looking for is dangerous distort and
so it loads up a whole set of plugins
that enhance the the sound of the guitar
so let's try that out
yeah
yeah
all right so that worked out fine I'm
going to turn off input monitoring and
go down to the channel strip here for
just a moment
there's a bunch of plugins here that we
can mess with if we wanted to one
particular I want you to look at is the
tuner on the tuner is a its own plug-in
but it comes with a lot of the guitar
channel strip settings and just lets you
tune your your input signal
all right so you can use the tuner to
check to see that your instruments in
tune and I know my guitar is in tune so
i don't really need it so I'm just going
to turn that off and on my guitar track
of a turn-off input monitoring and then
turn on arm for recording and well-armed
for recording does it lets that track be
recorded onto so the key command to
record in logic is just the our button
on your keyboard
I should have mentioned before that
space bar plays and stops your session
as well now I didn't record anything
there because it was a little too fast i
want to make it a little slower so I'm
just going to hit command Z to get rid
of that recording and then up at the top
of the window here you'll see that the
BPM the tempo is set to a hundred and
twenty beats per minute
i'm going to change that to a hundred
just a little bit slower and that what
you can do is you can hit the return key
to set your play head back to the
beginning and let's try that again
yeah
yeah
yeah
all right so that worked fine
as I mentioned before this white line
here is called the playhead and what you
can do is you can grab it and you can
move it around and you can put it
wherever you want and when you press
spacebar to play it will start from that
point and then as i said before you can
hit return to go back to the beginning
and another thing you can do is you can
simply click on the ruler up here and it
will put the playhead right at that
point in the ruler
so there you go alright so another we
got the guitar down
we are ready to record a software
instrument and what we're going to do is
we're going to record a bass guitar
we're going to find a software bass
guitar but first let's save let's do a
save as file save as the problem is if
we don't save tom
well the entire logic session is running
off of RAM which can cause some issues
so by default what it does is it puts
your tries to direct your session to
admin music logic this is a logic folder
in there but i'm going to save mine to
the desktop and said so i'm going to
click desktop give it a name i guess
i'll just call it a logic project one
and then down heroes organize my project
as a you can see a package or folder
folder creates a folder with other
folders inside of it with all of your
source files in package makes your
entire session one file so i actually
prefer the folder way you can also say
what what do you want to include with
your project and for now we'll just say
audio files will talk about some of
these other things later
ok now that we've saved we are ready to
assign a software instrument to our bass
guitar here so you just click on it and
as long as its arms you'll be able to
hear the instrument that's on it so
since we're not recording guitar anymore
its unarmed the guitar
let's also pull down the volume on the
guitar so it doesn't bury the bass
guitar when I try to record it so just
like with the audio track i can assign a
channel strip to my software instrument
track here and it will sign a bunch of
plugins as well as a software
synthesizer
so what you do is you just make sure you
select the track go to the setting tab
again and just like we did before i go
down to legacy and then to logic and
we'll see a whole list of different
instrument presets and i'm going to use
one called session base and after the
instrument loads as long as the track is
armed
you can play a few notes on your midi
controller and you should be able to
hear what the instrument sounds like all
right so I'm just going to hit our to
record just a basic quarter note
baseline
ok
yeah
yeah
yeah
alright so we recorded a MIDI region
there with our base and you can tell its
many because there's dashes and dots for
notes individual notes as opposed to a
waveform which you'd see on an audio
track so with midi
it's just don't like musical control
values stored in a clip
one thing you might have noticed during
the recording is that my stereo output
was clipping here by . 7db so to prevent
that digital overload
what we can do is just pull the volume
down in some of our tracks to give us a
little more Headroom one great thing
about midi tracks is that we can
quantize them which means you can
correct their musical timings
so in order to do that we go up here to
this area is called the inspector
actually this whole column here is
called the inspector
you can hide it or show it right here
are going to die on your keyboard will
also do the same thing and the parameter
we're looking for is this quantized
parameter right now it says off when it
says off it means that the notes have
not been quantized to a grid
so what you can do here is choose a
musical grid value like a quarter notes
eighth notes sixteenth note and whatnot
i'm going to choose a quarter notes
that's what I played and what it does is
it snaps every note in that region to
the nearest quarter note in this case
I'm just going to free up some room here
for some more tracks and one thing i
want to add to this are some drums and
one way we can do that is with logics
Apple loop browser and it comes with
about 30 gigabytes of additional
downloadable content and a good chunk of
those are loops to come to the upper
right corner here click on Apple loops
and you'll see your loop browser here
with the list of all the loops that you
can pick from
there's also some search parameters up
here you can narrow down what you're
looking for so I'm going to narrow down
my search by just looking for drums and
then you can come down to the bottom
here and you can scroll through the list
and look for a whole bunch of different
loops and when you find you like can
actually just click on it and it will
play for you
yeah
and then you can just click again to
stop the playback of the loop since I
like that one
all you have to do is drag and drop it
out into your range area and just put it
below your lowest track and it will
automatically make a new track for it
so let's just increase the size of the
track header and then let's also get rid
of the loop browser and one thing you
can do is if you hover your mouse over
the upper right corner of the loop
you get this little loop icon and it
allows you to loop the loop basically so
you just click and drag to the right and
you can make as many copies of the loop
as you want
Apple loops will actually conform to the
temple of your project
so let's see what this sounds like
yeah
alright that works i'm just going to go
ahead and pull the guitar down just a
hair and pull the base up a little bit
so they sit a little better with the
drums
ok so earlier I showed you how you can
create a new track by just going up to
the plus sign here and choosing the type
of track you want another quick way to
do is to click on a track that matches
the type of track you want to create and
then just double click at the very
bottom of the track headers and it will
actually create a a new track of that
same type
so for our last track here i want to
create sort of like a like a synthesizer
sound like a simply to like a synth pad
or something
let's go up to our channel strip
settings go back to legacy legacy logic
and we go to synthesizers and then go to
send leads and what I'm going to use is
called the classic trans lead the
classic translate is actually a
monophonic synth
so you can only hear one note at a time
alright so that's fine i could go ahead
and just play every note i want
individually in the recording just like
we did the bass guitar but instead i'm
going to take advantage of one of the
new features and logic the 10 and a new
feature is the midi effects insert on
the John the software instrument channel
strips and what this does is it allows
you to create various different media
affects one in particular that I'm going
to use is the arpeggiator now the
arpeggiator allows you to just hold a
chord on your midi controller and then
it automatically arpeggiate that cord
for you
so for this i'm just going to use one of
the presets up here and the preset i'm
gonna use is called classic cycle 01
all right so that sounds fine I'm think
I'm going to use that and once you're
done that you can just close out that
plug-in window and what I'm going to do
is record some chords with the
arpeggiator behind my pre existing
material but before I do that I want to
show you how to zoom because I want to
be able to optimize what I'm seeing so
one way you can do this is if you click
on the background and I just hit Z it
will auto zoom everything to fit the
window so everything is a lot bigger now
the other way you can do it is theirs to
zoom controls up here in the upper right
corner there's a vertical zoom and then
just to the right of that is our
horizontal zoom
so you can adjust everything so it's a
little bigger and not crammed into one
little spot now that I can see
everything i'm just going to go ahead
and hit our and record my arpeggiated
synth
yeah
alright that works just fine
what I'm going to do next is actually
pull the classic trance instrument its
volume down just a little bit
it's a bit loud so pull that down a bit
and then the other thing we can do is
just like with the bass guitar track we
can quantize it to the grid
so for this one I'm going to use a 1 1
note which is the same thing as a whole
note since all i played were whole note
chords
after you're done with your project you
might want to render your whole project
into a single file into like a away file
or mp3 something you can take with you
put on a CD or put on mp3 player
the way we do that is called bouncing so
to bounce is essentially to create a
mixdown a very thing that we have
so to do this you have to create a
bounce range so we're basically
designating a boundary of where we want
to bounce from and we want to bounce to
the way this is done is up here in the
upper left corner you'll see that
measures 1 through 4 kind of grayed out
looking and the reason why is this is
actually the the locators here if you
click on it turns yellow you can grab it
and you can set a left and right
boundary for your bounce another
function of the locators is called cycle
mode and when they're yellow like this
you can essentially loop everything
that's within that range and so far to
press play right now just hear what's in
between that range it would continuously
loop itself until I stop the playback so
after we select their bounce boundary
you go down to file bounce and then we
go to project or section and then us or
you can memorize the key command command
be so we choose that and this brings up
the bounce dialogue
we're going to stick with the PCM type
file which is essentially a wave aif for
CAF file and these other options don't
worry about it for now we'll come back
to these in a later video
another option we can change is whether
or not we want a real time or offline
bounce
what a real-time bounce does is it
bounces during playback
it's more accurate but takes a takes the
length of the file to bounce
it's so i recommend doing that for like
final mixes we're going to do an offline
balance which is a lot quicker but is
not as accurate
so here it tells us we have to name our
bounce and by default it creates a
bounces folder within your logic project
so we'll save it there and i'll just
call this simple rock song
so now
is done i'm just going to hit command s
one more time to save and then I'm going
to go and quit logic and you can also do
this with the key command command q
we no longer need logic open let's go
find our logic project folder we created
earlier
here it is inside there is a bounces
folder that automatically created for us
and inside there is our wave file that
we just bounced so I'm just going to
click on that file and hit spacebar to
see if it sounds all right
alright so there we go
we were able to create our very first
song from scratch with very little
knowledge about the software so i hope
you enjoyed the video hope you learn
something
I hope it was easy to follow like I said
the beginning of the video I'm going to
continue continue to try to do these
weekly until I basically run out of
material to to work with so so again i
hope you enjoyed the video and thanks
for watching