Logic Type Up Scott Belcher

   In this project I will be discussing how to use logic, how to set up equipment to use Logic and will talk about the different tools and features that you would fin d in Logic. Logic is a DAW which stands for digital audio workstation. With this kind of software you can create, record and edit pieces of MIDI to create a piece of music or some other kind of audio such as a radio play. The latest version of Logic is Logic Pro X and this is the version that I will mainly be discussing today along with Logic express 9, these are the two versions of logic that we have mainly been using at college.Starting up LogicWhen you open up a new logic file on your computer you will be greeted with screen.

When this appears you need to select how many audio or midi channels you want to use. Its probably best to start with 5 MIDI channels.

What is MIDI?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a way of using digital instruments instead of physical instruments. Using a MIDI keyboard you can control any kind of digital instrument that you like using standard piano notes, you can also use electronic drum pads to control a digital drum kit which is handy for when you want to input a beat quickly. MIDI devices used to be connected to a computer using a special 6 pin MIDI cable. You would have to use two of these. One as an input and one as an output, but these days you can simply plug MIDI devices into a computer using a standard USB cable. A MIDI keyboard picks up three main pieces of information when you play a note, these are; what note it is, what octave it is in and how hard the note is pressed also known as the velocity. When logic has received this information it will then put it through the digital instrument that you have selected or created to make the sound. When you record a piece using audio you cant change the notes you have played or the velocity of them after playing whereas with midi anything about what you have played can be rearranged or corrected afterwards. Most modern music incorporates MIDI in some way is not entirely.

Audio in Logic

As well as pieces of midi you can also record or import audio files into Logic express 9 and Pro X. One way that you could do this is by connecting a microphone. To do this you will need an USB audio interface, a microphone of your choice depending on what you are recording and an XLR lead to plug the microphone into the audio interface. For an example lets record a vocal piece; you will need a large diaphragm condenser microphone, a microphone stand. Once everything is plugged in you will need to go into the logic preferences, then to the tab labeled audio and select the name of your audio interface in the drop down menu labeled audio input. Once this is done click apply changes and now your microphone is connected to Logic. Next you will need to press the plus button to create a new track, this time we are going to use an audio track as we are using a microphone. On this new channel that you have created make sure that the icon labeled ‘I’ is selected; if you are using a condenser microphone make sure that the phantom power is switched on on your interface, this switch will be labeled +48V because that’s the amount of power that’s it sends to the microphone. Audio files in logic come through as waveforms; waveforms are the visual representation of audio. Some other ways that you could input audio would be by plugging a guitar into the instrument port on your audio interface. This way you can use digital amps and pedals to affect your guitar sound. Another way that you can record a guitar would be to put a microphone facing your guitar cab and record it in the same way that you would record the vocals. In logic you can manipulate your recordings with different software effects which I will talk more about in the mixer section.

The tool box in Logic

The tool box in Logic is where all of the most useful tools are kept and can be found by pressing the key command cmd T.

The Glue Tool: The glue tool is used to join selected regions together to form one region.

The Solo Tool: When you select regions with this tool it well play them on their own in isolation.

The Mute Tool: The mute tool will mute any regions that you select with it.

The Zoom Tool: This tool allows you to zoom in and out on the grid to view regions.

The fade tool: The fade tool is used to fade audio and MIDI sections in and out, it can also be used to slow down and speed up by changing the settings.

The Flex Tool: The flex tool is used to allow you to easily use the flex tools without a hassle.

The Pointer tool: The pointer too is probably the tool that you will probably be using the most out of all of them. This tool is used to press different control buttons in the software and is also used to select MIDI and audio regions that you have recorded into the grid.

The Pencil Tool: The pencil tool is used to draw in MIDI sections in a MIDI channel, it can also be used to draw in notes in draw mode.

The Eraser Tool: If you select multiple audio or MIDI regions clicking on one of these regions will delete them all. If no regions are selected and you click one it will delete that individual region.

The Text Tool: The text tool can be used to rename a section region or event.

The Mixer

Computer Monitor

SpeakersMac Mini

KeyboardMouse

Microphone MiDi keyboard/audio interface

Blue cable: Jack leads to send audio to the monitor Speakers.

Green cable: HDMI lead to send the video footage from the computer to the monitor.

Purple cable: USB type B cable to send the midi signals from the keyboard, it also sends the digital audio from the built in audio interface.

Red cable: XLR lead to send the audio from the microphone to the built in audio interface in the MIDI keyboard.

This is the mixer in Logic Pro X.

Each audio or MIDI or audio channel that create gets its own channel strip in the mixer. The two main controls that you get in the mixer are the fader and the stereo pan; the fader controls the level of the mixer strip and the stereo pan controls how the audio is distributed between the left and right speakers or headphone. If you wanted certain instruments to be louder than others or to be set to a certain ear then this is how you would control that. The area that you see in the red box is where you would insert audio effects. This would include inserts such as reverb, distortion and pitch shifter etc. in this section you also get a guitar pedal board that you can apply to any instrument not just guitars to add effects such as flagger.

The area that you see in the green box is where you insert something called a bus. Busses are very useful, when you send one of your channel strips to a bus it creates a new channel strip for this bus, so everything that happens in the original channel strip is sent to the bus where it can have more effects added onto it. A good use for this would be if you wanted add two of the same effect to two different instruments then you would simply have to send them to the same bus and then insert the effect. With the bus pots you can control how much of the signal that you want to effected by the bus. This is very useful for if you only want an instrument to be partially effected by a bus effects.

QuantizingQuantizing is a very useful feature within Logic express 9. This tool easily corrects any timing mistakes that you may have in your work. If you are using this feature with a midi pattern then the notes will simply snap into the grid according to the time signature that you have selected from the menus.

Automation Automation is a key bind section of the software that you can access by pressing the A key on the keyboard. Automation allows you to control the volume levels throughout the track to raise it, lower it or to fade out and in. another aspect of automation is panning, when automating panning you can set it up so that the track will pan to certain ears at different points of the song automatically; this is very useful for when you are creating the final mix. An example of when I have used this tool was in my audiobook project, one of the characters was whispering in the ear of the listener so we used automation to pan that part of the track completely to the left ear. When we asked listeners what they thought of this effect they were very happy with the results. Another use for automation would be controlling an effect such as reverb, we used this in the same project when the location of the radio play changed we used automation to change the reverb Levels to make it sound like they had moved from a large room to an outdoors space. Without this effect you wouldn’t be able to tell this change had happened so it’s a vital tool. When you get into some of the more advanced tools of logic you will find that pretty much any effecting feature can be automated to mate production easier and smoother.

The Piano RollThe piano roll is the area where you drew in your midi notes; its called the piano roll because the notes appear in the places where you would see them on a piano and they roll across the screen like a piece of tape in an old tape machine. This is because Logic is based upon a tape machine style. This is evident in the transport bar which I will be talking about next.

The transport bar

The transport bar is looks like this.

The 1st button skips the beginning of the song.

The 2nd button skips to the end of the song.

The 3rd button rewinds.

The 4th button fast-forwards.

The 5th button is stop

The 6th button is play

The 7th button is pause

The 8th button is record.

Busses

A more advanced feature but very useful feature of logic is busses. We have talked previously about adding effects and other tools to a single instrument channel strip on the mixer but what If you wanted to add exactly the same thing to multiple instruments? Of course you could try and replicate the same levels on the effects on each track but this would be time consuming, not totally accurate and it will eat through your processing power which could crash your software causing you to lose all of your hard work. This is where busses come into use. A bus on a mixer is simply a strip where you can send multiple other channels to it to so that they all become a single group, this is why you may also hear a bus referred to as a send.

Sidechaining

There is a method of creatively using busses known as sidechaining which is what I am going to be discussing now. Sidechaining is used in a creative way a lot in hard house and techno music, you have probably heard it when a kick drum plays for example plays and at the same time the bass is being cut out making the kick sound bigger without making its level any higher and giving it that real thumping sound. The way that this is achieved is by creating a new bus channel labeled side chain with a compressor on it and this is where you will want to send your kick drum. On your synth bass channel you will also want to add its ow compressor, within this compressor in the top right you will see a drop down menu labeled side chain, in this menu you will want to select the same bus that you sent your kick drum to, in my case this is bus 1. Now when you play the track you should hear the synth wobbling along with the kick drum. You can affect how well the side chain will worth by tweaking the attack and the release pots, and that is how to sidechain

In conclusion I hope you feel more educated when it comes to sequencing techniques and that you will utilize these techniques well. Thank you for reading.