From the course: Logic Pro X Essential Training

MIDI recording - Logic Pro Tutorial

From the course: Logic Pro X Essential Training

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MIDI recording

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- In this movie, we'll get introduced to the concepts behind recording a midi performance that you're playing on your midi controller. You're either going to input live middy from your attached midi keyboard, drum pad or via the typing keyboard or your iPad remote. Regardless, these concepts are the same. So here we have a simple project. The two tracks playing our audio backing tracks for the midi lead synth We're about to record. So let's make a lead synth track to record our midi performance into. Go ahead and create a new track, software instrument and we'll open the library. Here We'll choose synthesizer lead and let's choose classic Sawtooth lead. Now, once we have that established we can check out what that sounds like. (soft piano music) It's kind of biting lead that might stand out against these backing tracks. And we're going to record a midi performance into this track. Now, before we actually hit record, I want to take a look at a couple of projects, settings that might be useful. So I'm going to go into file, project settings, recording. Now here, we want to set a counting and this is automatically set up for one bar. And what that means is when I hit record logic will roll back one bar and give me some lead time. So I know when to come in, so we'll get one whole bar of blank count in, and then the recording will start. Now during that bar, we will have the option to hear the metronome so we can know where it's going. So the metronome is like a click track, that gives us a sense of time during the counting. And to see the settings for that. I can go up to the metronome settings and I want to make sure that click while recording is on. And what that'll do is when it rolls back and gives me that time to count in it'll give me four little clicks, one, two, three, four and then I can start recording. Another option is only during counting. If I don't want to hear the metronome during the actual part of the song, when I'm recording I could check only during counting but since the song doesn't really have drums it might be useful to hear the metronome throughout the whole recording. So I'm going to leave that option on. Remember these are project settings. These are not stored in your global press. So these will change depending on what project do you currently have open. Okay, that's good for the settings. Now let's get into recording. So the handy key command to begin any recording in logic is just to type the R button on your keyboard. So I'm going to do that in a second. And when I type R we'll hear that counting, the roll back we'll get four clicks and then the recording will begin. Okay, here we go. (upbeat music) And that's my recording. Now notice a couple things that happened. First of all, I made a midi region and you can see the little midi notes or midi events inside that midi region. And let me use the command arrows to zoom in a little bit zoom in horizontally and vertically here. And of course we can also double click on this to see those midi events in the piano roll. The piano roll is cool because it shows us velocity in color. So you can see where I hit the keyboard a little harder. I've got a harder velocity that's shown in red. It's actually the highest velocity of 127. Whereas the first note I played was a little bit softer and that's only a velocity of 66. So you get to see your velocity performance in the piano roll. Another thing that happened is the middy region name follows the patch name. So because our patch in this track is classic Sawtooth lead. Our midi region is also called classic Sawtooth lead. Of course you can always rename this, use the toolbox, take your text tool and you're free to rename your midi regions once you record them. But know that it follows the patch name or the track name I should say. So if I had renamed the track it would follow that name as well. Okay, So now what if I liked my performance but I want to fix one little section. Okay, So that's called punch recording. That's when you are able to set a defined parameter for logic to let you punch in and replace a specific section. So let me show you how to do punch recording in logic on a midi recording. So, one thing you have to do is set up logic to replace and that's done by enabling this button in the toolbar. There is a replace button. You can also type the forward slash to enable replace. And when that's on, it means that whatever you record over will actually replace over and not merge with the existing recording. So we want that on to do this type of operation. And the other thing we want on is our auto punch. We have to tell logic where to punch in and punch out. We don't currently see the parameters for that. I have to actually show that. And so I'm going to go up to the toolbar and right-click here. We're going to choose customize control bar and display and we're going to show the auto punch mode. It's not currently showing. So the second I click that you saw that little button shows up here and I'll click, okay, and turn that button on. And now we have a nice new little lane that shows up at the top. And this is our range for in and out of where we're going to replace a section. So I want to replace between bars five and six. So I'm going to move this over. And this means that it'll punch in at bar four and punch out at bar six. Now I don't even have to move the play head, as long as that range is established and second I hit the R button. It'll give me that count in time, the lead up time, and I'll be able to replace that section. Here it goes. (upbeat music) Okay, So I played that new section. As you can see, it made a new midi region. It sat there in place. It replaced the old one, so the old one's gone and I was able to punch in that section there. Now, if I want it to then merge all these back together. I can select them all and I can type T and I can say glue tool and just click anywhere and it makes one new region from the three. And we're done with that. We can turn off the auto punch and the replace. And I want to show you one other cool feature about midi recording. And I love this. This is one of my favorite things in logic. Now, pretend you're just playing along to the track, you're not actively in record. You're just kind of jamming along. So I'm going to hit play and play a little part, even though I'm not recording. (upbeat music) Well, that's a cool little riff I wish I recorded that. Darn, well it turns out that logic is actually keeping, the last line you played the last set of midi events you played, it holds that and its memory. And you can get back to it. Even if you didn't record it at the time by typing Shift + R you can think of it as like Shift remember. Shift + R and it will actually remember the last thing you played And there it is out in the main window. The last thing you played even though you weren't actively in record mode. So now we've seen how easy it is to get going with midi recording. And don't worry if you're like me and not that good of a keyboard player, as we'll see in movies to come. The cool thing about midi is that once you get your performance recorded you can then tweak the notes, the feel and the timing to your heart's content.

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