How to Record and Produce in Logic Studio

How to Record and Produce in Logic Studio Alright what’s up everyone this is Mike Dairy and this is a new episode of rock guitar power TD. Today we’re looking on my computer and I’m going to show you how I edit a range and record my ideas so that I can you know work on my songs and keep things organized. So what we’re looking at right now is logic. I use logic to do most of my production when I’m ready. I use Pro Tools when I actually recorded and finalize stuff mostly because my Pro Tools rig is much higher quality but logic is a little bit easier and a little bit more fun to work with so I’ve been using this a lot more so let me jump right into. What we’re looking at a bunch of things that I started recording but whenever really I start to record an idea what I first do is record the basic idea and then find out what tempo it is so this first chunk of audio we’re looking at right here is just me when I just recorded it and let it play. So if I play this back what we’ll listen to is just me laying down on the idea. So that was the main chord progression as this plays I actually have a metronome that allows me to tap the tempo so I could see what the tempo is and after I let that play and figure it out we could see down here that the tempo ended up being 110 okay. Now it’s very, very important to do everything to a metronome or drum beat and you want to make sure that you’re doing very evenly so that you can keep ideas organized. You look at the grid we consider these lines are broken up into bars which helps me you know when I got a cut and paste and move things around I know exactly how many bars I’m working with. So after I find out the tempo what I’ll do is either use a metronome. If I enable this and then record you could hear that I have a metronome but metronomes are a little bit boring to work with so what I usually do is immediately when I’m about to record I’ll find a drum beat to record along with. And in Logic it’s really cool, I just go to this button that says media and then I could type in— now these are all different loops so if I want drums, let’s say it’s maybe world and percussion or drums. I forgot where exactly I did about but I think I put latin in and here we have funky latin drum and I think now what I could do is just hit these and sample them and the one I found was this one right here. So what I could do is just click this and drag it and drop it right on to my sequencer here and then I have my drum beat so that’s how I find the loop and then lay it in. Now as you can see I can move this around and this function allows me to repeat it very easily so once I find it and lay it in I just put it right here and then copied it for a whole bunch of bars for a long, long time. Now what I do on the bottom here is record my actual takes so now I’m doing it to a natural drum beat. So I’ll just record that a whole bunch of times and then what I’ll do is use a repeat feature up here that I could loop a certain amount of bars. So what I’ll do is find out how long the rift is which is actually just two bars long so I’ll highlight 2 bars and repeat it and then what we’ll do is just search for good two bars sound good when I loop it and this was it. So then I could just cut and cut these two bars out and then repeat that so I could just take this. It will be my loop for that main rhythm and then I can move it wherever I want. Alright, and then I did the same thing with this other chord progression and this one sounds like this. Alright so then I did the same thing. I found 2 bars right here and cut them out, so now what I do over here on this rhythm track is that I start to arrange the rhythm the way I want it so what I end up doing is having this first part repeat 4 times. So that’s a total of 8 bars alright, and then I take the 2nd rhythm and put it in for 4 bars, okay. So the total loop is going to be 12 bars long which will be from here to here. Okay about there, okay. So that will be my 12 bar loop and then what I could do if I want is to actually just bring this over and loop it, alright. So now I could just let this loop and then I could Jam to it. As you could see I copied in piece of this 12 bar loop a few times just to kind of extended out, but now as long as I have this 12 bars cut out I have a loop aid so now what I want to practice this should just keep playing and I could jam on top of it. Alright great so that’s all there is to it really, that’s how I start off with this rhythm and this is the one that you saw me soloing to in the last episode, alright so after I figured this whole rhythm out I’m going to load up another one to show you now this is what it looks like after I clean it up a little bit okay. I have the main rhythm that keeps repeating and here’s the actual solo that I recorded from another video or from another take. So this is just a drum beat. This is the main rhythm and then here’s the solo y. You could see I use some coloring to help know which track is which and actually there’s a feature here that’s hiding all the other tracks. Okay we could see here these other tracks I had. I don’t erase it just in case I need to pull something from them but there’s a feature that allows me to mute them and then I could hide them so I don’t need to see them. So this keeps my production very clean. And that’s the basic idea in how I you know start recording and new ideas. I do everything to you know 1 or 2 different drum takes. Now these are just the basic loops they’re not that you know unique but what I’ll do when I’m done arranging the song is hire a real drummer to actually you know work and do live drums but this how actually you know recording and compose the piece so that I can get all the parts and all the ideas out. So that’s basically it, one thing I wanted to show you is really quick on the website where you could find this backing track because I made it available for anyone who wants to Jam to it. So if you go to RockGuitarPower.com/guitarlessons this is where the rockguitarpower program is. Up top here are all the page programs but on the bottom right we have the free contact members area. We have song lessons on a play chords back and tracks and all these others. When I go to backing tracks, it’s going to take me to where you could access. Now if you’re not a member just try to click on this. It will ask you, you know if you’re not a member that you could join for free you just got to enter your name and email so do those steps and then you’ll be able to click on it and gain access and this is what it looks like when you get here. So here is all the backing tacks, we have some for blue or some for rock but we got the bottom here we have RGPTV and this is soling rhythm in B minor so you could come here press play and this loop is about 5 minutes long so you just let it play and jam on it. So in this tells you the chord progression and you know what key it’s in. So that’s about it. I hope that helps, have fun and we’ll see you in the new episode really soon. Be sure to leave comments. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you want to see more of and I’ll definitely hook you guys up. Take care.