Are you a blind or visually impaired guitarist looking for a way to tune your instrument? This screen reader friendly tip covers how with VoiceOver to use one of Apple’s Logic Pro’s included Virtual instruments or Soft Synths to generate a reference Pitch for you. Best of all, we’ll cover how to make it hands free so you can play and adjust the tuning keys on the guitar while listening to the reference.
We’ll first need to start with a Logic Pro project open, with a software instrument track in it loaded up. In this instance, the Steinway Grand Piano is what’s being used for the example. Next you will need to then record the note you will want to use as a reference, like an E2 note to match the low E string on the guitar. You can either use an attached MIDI keyboard to play this in or use the Musical Typing Keyboard.
Next, open up the Event List and verify that the position is set to bar 1 beat 1. If its a llittle early like it is in the tutorial, you can always double click on the position with Vo Shift Space twice quickly and type in 1 and press return. You can do the same in the length column to set the Length to be exactly one bar long. The other thing I also do is set the Velocity to 127, as I find having the note at its loudest helps to hear it better with the guitar.
Once you have the length of the note set, you can use Locators to set up a cycle range starting at bar 1 and ending at bar 2. Once the cycle range is set you are able to toggle cycle mode on with the letter C. This will play the 1 bar long region on repeat until you press the space bar again, thus allowing you to now pluck the relevant string on your guitar and adjust the tuning peg to match the pitch while the note plays back consistently for you.
If you would like to also hear your guitar through Logic as is done in the example, you will also need to add an audio track to the project. Set the input of the track to the same input your guitar is plugged into on your interface and turn on input monitoring with Control I.
Now that you know how you can easily and accessibly tune your guitar using some of the sounds included in Logic, Lets dive deeper into ways you can record your guitar using virtual amps and filling out the production with some of the other sounds available to you, from drums, to bass, to keys and beyond. Book a one on one session if you are ready to maximize Logic in your guitar based productions.
