Logic Type Up

Scott Belcher

InthisprojectIwillbediscussinghowtouselogic,howtosetupequipmenttouse
Logicandwilltalkaboutthedifferenttoolsandfeaturesthatyouwouldfindin
Logic.LogicisaDAWwhichstandsfordigitalaudioworkstation.Withthiskindof
softwareyoucancreate,recordandeditpiecesofMIDItocreateapieceofmusicor
someotherkindofaudiosuchasaradioplay.ThelatestversionofLogicisLogicPro
XandthisistheversionthatIwillmainlybediscussingtodayalongwithLogic
express9,thesearethetwoversionsoflogicthatwehavemainlybeenusingat
college.
StartingupLogic
Whenyouopenupanewlogicfileonyourcomputeryouwillbegreetedwithscreen.

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 thats the amount of power thats 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 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 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.

Computer

Speake

Mac Mini

Mouse

Keyboar

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.

MiDi

Purple cable: USB type B cable to send the midi signals from the keyboard, it also
keyboard/audio
sends the digital
audio from the built in audio interface.
Microphone
Red cable: XLR lead to send the audio from the microphone to the built in audio

The Mixer
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.

Quantizing
Quantizing 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 wouldnt be able to tell this change had happened so its
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 Roll

The 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.