Logic Pro X - Making your first track [tutorials by @grizzle]

Tutorial Outcomes:
Basic arrangement techniques (copying, looping)
Exporting your track as an mp3

Hello again! If you read my first tutorial that's great, and welcome back! If you didn't then go and check it out and then come back here... Today we're going to take our understanding from last time and now look at building a whole track. We'll be making some instrumental hip-hop as an example, which you can upload to dsound or Soundcloud and show off to the world! We'll be keeping it simple for now using Apple Loops, but will soon be adding to your skills in future tutorials...

OK, open Logic Pro from the dock and select 'New Empty Project' from the pop-up. Hit create on the next window to select a 'Software Instrument' track. You'll then have a blank canvas in front of you just like last time.

Before we start let's free up some whindo space. At the top left-hand side of the screen there's a button that looks like a filing cabinet, and another with an i in a circle. These select 'Library' options and track Inspector options which we don't need right now, so turn them off to free up some window space.

Open the Loop Browser on the right-hand side of the screen. We're going to click on 'Genre' underneath 'Loop Packs: All Genres' and select 'Genre', and then 'Hip Hop' as our style of choice.

We can then click on a loop title and it will loop, giving you a feeling for how it will work in your track. You will see some of these loops are blue and some yellow. We'll come to that shortly...

Below the list of genre there's a search box. Type 'bass' in the box to search for all the bass loops. I'm going to choose 'Knockout Synth Bass' Like before I'm going to drag it into my track window. You will see if you try and drag it onto the existing track it will display an error message as you cannot put an audio track onto a software instrument track, so drag it directly underneath and a new track will be created for you.

Let's add some rhythm. In the search box type 'drum' to bring up all of the drum loops. Listen to some against the bass to see what works. I'm going to choose 'Anton- First Class'. You will notice this a yellow track, which is a 'Drummer' track. Drag this and add it to your track underneath the bass line:

You will see now that the drum loop is twice as long as the bass line. We're going to loop the bass line so it's the same as the drum loop. Hover your mouse or pointer over the top-right of the bass region and you'll see the icon change to a loop icon. Click and drag the pointer to make the loop 8-bars long.

We can now also drag the right-hand of the loop region (the yellow bar at the top) from 5 to 9 to make our looping region 8-bars long.

Let's add some more content. Clear the search box and type 'guitar'. Listen to some of the loops. I'm choosing 'City of Angeles Melody Guitar'. Drag it to an empty space underneath your drums. Extend the loop to fill the space like we did before, clicking the top-right corner and dragging it. We now have an 8-bar loop with 3 tracks as shown below. Well done for getting this far!

We're going to create a little arrangement now. We'll think of this as ABA. What we've done so far is A. We'll change it, add to it, make it more exciting, that will be B. We'll then bring it down again for our ending.

Here's a simple technique. Click and drag over the tracks you've made so far to select them. Hold down the 'alt' key on your keyboard and click and drag the tree tracks you've selected so the copied loops start at 9. Hit 'alt' again and copy the loops again so they start at 17. You now have 24-bars of music.

I'm going to add a couple of new tracks to add some interest. I'm going to take the 'City of Angeles Beat' and add that to bars 9-17. I've also added a brass part 'City Nights Brass 01'. The last section was given more interest by adding 'Crossroads Bells'. You may also notice that I shortened the bassline at the end, removing the faster ending to the loop so the track comes to a more natural finish. Again I did this by dragging the top right hand corner.

It's still a little rough around the edges but we've only covered a little, I've been doing this for 20 years and still learning! Let's make an mp3 of what we have so far...

Go to File at the top menu and choose Bounce > Project or Section. Ensure MP3 is selected and highlighted. Choose your start and end points. Our track starts at 1 and finishes at 25 so type 25 in the End box.
You can change to Bit Rate if you want a higher or lower quality mp3, and if you select Write ID3 tags you can select ID3 Settings and add a song title, artist name, album name etc. Once you've done all of this hit OK and save your file where you want it.

OK, that ends todays tutorial, I hope you found it interesting and at the right pace. I'll be taking it a step further next time and introducing new features of Logic. Make sure you follow me so you don't miss it!

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