Logic Pro for Beginners

1. Intro: Hi, and welcome to this Logic Pro beginners tutorial. By the end of this tutorial, you'll be able to understand the basics of logic, to be able to record your own songs. I think these few tools, you'll be able to record your own song ideas and get into the software as quickly as possible after you have installed Logic Pro on your Mac. So let's start. 2. create track setting bpm: Click up in the file corner and then press. New window will pop up. And it will ask you if you want a software instrument or audio and instrument, or it says trumps and other things too, to get into it as quickly as possible. I will just tell you the two most basic options inside or software instruments and audio. Actually, it doesn't really matter which one you press right now. But let's begin with audio. If you see this green bar working, it means that your microphone in your computer is activated. Here. It symbolizes that recording option. It says Record Enable. If you press this and this is flashing red, it means that this is activated. And if I would press on the Record button here, then that would mean that it would record. I recommend that you also check these features here. This is the tempo and this is connected to it too. It's called a click track. So basically, this is a tempo of 120 beats per minute. It might be a little bit fast. So if you press with your mouse and you pull down or up, you will get a different rate or a number. Let's say we wanted to do a pop song. We can keep it for now at 80. 3. recording saving cutting: If you want to go back with a cursor, you can either pull this timeline back and forth. It means that it starts to record where that libraries or that timeline is. But if we wanted to start from the beginning, we press on this beginning button or backwards, and then this button becomes a stop. Let's start with recording, maybe some vocals. So let's record something like this. Now we have a track. I can take this track and I can pull this a little bit further in the song. And I say listen to it. Maybe I realize that may be somewhere in the middle here. My singing was off pitch. If I wanted to change this and record again, unlike I didn't really like that part. Go up here to this tool button here. I can just look for something called a scissor tool. This is one of the most useful tools, in my opinion. Yeah, I use it a lot because it's very simple to use if you want to activate it and see now there is not really activated. Then I need to press hold the Command button. And you see now there is like a half scissor there. Let's say that I was not happy with the results of my vocals in this region. Then I just hold Command and press once. And now you can see it's divided. And let's say that it was still until here. And I press Command, and then I press the mouse button at the same time and holding the Command button and release. Then I can press this region here. And I can press backspace. Sometimes I don't see Delete button actually on the keyboard. So I assume that most Macs just use the backspace. So I press the backspace, or maybe it's called delete. But it doesn't say Delete on the keyboard. Either way, you can do that. If you wanted to regret, you just put command and then z. It's back. You can press Control and click with the mouse as well. Then a menu bar comes up. You can have another option and just look for delete here. Let's see if we can find it. And delete that. You can do that too. So let's say that we were happy with these ticks. We can let them be there. If we regret our choice, we can just pull it back again. If you want to make sure that your work is always saved, press Command and S. It's a short command. And you don't really need to use it if you don't want to. It's just that. It's very good to have the command S function on a constant reminder. Maybe like every couple of minutes you press Command S, get into the habit if you could to press Command S, then it will ask you where you want this to be stored. I have chosen to put the folder where I want to say in an external hard drive, here, you have different options. I think it's a good choice to put folder and then you mark all of these different alternatives. You don't have to mark movie file. This is because if you want to go to another computer and open up your project than a folder will be created. And these backup files so that you will use in the future will actually be stored in the folder and files won't be lost. The package function, I'm not sure if all of the data actually follows. So I press folder and I mark everything except movie file because we haven't recorded a movie and we don't implement that right now in our project. 4. adding keys: Let's add some keys. And you're maybe thinking to yourself, I don't have a keyboard or a piano, electrical piano or something like that. And I need to buy that. Actually, you don't really, you just press this Plus button here. It will give you the same alternatives again. Do you want audio or software instrument or the sudden once? And as I said, these two are the most common ones, audio and software instruments. So this time we take software instrument and press Create then a new track. And by default, the classical electrical piano has been selected. With this, you can actually makes them sound. If you press the command key and hold the Command key and press K, then you can release it. Then this miniature keyboard turns up and you can use this by pressing these buttons that you see on the, on your computer keyboard instead. So let us say, Hey, that's C, so I can press it with mouse or with the sport. So basically, you can just play around with it. I know he doesn't really sound very nice right now, but I'll show you how you can work with these files. Let's check it out. Just press record. We stop it. If you press Spacebar, it stops. I can press this red button here. We close it down. As you heard right now. It doesn't sound very nice, but have no fear. The first thing that you can do, just to get things aligned, you can, if these things are a little bit off in tempo, I can listen to the click to see. They line up pretty well, but I want to be on the safe side that these ones are steady on the beat. Because when you add on even more instruments in the future, it might be a little bit messy. If you want to do this. You can press this button here. And in this instance it's in 16th notes. In 16th parts, you could say, then you have eight notes. And if you take four, then it aligns even closer to these even numbers. Here are uneven numbers, but the numbers on the top, if you take two done, some of them actually disappear spend Then if you press one done, even these notes disappear as well because they are actually not disappearing. They just fall back and align themselves up to the first bar here, 111. That's going back to see they are all hidden under here and it's snapped back here. It's like 12. And then if we want every fourth, then they start popping up again. I'm gonna go with 16th Because I think that's generally there is still a little bit of a group there, but you still align it organized. If our listened to these, I can listen to the courts and listen. If I could change them, make them a little bit more interesting because it's difficult to play with your computer keys. There we have one-quarter. If I press my mouse, there will be like, I can hear the sound. Even though I'm not very good at music theory, I don't really have to use it. I could just listen with my year and no, it doesn't read this straight again. I don't know. Maybe up here. Yeah. Sounds a little, Jesse. Let's keep it that way, doesn't it? Yeah. 5. fading normalizing: Let's go back to a problem that might occur. If, for example, either that this bar is not really showing, you have to check that there is an input. You'd click here on this side here where they're assessed input and check if there is something that is actually checked here. If it doesn't say anything here or if it says empty or none, then it means that the computer can't really find a microphone or something like that, then you can check into settings. But let us just assume that everything works for you. If I press this S here, so I don't hear the piano. It seems like the metronome here, even if I listened to it without the metronome beat there. The reason for that is that I didn't use headphones when I was recording. The clicking sound gets into my computer microphone. If you want to isolate that sound, then what do you need to do is just simply get some headphones, plugged them in, and then do it again. I'm putting my headphones on and I don't want these tracks anymore. So I'm going to delete them. This is a perfect moment for us to repeat what we did before, how to record an audio track. Breast the R button and then press this. I will be listening to this track now as I'm recording, if you, for example, think that the piano and my headphones is a little bit too loud and I can't really hear myself well, then you can just lower the volume or increase the volume depending on how you want the instruments in the background to sound as you're recording. Let's see if we can do something like this. I hear the clicking sound, then. Very nice. If you want this audio track to be sounding a little bit louder. You just put this, maybe it's a maximum or a little bit lower. One trick that I use, which is a good tool for beginners, but you need to watch out a little bit sold the sound doesn't clip, which means that the volumes will reach the maximum volume basically. And that means that the sound will sound distorted. It could sound a little bit crunchy and doesn't sound little bit annoying to people when they listen to your track. So in this case, this is the maximum level and this is 0 decibels. And this goes up to like a more increased level of volume. But there is still dynamic within this range. There's still room here. If the sound wave would be all the way up here, it would probably be peaking because this is the maximum 100% of decibel or something like that. Not really, but in this software, I mean, we're not talking 100 decibels here. That's very loud. It would be like someone completely screaming your ear. Either way this bar comes up. This is just default settings. I haven't changed anything, I press Apply. And as you see, the audio file is sort of increased with a margin of one decibel from the maximum level. This could have some implications on the sound. If you listen to it and you think it's fine, you could hear a little bit of noise, maybe in the background. You can delete the spaces in-between. Just be careful. Sometimes there's S's and T's, like some sharp sounds that doesn't really show very well on this. I can press this region here to my left. And there is region, then there is more. So it's like says region says five selected clips, but press this middle one, you go down, you press more. And then there is a fade in and fade out section here. If you double-click, then press a number seven, works good. Then you can see that these fade in and fade out is showing up. This means that the sound from this region two here will be a little bit smoother so that it won't really click or cut. 6. drums mixing: The next thing that we can do is to get some kind of drum track and the beauty with logic. If you really don't know where to start, you can press up here on the right top corner. There is a loop browser. Now, just to use these loops, just as they are. I wouldn't really, you can, you're not going to get in trouble. They are there, so that should be used, but it's more fun to program your own stuff like you did with a piano Jess right now. But let's say that we just wanted to beat, then. You can take this back beats and you drag that in. And the good thing about it is that even though these are recorded in different BPMs, it's 80 BPM and it will actually align itself. And that's the good thing about working with a click track, because when you add things, it's much easier to adjust things if some new want to change one part, maybe part a should be after Part B or something like that. You can shift things around much easier. I actually don't really want to use this someone who make my own drums. So with drums or just do the same thing, actually don't use the drum track or just put like software instrument instead. Then I go to drum kit. We can use, let's say retro rock, press Command and k. Then. Now I hear that this key is a tom sound. I actually wanted to kick sound and the snare sound. And it's because we're in the second octave. If you press this C here with a minus on it, you will be back to C1. And this is the first octave. On the first octave, on the first key on the keyboard here, we have a cake, and then under D, we have a snare. So many of these instruments, they are aligned in this way on C1, at the first note on the C key, in this case it says a, but this is the C key on a keyboard. C note. Press that. You've got to kick them. You got to REM sound on w. It got some hi-hats here In. This setup is more or less the same on many of these drum kits that you can choose here on the left side, if you couldn't find this library tool here, you mark this instrument here. You press top-left corner. This library will come up. Drum kit, click, go down, retro rock, or whatever drum kit you want. Okay, so we'll do the same principle again. We just press the record button. This is activated, we can see that and we wanted to go. So here we go. We can hear. It's like, Okay, there we go. These jumps are not tight. For a beginner. I would quantize drums and I quantize my drums as well. The downside with quantizing, you lose a little bit of the live feel of music, but it's quite convenient. You don't have to mark. For example, if you just want to quantize OneNote, you can. So you just mark that node and then you press quantize and then it's grid in. Now that we have quantized these, we can listen back and see. Now we want to maybe change the scent. You can go back to the library again. Then you go down to synthesizer. For example, you can press classics. And then eight is fizzy sinth. You can play around with these, you can quit click many different sounds depending on what style of music that you want. There are some sounds that sounds a little bit more out like hip hop. There are some sounds that sounds a little bit more like eighties or nineties far for stuff like that. In this case, this is something called a plugin. This plugin called alchemy was registered when we pressed on this, but it's not always like that. For example, when I press this synth or this space, this plugin was used instead. So let's go with that. And that is more or less what you need to know to record your idea. But now you can see that this red thing is showing on our stereo out signal. So this one to the right is our stereo out source. This is the sound that we hear. This on the left is just this channel that is being marked. Now, it's this channel is being marked. But as you can see this on the right, it doesn't change. This red thing is because as I said before, the sound has peaked and so it becomes distortion. All of these tracks have too loud volume, which means that the sum of all these volumes, they become louder than what is good for the songs sound. So basically how you fix that, then you lower all of these. You can press up here, drag all of these instead of the last, the last one here. And then you just pull them down too. They all go down and similar, that's put them at seven. We want to reset this bread here. We press once, then it's reset. So next time we play them, April, rate desert, a different number here. Basically, it's good. 7. Adding bass and save: After you've recorded your instruments, you basically use the same technique if you want a new audio track. For example, if you want to play guitar or if you can play guitar, then you use an audio track. If you have midi keyboard, USB keyboard or something like that, do you plug the, plug that in and you can use that as a midi and then you use software instrument. And then after that, you just continue like that if you want to base it, take another minute track. We can do that, for example. Then retro rock drums comes up, but we will actually want to base it, press base. It will take muted base. I will press this file and then I will press Option key. I hold my mouse button down and I hold the Option key down, and then I pull it down once that. Now these sounds that were actually from the retro rock attract, they exists now on the bass track. If you want to change it, you double-click on a track and you change the notes. And you just listen to if you want these. And so on and so on. If you want an extra note, maybe I want like one to pop up. I press Command than this pencil tool will show up. The same as in this window here. Here. But here the pencil tool is the most commonly used in the piano roll window if that's not marked, done. Just clicked pencil tool, just means that when you press, you can get a new note. If it's too long, you can actually go to the corner here you'll see this drug tool can make it shorter or longer, or you can record it live just like you did with the piano track. And you can quantize. If I went different strengths, I can change the velocity. Maybe I want to elect change the intensity and it goes either up or down. I think that's good for now. We have base, we have drums. Then we go over to factory, logic. Then mastering. This one is usually good. You can play around also here we can press different ones and try out how they sound like this preset here. You just press that and all of these plugins that will make it sound a little bit more full and the sound is getting a little bit more developed sounds. All right, now we wanted to save this to show our friends or just have a file of music that we can use. We press File, Bounce, and then projects section. Then you get a couple of options. Mp3, you can use that and you press Okay, the settings are usually fine, normalized on, that's fine by me. You can have it offline or real-time. If you press real-time, then you have to listen to the whole song. Wave is usually a good format to use if you're using Windows, usually wave is a safe, safe one to take. Let's take that. Let's use wave. Now we will get to files that we can send. One that is a lot bigger, bigger in size, and one MP3 file, or they're usually about one megabyte per minute gap. Let's press Okay, now you can choose where you want this to be stored. Right now, it will be stored in the bounce folder, in your project folder, which is probably in your logic folder that you chose from the beginning. But either way, if you're just don't want her more rebutted or you for some recent can't really find the files, then you just go to Save the file at documents or desktop or something like that. Press bounds. It goes through this section over here because this is the section that I wanted to save. Then you just go to that folder. Imbalances. We have two files. It says MP3 and we have a WAV file. And there you go. 8. Outro: Basically, just to go over it again, we have covered the metronome is good if you want to be able to adjust or shift things around and maybe record something else in this part or you don't want it at all. So you want to mess around with the project and cut it up and see what works in different places than a metronome is always nice. Also, when you add more tracks on top of it, I would recommend to go with a click track, even though it's difficult, maybe sometimes to record in perfect timing. So there you have a very basic way of making your first song. I best tip two would be the more you play around with this software, clicking on buttons, seeing if there is any other plugins. What sounds nice? Can I get inspiration with another sound? What does this sound? It maybe it's a horn, maybe it's some strings and you're like, Yeah, this sounds cool. I got this idea and then I click around and see how your inspiration can get further. And you know, as you click around, you'll probably find out more places. But these width, these basic things that I've showed you, you will be able to make a song and to present it to someone. So good luck with the music. Thank you for listening. And it will ask you if I want to save as I close the program. Yes, I do.