Chapter 3: Recording Audio

The good news is that Logic Pro gives you a bunch of ways to record audio, using your voice, guitar, saxophone, or any other "real" source. The bad news is that Logic Pro gives you a bunch of ways to record audio, like your voice, guitar, saxophone, or any other "real" source. Seriously though, there are advantages to each method, and you may very well take advantage of several different workflows.

Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics:

• The Project Templates
• Setting Preferences
• Project settings
• Cycle recording options
• Recording without cycling
• Saving a template

This is the first chapter in which you will want to use one of my projects that I have provided for you, Chapter 3.logicx. For now, though, let's begin by opening one of the included templates.

NOTE:

The project and media files for the chapters are available at this link, https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Jumpstart...

The Project Templates

If you have set your default action for opening Logic to Ask, as I suggested in Chapter 1, Beginning with Logic Pro 10.6. you will see you have the option of New from Template. In Project Templates, you see Hip Hop, Electronic, Songwriter, Orchestral, Multi-Track, and Music for Picture. Each has a description and if you open the Details disclosure triangle, you see even more options to tweak before you open it:

Figure 3.1 – Project Templates

I recommend you eventually take the time to explore all the templates. I think for teaching you about recording audio, Songwriter is the way to go:

Figure 3.2 – The Songwriter project template

As you can see, the template creates a Drummer track with a Drummer region, a sampler software instrument with a Steinway Grand Piano sound, three audio tracks for the task of recording vocals or guitars, and a bunch of plug-ins, with the Library open. The only two I will...

Setting Preferences

Remember, any changes you make to these are global to Logic Pro and therefore affect past, present, and future projects.

Audio Preferences

Under the Logic Pro menu, navigate to Preferences | Audio | Devices. If you have not already selected an audio interface, as we did when opening the template, this is where you will assign it. Core Audio should be checked, and if you make any changes in this tab, you need to click the Apply button to apply the changes:

Figure 3.3 – Enabling a Core Audio Device in the Audio Preferences

The I/O Buffer Size (In/Out) has a range of choices, from a low of 32 to a high of 1024. The lower the size you choose, the lower the latency. Latency is the amount of delay you hear when playing a software instrument or recording an audio part through plug-ins. So why not just choose the lowest number, 32, because who wants more latency?

The answer is that the lower the buffer size the harder your computer has to work...

Project Settings

Under the File menu, navigate to Project Settings | General.

There is a new project setting for dynamic loading of plugins as you need them, which you may find helpful for large projects, and it is on by default. If you don't want this, go to General | Opening Project | Only load plug-ins needed for project playback, and uncheck it. Unless you save it as a template though, you will have to keep doing this, which, frankly, I wish were not the case.

For now, we can leave the Project Settings. Because I am just going to record a vocal and a MIDI piano part, I will delete the other tracks from my Track List.

Setting levels

I am going to get a bit geeky here for a minute and talk about how Logic handles incoming signals. Logic has a floating point architecture, which means it adjusts its headroom automatically to incoming signal, so that any channel strip can go into the red without creating digital distortion, except the Stereo Output.

When you are...

Recording with a Cycle

Cycle recording is recording the same bars over and over without pausing in between attempts. Logic gives you several options for a cycle recording workflow.

Cycle recording with Take Folders

Take Folders was the default choice for overlapping recordings in Cycle mode in our Recording Preferences, so there's nothing I need to change now. To set the cycle, I select my piano region and press U and I am ready to go.

I am going to sing Mary Had A Little Lamb three times without stopping, each time a bit differently. I make sure that the track is armed by clicking the R button on the track header or at the bottom of the channel strip in the Inspector (the flashing R in the track header) and I either press the Record button in the transport or press R on my keyboard, and away I go! If you have downloaded the Chapter 3.logicx project, you can see and hear what I have described.

What I have now created is called a Take Folder. I will be able to use...

Recording without a Cycle

All three options, Create Take Folder, Create New Track, and Create Track Alternative, are the same as with cycle recording, but you stop in between takes.

Let's say that you are now pretty happy with your audio recording, whichever method you used, but there is a specific section you are not happy with that you would like to replace and have Logic help you with it automatically. For this task, Autopunch is your friend.

Return to Customize Control and Display and under Modes and Functions, check both Autopunch and Replace. You will now see two buttons to the right of the LCD. The X toggles Replace on and off and the up and down arrows toggle Autopunch:

Figure 3.10 – Autopunch and Replace buttons in the control bar

Now you will understand one of the reasons I recommended in the previous chapter enabling Sample Rate or Punch Locators in the LCD. You can see the red bar that shows in the punch locators, and you can...

Tape recorder style punching in/out

Many of us who come from the world of tape recorders still like recording along and simply punching in and punching out when we deem it necessary, without stopping. In Logic Pro, we do this with Quick Punch and using Record Toggle.

Hold the mouse down on the Record button, check Allow Quick Punch-in, and switch to Record/Record Toggle. Or, with Quick Punch-in enabled, instead of pressing R to go in and out of record, press the asterisk key. This method is still especially helpful when you are running Logic but someone else is performing.

Recording without a click with Smart Tempo

While it certainly is possible to record to a click without the result sounding mechanical, it is freeing to record without one. Musicians refer to this technique as Rubato, the traditional Italian name.

You can record both audio and MIDI with software instruments freely, but let's try it here with audio with a Logic Pro feature that I believe is simply amazing:

1. Set your project tempo to approximately what you want it to be.
2. In the Control bar's LCD, change the setting from Keep Tempo to Adapt Tempo.
3. Record!

I recorded the first phrase of the Battle Hymn of the Republic because it's public domain and has strong downbeats, which really helps Smart Tempo's analysis. Here, you can see the result:

Figure 3.12 – A Rubato vocal recording

Smart Tempo has correctly analyzed the tempo I sang and created a tempo map. Now I can play subsequent parts and hear the tempo...

Saving a template

To save a template, follow these steps:

1. Save your project.
2. Press Command + A to select all the regions and delete them.
3. Press F to open the browser and in the Project tab, select all the audio regions and delete them. This will not delete them from your drive.
4. Under the File menu, choose Save as Template and name it.
5. Close the project without saving it again so that the project will remember the audio files' locations that are in the project.

The next time you open Logic Pro, you will see a folder named My Templates, and there it will be.

Summary

You have now been introduced to Logic Pro's included Project Templates, with some recommendations for your Preferences. As you discovered, there are also Project Settings for you to choose from that will affect how you record audio. Setting levels properly is important. Finally, you can record with or without cycling with different workflows, as explained, and fix takes with Autopunch and old-fashioned tape-recorder-style punch in/out. When you have Project Settings and track choices that you like, you may well want to save them as a template.

In the next chapter, we will explore the options for soloing and muting tracks and regions, as well as renaming them. We will learn how to copy and repeat regions, and the effect the Snap and Drag settings have on the behavior. We will also learn about the Audio Track Editor and Audio File Editor, how they differ, and where they are useful.