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 Logic
When 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 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 a lso 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 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 Monitor

Speakers

Mac Mini

Keyboard

Mouse

MiDi keyboard/audio
interface

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

Microphone
Microphone

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.

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.