This is a series on how you can use nothing but Logic and what’s included in it to create beats and music. While you can certainly use these concepts with 3rd party loops and software instruments, I demonstrate them with only included sounds and loops.
This requires some understanding of basic concepts and fundamentals, such as selecting and splitting regions, It would also be beneficial to turn on chase and turn off playback pre-roll. This along with splitting and selecting regions is all covered in the getting started with Logic course so check out those modules.
Familiarity with the Piano Roll and or the Event List would be helpful as Well. While the Piano Roll is used exclusively in this tutorial, the Event List tutorial is a bit more in depth, and what’s covered in the Event list tutorial is also applicable to the Piano Roll.
The [Loop Browseris also used in this tutorial, so it may be worth it to check out that tutorial as well if you have never used it before.
I also use the Virtual Typing Keyboard (aka the Musical Typing Keyboard) to play the Software Instruments in this project, but if you have a MIDI Keyboard hooked up you could use that instead or in addition to, the choice is yours.
Also you may want to be familiar with some basics of the Sampler
As I am talking through a lot of what I am doing. This may seem like a long process, but I assure you it’s not as long or as daunting as it may seem once you get used to it and develop the muscle memory. So if it seems overwhelming now, just take it in small steps. As I am using stuff from the Loop Browser,, you can pull up the same loops and play along at home. So work with each section until you’ve got it down.
While the Loop Browser is used here, you can do the same with 3rd party loops as well, and in those rare cases where the loops don’t come with their tempo info, you can follow this tutorial to get the loop’s tempo.
Below this is part 1, followed by some notes on it. Part 2 etc will follow further down the page in a similar manner.
All 4 parts of this tutorial are also available in one playlist
Part 1
Around 43 seconds in, I Start out with a drum track and I use Musical Typing Keyboard to play in a basic beat to get started with. Not surprisingly my playing wasn’t exactly on time, but close enough that pressing q to quantize sorted it out on to the beat.
We’ll then go through the Loop Library to find a sound to add to the project and this is the sound we’ll chop up and play in the sampler. Pressing O will Open or close the Loop Browser. Once in there, you can sort loops by a number of different types of metadata but in this case, we’ll use Genre. Then I’ll preview and select a loop.
As it’s a software loop we bring in, We can open up the Event List or the Piano Roll to edit the performance. es-how-with-voiceover”>Piano Roll.
Given that I’d like a 4th chord and we only have 3, I’ll duplicate or repeat one of the regions and change some notes in the Piano Roll to get a 4th chord to use in the production.
We then cover how to import them into the sampler, and how you can treat these chords as one sampler instrument instead of 4 separate sampler instruments.
Any questions about this so far, drop them in the comments.
Part 2
This edition of the tutorial starts off with unmuting the regions that got muted when I bounced in place, because now we’ll use the Piano Roll to move notes around and and use the same chords slightly differently. As I did for the audio regions before importing them into the sampler, I want to set these MIDI regions to be one bar long as well.
With the audio regions in the previous tutorial, I use the time stretching function with the locators to set each region to be one bar long. This time however We’ll just select each region and set their end point to end at the next measure with Command Right Bracket. The reason we time stretched the audio instead of just adjusting the region length is because using Command Right Bracket to adjust the region length, does just that, it only sets how long the region is. If the audio stops before the region ends, it does nothing to stretch the audio out to the end of the region.
In this case we’ll set the end of the region so we have the region being as long as we want it to be, but then in the event list we’ll move the notes around to get them to start and stop where we want in the region. Since there is no Piano Roll for audio data, time stretching the audio to start and end where we want it to is the way to go.
Once we Set all the MIDI Regions to be one bar long and re-arrange the notes in the Piano Roll, we then put them in the right order so they follow the chord progression we played in with the sampler.
Now that we have this melody in the right order to follow the chord progression, we can point it at any Logic or 3rd party instrument to change the sound. Remember you can also transpose to find the right octave for the new instrument to help it blend in with the production. You can even transpose via semi tone if you want to harmonize it with the current chords or other parts.
This part wraps up using the VoiceOver function to copy last spoken text and use it to rename the tracks.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. We’ll continue to add parts to this in part 3.
Part 3
In this installment of the tutorial, We take a look at using the same instrument that the original loop was in to play in something new. After recording the MIDI and Fixing it up quickly in the Piano Roll, some delay is added and then it’s bounced in place to get audio that we can import into the sampler.
Once it’s a sampler instrument and it’s played in, we’ll then again use the Piano Roll to move it to start on bar 1 as it was played in a little early. Dial in the volume and we are good to go.
This is more of a little sparkle or ear candy type thing, once we start arranging this track it doesn’t have. To be on every downbeat, but something that can be used in specific spots throughout the arrangement to add a little interest or signify some kind of change in the song.
Got any questions about this part, drop them in the comments. Next up, we’ll take a look at how to separate the drums we played on a single track into individual kicks, snare, etc tracks.
Part 4
Now let’s revisit the drums. Since the electronic drums in Logic Pro are already a Track Stack with the individual kit pieces on separate tracks, it’s possible to take what we played on the Track Stack and put the kick on one of the kicks tracks and the snare on one of the snare tracks. Once it’s demonstrated how to do this, plus why and how you may want to transpose the kit pieces, we’ll next add claps.
Once we choose a Clap track and try a few claps at different pitches we can play in a part and record it with the clap we choose. A quick trip to the Piano Roll to sort out an early clap and we are set.
After this we’ll return to the well that is the Loop Browser, and find a Hi Hat Loop to bring inn. We’ll also look at how you can preview loops with the project so you can hear better if it will work with your production. In addition we’ll talk about how to preview melodic loops in the key of the arrangement as well.
After choosing a Software loop to use, we put it on the hi hat track inside the BoomBat kit, and chop it up as if it were audio to get it to play the pattern we like. So you can edit MIDI regions similarly to audio regions or you have the option to edit them in the Piano Roll to move notes around.
We’ll also take a look at how easy it is to do the tape stop effect in Logic with no plug ins needed.
Hopefully this tutorial has demonstrated how with everything included with Logic Pro you could get started making music without anything else but your Mac and a copy of Logic. Got any questions or follow ups for this? Let me know in the comments. Don’t for get to adjust the volume on the various tracks as well to get things to blend better with each other and if the production gets busy you can pan stuff off to the sides as well.
Never thought of putting different samples in a track stack. It makes the sampler so much more useful. I also liked the way you got rid of unwanted notes by making regions where they start. It seemed odd at first but it works surprisingly well. I could use that due to my poor keyboard playing.
Yeah I find that a quick way to get rid of unwanted notes. However if I didn’t want each chord as their own region, then I’d just delete the unwanted notes in the piano roll and leave it as one region. The exception being if there is a lot of notes you want to get rid of, then splitting them into their own region and deleting that region could be quicker.
Hi Mr. Oreo. In part 1, you use VoiceOver to move through notes in the piano roll. I find that plain right and left arrows are more helpful doing this for me, because there is much less chatter and I get a chance to hear the notes as I land on them. This part of the audio is close to 5 minutes in.
If you have perfect pitch or otherwise are able to recognize musical pitches by ear left and right arrows are a great fast way to move through the Piano Roll, or up and down arrows to move through the event list. However if you can’t recognize pitches by ear VO Left and right will announce the notes in the Piano Roll or VO up or Down in the Event list. Unfortunately, yes it’s a lot more verbose using VO Left and Right in the Piano Roll as it announces the note’s ‘ position in the time line as well, something it doesn’t do in the Event List when using VO up/Down arrows.
Another reason to use VO Left/Right arrows is in cases where you do want to know the position of a note but you don’t want to move the playhead from its position. If you use left/right arrows on their own then you will most likely end up m using control home to see where a note is located in the time line and that will change the playhead position for playback.