Logic Pro #16 - Electric Guitar, Amp Designer & Guitar Recording
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- In this video, I demonstrate the following:
1. How to properly set up and gain stage your DI guitar input signal
2. Explain the difference between low-Z and high-Z signals
3. How to use Amp Designer
4. How to add stomp boxes in your signal chain
5. How to record electric guitar using take folders and quick swipe comping
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#logicpro #logicprox #tutorial
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro & Setup
3:19 Sponsor Segment
3:50 Audio Track, Tuner
6:08 Amp Designer Overview
10:48 Add Stompboxes
11:55 Record Guitar
13:52 Record & Comp Guitar Parts
17:02 Track Alternative for Take Folders
18:07 Final Result, Trim & Fade
Just recently started getting into setting my own studio and recording / mixing / mastering on my own. This channel is one of the reasons I had newfound belief that I could do it all myself instead of paying loads of money at professional studios. Thank you for putting out these videos, it has helped enormously on my music journey :)
You have made this series at the perfect time for me, thank you
Your level of detail and explanation is extremely helpful to your viewers. Thank you for doing this!
I've been using Logic Pro for sometime now, but I love finding out new ways to support the work flow. An excellent tutorial.
Fantastic, just loving these lessons, so inspiring x
Being no guitar player I had no idea about this. But it’s important to know about it, as I could need it faster than I think! Thanks a lot! #17 is also here already. It must wait till tomorrow. 😊
Thanks for all your tutorials. They have been of great help for me.
Thx a lot for the enlightening intro on setup and instrument/line input! Small, but important detail.
Excellent and well put together video. This was easy to understand and step by step detailed. Thanks so much.
Your videos are so good. Thank you!
Super helpful video, really appreciate your sharing!
Another fantastic tutorial.. thank you
Your videos are very helpful and thank you for taking the time to help others learn.
So clear and straightforward, thanks for this video!
Great job on this tutorial!
you are truly living in your purpose man
Very good (and accurate) video with good advice. I've gone a more expensive route, which some guitarists might or might not want to consider. If you buy an HX Stomp, you can buy the HX Native plugin for only $99. The Stomp is an idiot-proof box for recording guitars (plug and play) and you can record (via USB) a stereo patch from the Stomp AND a mono or stereo direct input signal at the same time, which can then be run through HX Native plugin. HX Native is a full-fledged Helix in software form - identical sounds as the $1,699 Helix (but no foot switches and buttons). Best of all, HX Native is not hard on your CPU - I made a video where I got it running on a 2009 white MacBook running Logic 10.3.3. Pretty damn amazing for modern software!
These videos are so great, I’m going to have to buy a guitar! 🎸😉
Thanks Josh.
Terrific, so helpful.Thank you.
precisely what i was looking for! thanks a ton!
Great video
King Of Tutorials
Great tips !
Thanks for making this video
Thank you sir for this tutorial. New sub here!
Thank you so much.
great vid
Loving this series - will there be an edition on Flex time or general time editing?
Still using Jam96k. Very satisfied with it.
good job.
Thanks
Great stuff. 👍🇦🇺
Great video! I always like to put a vst TSE 808 pedal with default settings in front of any guitar plug-ins, the sound becomes very saturated as when playing a real amplifier
Thank you! I’m wondering how to best record an acoustic guitar that has amplification built (Taylor ES system). Do you still approach like an acoustic/mic audio signal or do you go the electric guitar route?
The Fluff amp sim is really good for distorted guitars and it’s free
Hello. Your videos are great and helpful. I wanted to mention that, in context of gain staging, I like to click on “Input Metering” to ensure my input gain is in an acceptable level. I check this separately from the gain staging on interface. It helps greatly in mixing.
Input Metering? Or Pre-Fader Metering? I typically use pre-fader metering (as I did in this video) to make sure I'm seeing the full scale of the input signal, without any volume adjustments, but I do have to bypass plugins to see it correctly.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy yes sorry that’s what I meant. I didn’t notice you were using it in the video. My mistake. Great stuff you’re doing with these videos. I’ve been using Presonus Studio One 5 for months via PreaonusSphere but I’ve gone back to using Logic Pro 10. I’m stuck however using the last compatible version for High Sierra as my iMac is from 2011. It’s still great though and more than enough.
Very nice! Regarding input level on the audio interface, for me when using a guitar with hot active pickups, even when input level dialed all the way down, the signal is still red lining. To solve that I have to turn down the volume knob on the guitar itself. Or maybe I should get some kind of mixer to put in front of the interface and control the input level that way...
A volume pedal before input can assist with that. OR, you can try plugging the guitar into a line level input instead of an instrument input. Active pickups will often have preamps built in, so the signal level is really hot, and the only option is to use a line level input. On many interfaces the line level input is the same as instrument, you just have to select "line" either on the interface itself, or in the interface's control software. However, on some interfaces, like my Symphony Desktop, I have to select a line level input on the unit, and then plug the guitar into the back of the unit in a shared XLR/1/4" input, rather than the instrument input on the front.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy Thank you for that very helpful answer! I have an aging 10 year old Focusrite Solo interface, so I will run down to the music store and get me a Scarlett Solo instead. Then I can use the "inst" button like you showed in the video! Thanks again, love your content! 👍
I ❤
Great tip on the track alternatives.
I’m a drummer not a guitarist. Does it matter if your guitar is active or passive before you plug into the instrument input on the interface? Also would you need an active DI box for an active guitar?
There are some guitars with active pickups that may redline the signal on an instrument input. In those cases, you can either try putting some sort of volume pedal before the input to attenuate the signal level, OR try plugging the guitar into line level input. DI Box will also work as well.
Hi Mark great video as always, I noticed you are not getting any amp noise when selecting amps not even when you are adding pedals! I get a lot of noise how are you doing it?
when setting up to record DI guitar and bass, is it again best to roughly aim for -12dB, and also turn on pre-fader metering? absolutely loving this series
Did u find an answer?
@@houseofgraceworship nope, but this is what I’ve been doing haha
I didnt follow the comping together of takes bit around 16 mins in. Is there another video you do that expands on that?
Check out #14 in the series. I go over take folders and quick swipe comping in that video. Just focusing in as an introduction to that feature.
Hi there. Really enjoy your videos. Quick question: You recommend having the gain on the instrument input set to minimum, but isn’t the sound of amp designer very much going to depend on the input? I have been placing a level meter at the input and trying to dial in something around -18…-12 dBFS, assuming this would be the “sweet spot” for the logic plugins to follow. Thanks for all the great content.
Great question! The input level going into Amp Designer, or any amp sim, or any real amp for that matter, will absolutely affect the tone you get on the output, 100% correct. However, instrument and line level signals technically speaking are "fully open" signals, meaning they don't actually require any added gain. It's not like a microphone where you have to pull up the gain to 50% bare minimum to get a decent recording signal, for most sound sources.
The level I'm getting from my DI guitar signal is precisely in between -18 and -12 dBFS peak with the gain at zero on my interface. In fact, if I play a little harder it will easily go above -12 dBFS. So the instrument level signal is already where it needs to be. Although, your guitar pickups, whether they are passive or active, and whether you use any pedals before the amp will also affect the signal level, and the tone on the output. So you may get some variation from guitar to guitar. Especially with some basses, I find I need to pull up the gain just a touch to make the signal a bit more "healthy" on input.
Now, I did mention that I will sometimes pull up the gain a bit if I want to saturate the tone a bit more, and that's totally fine. People do it all the time. But the key takeaway here is that you don't want to add too much gain to the input signal of the guitar, otherwise the transients will start to get truncated, and this will give you a "floppy", "mushy" tone with no punch or definition. So that's why I recommend recording DI guitar with the gain all the way down to start, and if you need to/want to, you can always add the gain plugin before your amp sim for extra input gain, or add a stomp box pedal before the amp sim for some extra "umph". If you record with the gain too high, and transients get truncated, and you can't really take back that gain in post.
There are other options out there too for changing the impedance of your guitar signal on input, to get a different tone. For example the Cloudlifter ZI is a great option for this. Rather than just adding gain, it actually gives you a variable impedance control which vastly changes the tone on input. Great tool for guitarists. I reviewed it a long time ago, and probably used it improperly, but still a great tool for shaping the input tone, without adding gain.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy hey. Thanks for the really thorough reply 👍
If i get lots of noise between playing could this be a lead problem?
A question: On Output R, why would you not just copy and paste the audio from Output L? What’s the purpose of recording the guitar all over again for R pan?
Thanks. Love these videos :)
Great question! If you don't re-record a separate guitar part, it will just sound exactly the same, but louder. The stereo effect doesn't come from the panning alone, it comes from the variation between the left and right guitar parts. Another mistake I've seen a lot of in my mixing clients.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy perfect, thank you so much
I notice at 12:52 there is a message that says, "Only the clean DI signal is recorded when using this method. Amp Designer comes after the region in the signal chain." So my question then is how do you record so the effect is baked into the recording? I like the idea of being able to audition different sounds ipso facto, but once i've recorded something I like and move on to find a new sound, I lose the sound I had for that take. Is the simplest solution to create duplicate tracks and record on those for each desired sound? Or perhaps using a different method altogether? Thanks for great content! Always very informative! Cheers!
There are different ways to do that, but probably the easiest way is to make the recording, edit the recording, and then select all of the regions on the track, and press Control B to "bounce in place". You can include the effects plugins on the track in the bounce, which will effectively "bake" the effects into the recording.
The twelfth fret harmonic is exactly the same as the open string. You should check it while pressing the 12th fret, that way you're actually checking the saddle intonation.
At 5:10 you test the guitar input and it works. That's great. Mine doesn't. Would be nice if you could suggest some things to check when you don't get sound at the Logic interface. The Apollo Twin shows signal, but the channel strip does not. Videos like yours are helpful, but you assume at every step that the viewer is having the same success as you, and it ain't necessarily so, to quote Gershwin. The Apollo is selected in the Logic preferences, etc. Any suggestions? Thanks
Can someone help me out, I'm confused as to whether I should open my amp sim (Amplitude 5) in 'mono' or 'mono->stereo' when double-tracking. And if someone could explain why I would be eternally grateful!
I use a 2I focusrite, but when I plug in my electric guitar and load into Logic Pro X, I get some annoying, fuzzy feedback. Anyone know how I can fix this to make the guitar clear?
Make sure the preamp you're plugged into on the interface is set to "inst" (for instrument). If "inst" isn't on, then you're plugging in at line level, and you're going to get a lot of noise.
Referring to your words of adjusting the gain level for your input: if I understood you correctly you said one should mostly use the lowest possible gain level. Conversely, I have been always told to use the highest possible gain level without peaking at the loudest part of your song. Are there reasons not to do that?
It's not exactly a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking if you want the pure tone of the guitar amp sim to come through, without extra drive or saturation, you want the gain on instrument level inputs all the way down, or only pulled up just a bit. You'll actually find with most clean DI guitar signals, you don't actually have much gain to work with before you start to clip anyway. The same applies when working with a real guitar amp. If you want the pure tone of the amp to come through, you don't put a drive/gain pedal in between the guitar and amp to boost the gain. However, if you're looking for more heavily saturated tones, or distorted tones, it's often common to put a drive/gain pedal in between the guitar and amp, or between the guitar and amp sim. In that case, you can simply add a drive/gain pedal plugin in Logic before the amp. You can also add a bit more gain on your interface on input to boost the tone a bit, but just keep in mind tone will change a bit. So it's not necessarily a 'can' or 'can't' situation -- it's what type of guitar tone are you going for. When I record distorted tones, I'll often add just a touch of extra gain on the instrument input, add a drive pedal plugin before the amp, but then pull down the amp a touch, so the input level is doing a little more work. But I'm never pulling the gain on instrument levels way up, past like a quarter turn or so. Now, when recording with a microphone or a line level input, those are completely different situations.
If I choose a dirtier amp, there is too much initial noise. When I insert a noise gate after the amp, there seems to be no impact in getting rid of that noise. This technique is what I use on my Positive Grid Spark 40 amp, but it seems that the noise gate has no impact on the Amp Designer amps. Time to test out the noise gate on overdrive/compression effects outside of the Amp Designer.
Try the noise gate first in the chain.
Does this work with an acoustic electric?
I have spent days now, trying to figure it out but... No matter what i do, i don't hear the plugins (amp, whatever). I hear them ONLY after recording, and then play the recording back. There is no way to monitor or rehearse with the pugins BEFORE pressing record.
I have initialized settings a couple of times, Software monitoring gives me a feedback, auto input monitoring doesn't do anything...
Anyone ? Thx !
Are the amps in the logic and the Garageband same ?
Some are ! Logic just has more ! Garage free
Hi Josh, Just wondering why you don't pan hard left and right ?
Because that would completely isolate the guitars in only 1 channel each. I like stereo width but I also don’t want to lose all center definition.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy Cool, thanks Josh, this might be why my guitars sound rubbish on mono sources. Enjoying this series and looking forward to the upcoming videos. I see people panning hard left and right all the time, so I just thought this was the norm.
For heavy guitar parts, I'll often pan a lot more than I'm doing here, so it's not uncommon, but I never go 100% left or right. Another trick you can do to make sure that your guitars still have some definition in mono is track a 3rd center guitar part, but put it lower in the mix than the left and right guitars. In stereo you hear the L/R guitars fine, but in mono, the center focus is a bit more clear.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy Great advice, I'll give that a go. Thanks again.
The input gain of your preamp soundcard must be set to optimize the ADC, i.e. you want to have an input level as close to -6db (to leave room for hard strumming) as possible. If you do not do that, your signal input will suffer from poor discretization.
I find it odd that in Amp Designer the Master on the Amps is always on 100% by default. Do you know the reason for this? It's not the case in the Bass Amp Designer.
It's probably because the Bass Amp Designer gives you the ability to blend the direct box signal with the amp, which might require some master output adjustment to not clip. Whereas Amp Designer doesn't allow for that. Although, I've noticed that the output slider in the bottom right is often adjusted on the Amp Designer presets. The master output knob will likely change the perceived tone of the amp, while the output gain slider, is just a clean volume control. Which makes sense, because in the studio we would always cranked the amp volumes pretty loud to get the best tone (especially with crunch and drive sounds), but then pull down the track volume to get the amp to sit in the mix.
I'm getting signal to channel of Logic Pro, track 15, input 2, High Z, on XR18 interface, nothing is going thru the plugin, can't make any adjustments nothing......I've followed your instructions step by step...I can't figure it out, I've rebooted the Mac Book, closed everything reloaded, still nothing....
I own an X18, which is similar to the XR18. From what I recall, you might have to switch the channel over to Hi-Z on the tablet X-air software or make some other adjustments in the software. It' been a year since I used my X18, but last I remember, using the X18 as an audio interface required some additional routing in the X-Air software to make the channels be recognized in Logic.
@@MusicTechHelpGuy I’ll have to try that, I have a Scarlett 2i2 which is what I started with I’ll try that one later tonight. Been working on a fairly large project and I want to get it done. Oh and Thanks for the info…
Every Fractal Audio users: "Oh, ok, I can skip many parts of this video..." :D
I can't hear my amp or plug in, I just hear my instrument...
Thanks