Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
If you're searching for answers on topics such as: what is mixing in music, how I can learn to mix music, how to start music production, how can I get better at music production, what is music production, or maybe how to get into the music industry or even just how to release music. Either way, you’re my kind of person and there's something in this podcast for you!
I'm Marc Matthews and I host the Inside The Mix Podcast. It's the ultimate serial podcast for music production and mixing enthusiasts. Say goodbye to generic interviews and tutorials, because I'm taking things to the next level. Join me as I feature listeners in round table music critiques and offer exclusive one-to-one coaching sessions to kickstart your music production and mixing journey. Get ready for cutting-edge music production tutorials and insightful interviews with Grammy Award-winning audio professionals like Dom Morley (Adele) and Mike Exeter (Black Sabbath). If you're passionate about music production and mixing like me, the Inside The Mix is the podcast you can't afford to miss!
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Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
#162: 5 Essential Logic Pro X Tips to Boost Your Workflow and Creativity in Music Production
Struggling to improve your workflow in Logic Pro? Whether you want to speed up your music production workflow or learn essential Logic Pro tips for beginners, EP 162 of the Inside The Mix podcast has you covered. Discover the game-changing techniques that can revolutionise your music production!
If you're passionate about music production, this episode is an absolute must-listen. Join me as we dive deep into five revolutionary Logic Pro workflow tips designed to streamline your creative process and boost productivity in 2024. From saving time with MIDI Chase to transforming your sound with MIDI note flam, these tips will enhance your music production game.
In this episode, I’ll guide you through:
- MIDI Chase: Ensure MIDI notes play even when the play head is midway through a note, saving time and avoiding playback issues.
- MIDI Note Flam: Humanize chords by slightly staggering the notes to create a natural, human-like feel, or generate complex arpeggios.
- Track Auto Color: Organize large sessions by automatically assigning colours to tracks, making it easier to identify stems.
- Auto-Create Sampler Instrument: Drag audio files into Logic Pro to quickly create a sampler instrument, saving time in building custom sounds.
- Enable the Third Tool: Assign a third tool to the right mouse button for quick access to additional functions, improving workflow efficiency.
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Hey, inside the Mix podcast fans. It's Waz here from For the Cause and I'm an artist specialising in synth rock. I recently completed Mark's Logic Pro Mixing Tips for Synth Pop Producers course and I've learned some amazing techniques that have really helped me focus on several key elements of my mixes. I've learned to get the foundations, like the balance, right and gained some valuable insight into how to apply corrective EQ. One thing that really stood out to me was using the gain tool instead of faders to set my balance. It's completely transformed how I approach mixing, especially when it comes to drums and bass and setting those relative to each other before I touch anything else.
Was:Since taking the course, I've used some of the tips and methods in my mixing. Seeing Mark's methods has inspired me to be a little less rigid in my thinking and a little more open with the plugins I apply. I definitely recommend this course to any producer or musician looking to take their mixes to the next level. It's a game changer. Thanks, mark, for putting this together. Keep up the great work. You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews.
Marc Matthews:Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Hello, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, a big welcome. Make sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts and if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and that notification bell so you get notified of new episodes. And, as always, a huge welcome back to the returning listeners and viewers if you're watching this on YouTube.
Marc Matthews:So approximately a year ago, I dropped the episode episode 82, 5 Essential Logic Pro Workflow Tips and it turns out it's the most popular episode ever of the podcast, which is amazing. So I thought a year down the line, approximately a year, maybe longer than that, I think it might be longer than a year, to be fair, I would record an update. So this is going to be an update episode, as I've got and I use different sort of workflow tips more than others now. So this is going to be an update for that. Episode 82, five essential Logic Pro workflow tips. So go check out that episode after this one and see the difference between the two. So this one I've waffled it now as I usually do this is going to be five essential Logic Pro workflow tips. 2024, let's say so, let's dive in.
Marc Matthews:So this is tip one and it's called MIDI Chase. Basically, this solves the issue whereby the playhead is midway through a MIDI note and it doesn't play. So I'll do this now. So I've got this region here, say region, this MIDI region, and I'm going to play it and it's halfway between it was halfway through the note, basically and it won't play any audio until it gets to the beginning, to the beginning of the next MIDI note. So I'm going to play it. Okay, so to solve that, we do this we go to File, we go to Project Settings, we go to MIDI, we go to Chase and then we go to Notes. So it's MIDI Chase and then Notes. Make sure that is enabled. And now when I play it midway through a MIDI note, it plays, which is fantastic, because before doing this and I was trialing different patches and sounds. I'd always have to wait for the beginning of a new midi note or sequence of notes for the sound to be triggered, and now I don't have to wait for that. So that's tip number one to enable midi chase.
Marc Matthews:Tip number two is called MIDI note flam, and basically we can use this to humanize a chord or chord progression or a MIDI chord or chord progression. So these three notes here make a chord and they are quantized to the grid and if I play it, all three notes of this chord are going to play at the same time. Okay, but what if I want to slightly stagger them? I can do this. I'm going to select all the notes like so, and then I'm going to come to region and it says main up in the inspector on the left. You need to make sure that you've got it quantized and then down. If we scroll down you've got more, it might be collapsed, so I'll expand it. And you've got QFLAM, so I'm going to click on that and then basically you can drag it by ticks and it will start. For those of you watching this, you'll start to see the notes moving and they are staggering like steps. So if you go minus, then from the top down, it will shuffle the notes to the right. If you go the other way, if I go plus, from the bottom up, it will shuffle the notes to the right. So if I play it now, probably let's emphasize it, let's over-egg it there we go. You can hear it makes it more human. And you can go further and then create an arpeggio sort of effect with this. So this is going from the lower note and then moving the higher notes to the right with the plus value, and if I go with a minus value, do the opposite. So the higher notes and then it's moving the lower notes to the right, kind of like descending if you will. So if I play it now, in fact let's drag it a bit further, there we go. Quite a cool effect. Okay, so that's MIDI note flam.
Marc Matthews:Tip number three is track auto color. So this is one that I started to use recently because I found it more and more of a bore like to drag in stems and then change the color manually, and I was like surely I could just drag them all in and have Logic do it for me and auto color, and you can. So what do I mean by this? So I've got these stems here, these midnight stems, deep blue, and I'm going to drag them into this session. I'm going to create new tracks and it does it. And you've got these muted blue. They're all the same color, pretty uninspiring, right. But we can change this so that Logic automatically colors them in this nice cascade of color. So I'm going to command-Z I was going to say control them and I'm going to change the settings. So we go to Logic Pro, we go to Settings and we go to View and then we go to Tracks and Appearance.
Marc Matthews:So Track Color, I'm going to set as Auto-Assign 24. You can do 96 colors, but then the discrete colors. It can be quite difficult to differentiate. So I'm going to go with 24 to make it obvious Region color as track color. So that means when I move an audio region from track to track, it will assume that track's color. Save me having to do it. And you can do the same with markers as well. So I'm going to individually, or rather auto-assign markers too. So close that down. Now I'm going to do the same again.
Marc Matthews:I'm going to drag these stems across. Create, or rather use existing. No, I don't need to use existing tracks because there are none. Well, there's one, create new tracks. And now I've got this lovely cascade of color for those of you listening from top to bottom and I'm going to delete one in the middle randomly and I'm going to drag one up from the bottom and I'll describe how it has taken on the color of that track. And I'm going to delete one in the middle randomly and I'm going to drag one up from the bottom and I'll describe how it has taken on the color of that track. So I really like this one. I really like this one because I'm all about efficiency and organization. So that is tip tip rather I was going to say track. That is tip number three and that is auto color tracks.
Marc Matthews:Tip number four is auto create a sampler instrument and I use this in almost every session. It's so quick to create a sampler instrument in Logic Pro. So in the finder window I've got these tom samples, I've got six of them and I want to create a tom sampler instrument. So I select these, drag them into Logic and I've dragged them to the tracks section, the track header section, in Logic and you have to wait a second and then it will come up with this menu so I can select a sampler chromatic map, sampler optimized map or a drum machine designer, and I like to use sampler chromatic map. The optimized map will change the pitch and I don't want that. So I'm going to select chromatic map and drop. Now it opens the instrument Sampler instrument rather and I can trigger these samples. So a really quick way to create a sampler instrument in Logic Pro.
Marc Matthews:My fifth and final tip is the third tool tip, and I use this more than anything, and it was a game changer. I hate to use the word game changer because it's thrown about a lot, but it really was for my workflow. So by default in Logic, you'll have two tools available to you at any time, and the left click is usually your pointer tool and then your option click is whatever you select, as is the marquee tool. I say the left click is usually the pointer tool, it's whatever you select it as. So for me, the left click is the pointer tool and the option click is the marquee tool. Now I've got a third tool here, so I've added one. I've enabled a third tool, which is the right click tool, and this is gain. So I use this for when I'm controlling the gain of an audio region. So how did I get that third one.
Marc Matthews:Or if you want to disable it, you go up to Logic Pro and you go to settings and you go to general. Here you click on editing and then you've got right mouse button and then you can select. And I've got it selected. Or rather, I've got the from the dropdown menu here is assignable to a tool. So if I were to, I'm going to do open tools menu, opens tool menu. If I change that, you'll see at the top, if you're watching this, I've now only got tool two, rather tools available to me. So I'm going to change this to is assignable to a tool. Easy as that. So I'll do it once more Logic Pro settings, general editing right mouse button is assignable to a tool. And I really do, having three tools available to me because, particularly with podcast editing, it is extremely useful. So that is the fifth and final tip, that is, to assign a tool to the right mouse click or the third tool tip.
Marc Matthews:So there we go, folks. Those are my five Logic Pro workflow tips for 2024. That is the update. So, number one we've got MIDI note chase so we can trigger the sound of a MIDI instrument midway through a note. We've got MIDI note chase so we can trigger the sound of a MIDI instrument midway through a note. We've got MIDI note flam so we can humanize a chord or chord progression. We've got auto track color so we can drag stems and audio into a project and it will automatically assume a color. We can quickly create a sampler instrument by dragging audio into, or or rather onto, the tracks region in Logic Pro, and we can select from three different options, and then we can also enable the third tool. Tip If you've enjoyed this episode, folks, I want to hear from you, I want to hear your reviews and recommendations, and it will be part of the podcast.
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