There's so many options out there. It's so useful when you point out the gems offered in Logic. Off I go to check out this instrument with a new perspective. Merci!!
Thank you very much, Jono! Great video! Until now I hadn't noticed the existence of the Studio Piano and Studio Bass... Thanks for your very clear presentation of the possibilities of the Studio Piano!
Studio Piano and Studio Bass are some of my favorite additions to LP11, right after Stem Splitter and the improved MIDI routing. Really good sounding instruments. Vintage Upright being my fav piano from that selection :)
Wonderful! Can't wait to play around with it. Those chord progressions were wonderful, Jono Buchanan! Are they from a particular composition or did you do them just for the lesson?
That's very kind, Jennifer. Just a little bit of improvisation led by where the piano took me. They're - for me - Logic's most inspiring pianos (so far) to play. Hope all's wonderful with you.
I spent a day and a half with studio piano immediately after it came out. I was really hoping it was going to be an improvement. It sounded pretty good. But I was significantly disappointed by it. It wasn't really any better than what I already had. Not nearly as good. Then I compared it to what I already had. That sounded a lot better than studio piano, and what might be surprising about that is what I typically use as my standard lead instrument is the standard pianos in Logic. I've found ways to make them sound much better than the raw versions of the patches, or the gussied up samples in studio piano. In particular, if you take the Steinway grand, which is a Steinway D, and layer that with the Bosendorfer, lower the gain by 4.6 dB on that, use the velocity processor to change the dynamics of both to match, pan the Steinway six clicks to the left and the Bosey 8 clicks to the right, that blows studio piano completely out of the water. (There are a couple notes that are too soft or too loud in those patches as delivered, so the best way to cure that is go into the sampler and fix each note to where it really should be, then save that.) The Steinway by itself sounds a little harsh in the fourth octave, but when you layer the Bosey underneath, which has more of a woody, mellow sound, you get a piano sound that has the attack of the Steinway and the body of the Bosendorfer, and it sounds light years better than either of them by themselves, if EQ-ed properly. Other than the upright, the pianos in studio piano are all just standard Steinways. And they don't sound really any different from the Steinway that's been a part of Logic for over a decade, because they aren't any different. It wouldn't surprise me if they aren't using the exact same samples. All studio piano does is put a pretty interface over the top. Pretty much the same thing studio strings does. The already existing pianos in Logic are already 'stereo miced' in that as the keys get higher from middle C, every three keys are a click panned farther to the right in MIDI, and in the notes below middle C every three keys are a click panned further to the left in MIDI. If you want them to sound like one mic, completely monaural, that can happen very easily. You don't need studio piano to do that. In anything other than just solo piano, especially any mix that has any sort of density (and it doesn't have to be that dense), the bells and whistles, pedal noise, key noise, release samples, sympathetic resonance, etc. do nothing but clutter the mix and make it less clear. Pedal noise, key noise, and release samples are actually defects.They are therefore essentially useless in almost all genres. And if you really want sympathetic resonance, you can layer in the Electro Harmonix patch which simulates that beautifully, and allows you to control how much there is. and if you want the clickiness of key noise to give it a little more attack, you can easily and effectively add that using the Enveloper plug-in. And all the other things, panning, compression, delay, reverb, etc., are all still available whether you use studio piano or not. Arpegiator? Please. Nothing could be more boring than that. It's about as sophisticated and creative as a drum machine from 1982. The only valid use for that would be to cure insomnia. It's in no way a shortcut to creativity, because there are no shortcuts. There are other acoustic piano patches that also are very good and can be used, but those are not in studio piano and those are not in Logic. If you want an acoustic piano as a lead instrument, sometimes a better choice is The Grandeur, which has harmonics almost like a female soprano voice. It just soars above, and cuts through the densest mix. It's well worth the hundred bucks. Sometimes I'll layer that into that combination I mentioned earlier of Steinway and Bosey. That's 1000 times better than studio piano could ever dream of being. There are eleven velocity layers. Not two. There are over 2,500 samples. When they recorded The Grandeur they blocked off traffic for blocks in London for weeks (which is why $100 seems like a bargain). I also have a patch from Korg called 'compressed piano' which has a nice tack piano sound to it. But studio piano? Meh.
Thanks for sharing your experiences/choices. I’m by no means suggesting Studio Piano is a silver bullet but I do think that it has some qualities which I don’t hear in Logic’s other piano options, particularly its upright piano. But it’s a range of opinions which keeps the creative world turning!
Again, thanks for the information. I have experimented with the session players , but didn’t realize they are using new instruments. That, and internal midi routing and chord tracks have been drowned out by the “AI” noise. I also think the last update made Logic a lot more stable.
Agreed on all fronts. There are lots of good things in Logic 11 which were indeed hiding behind the headline noise. It was important to address those things first but it's great now to be able to shine some light on some really useful developments.
Great video. I’d never thought of the studio piano’s and I hadn’t found my way to the built in arpeggiator in Logic. I’ve been busy playing with the one on Spire. But some more great insights helping the old ideas come back.
Thanks Mikey. Absolutely, that’s exactly what I hope this channel is all about. One idea always prompts another. So if simply adding an Arpeggiator to a piano subconsciously prompts a series of decisions which lead to multi tap delays, reverb clouds, polyrhythmic counterpoint, ambient washes or even backing vocals… great! Sometimes just locating a rabbit hole is invitation enough to dive down one!
Hi Chris. This one is a step in the right direction without being a magic bullet. Depending on what you want, I would definitely recommend the Woodchester piano plug-in, alongside Soundiron’s Emotional Piano.
Hi there Jono, I am presently taking your course (orchestration) on line in Teachables and I am having real problems doing a simple command you seem to do very easily in your Logic Pro project. It's the part where you copy a region into another midi track and then add another region from another track into it to edit both music lines. You say to select and copy the first region to the new midi instrument track and then just select and copy the next one in the track below and drag it into the same new instrument track and do command J to insert the 2 regions into one track and then be able to edit them in the editor. I have tried for an hour to do that and I get an error message saying I can't join them because there is only one region. So it seems like whatever I am doing, the second region is not appearing in the track with the first one. What I did to get around is duplicate both tracks and regions into new tracks and regions and then I was able to select them both and join them. I then have to delete the duplicates which is kind of a drag... Anyways, I did not find a place where I can interact with you in the course so I am reaching out in this video. Thanks
Firstly, thank you so much for signing up for the Teachable course. I hope that it's proving useful to you. Secondly, there is a Community page on Teachable where you can post any queries, comments or join in any discussions, including starting a topic of your own. I don't mind answering questions here on UA-cam at all but I'm hoping that, over time, the Community page will become a valuable place where everyone can help, advice and get the information they need, as the range of courses there expands and the questions become specific to those courses. The link to the Community page is here: jbmusic.community.teachable.com/ Now, let's see if we can get this issue fixed! As you have said, it's important to note the difference between Tracks and Regions. In many of the musical examples on the course, I've joined together two Regions and, if I've read your question correctly, this is the technique which isn't quite working for you. Everything I'm about to suggest will only take 2 minutes, so please try this to see if it works. Open up a new, completely empty Logic Project. Create a Software Instrument track for any instrument you like and then press 'T', which will bring up the Toolbox. Select the Pencil Tool and click anywhere on that first track to create a new, empty Region. It will only be a Bar long and it won't contain any notes. Then, still using the Pencil Tool, create another empty Region a few bars later, leaving a gap between the two Regions. And then create one more Region on the same track a few bars later again. Now you should have 3 regions, all separated by a few empty Bars. Press 'T' again and select the Pointer Tool. From the error message you're getting, it feels like this next part is going to be most relevant to your query, as it sounds like you only have one Region selected before you're trying to join two Regions. To join Regions 1 and 2, you need to select them both whilst NOT selecting Region 3. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The first is to click once on the first Region, hold down Shift and then click on the second Region. This will highlight the first two but leave the third one un-highlighted. Let go of 'Shift'. If you then press Command-J, Regions 1 and 2 will join together and the gap between them will become part of the Region, meaning you'll have one long region, followed by your original third Region. To practice joining these again, click anywhere (apart from on either of the Regions) in the Main Page to de-select the Regions, then click on the first long Region, hold down Shift, select the short second Region to highlight it and then let go of Shift again. Now use Command-J to join them. Hopefully all of that works. But that's all on one track! Press Command-Z to undo a few steps until you've got your 3 empty Regions back as they were when you created them. Create a new Track by pressing + at the top of the Tracks area. Again, select any Software Instrument. Next, you're going to copy the first Region on Track 1 to Track 2. To do this, click once on the first Region to highlight it. Then hold down 'Option' and don't let go. Use your mouse to drag the first Region down to the second track and you'll get a copy of it directly underneath the first Region on Track 1. Only when you've finished dragging it with your Mouse or Trackpad can you let go of 'Option'. If you do that too soon, you'll move the Region instead of copying it. Do the same thing with the third Region - copy it to Track 2. Then, let's Join together the copied Regions 1 and 3 on Track 2. This time we're going to select them in a different way, rather than using the Pointer Tool to click and select Regions. I want you to use your Mouse to click and hold anywhere you like in the empty Main Page area under your two Tracks. In that dark grey empty space below your regions, click and hold down your Mouse button whilst dragging outwards. This will create a 'box' which you'll see as a blue area as you drag outwards. Let go of your Mouse click and it will vanish and you'll need to click and start again. Anything which you 'click and drag over' with a blue Box like this will auto-select. So I'd like you to select those two new Regions on Track 2 using a highlight Box, until they're both highlighted. Then, let go of your Mouse and use Command-J to join them together. Hopefully you can now return to your main project and use these techniques. If not, please let me know via the Community Page in Teachable and I'll happily help you out.
@@jonobuchananmusic Thank you very much for this and hopefully it will work. By the way, I just love your course! The delivery and contents are amazing so I am hooked to teachable!
@@danielel9191 Thank you so much. Do let me know if you need any more help and feel free to start a new thread in the Community Page on Teachable if you'd like to about this or any other topic relating to the course.
Hi. If you have a sustain pedal, plug it in, press it down and don't let go! If not, go to Track > Other > New Track With Same Channel. That will create a second track routed to the same instrument. On that second track, create a region with the Pencil Tool which lasts for the entire duration of your track and then open that region, open Automation (in the Piano Roll Display) and use the drop-down menu to select MIDI CC#64, which is Sustain. Draw a single point/node at 127 which will last for the entire duration of that region. Then, on the track above (the original piano track) play whatever you like and the sustain pedal will be permanently 'on'. Or create the Sustain on/off messages you want in post-production, having recorded the piano part you want.
As I'm not a regular MainStage user, I must confess I wasn't aware that it hadn't already been ported across. I'm sure it won't be long before it's there.
It never occurred to me to delve into Studio Piano in this way. Genius! 😮 Thank you 👍
Enjoy it Peter. It's a really useful new instrument.
There's so many options out there. It's so useful when you point out the gems offered in Logic. Off I go to check out this instrument with a new perspective. Merci!!
De rien! Merci à vous!
I hadn’t paid this any attention. This is great. Thank you.
You’re very welcome. Thanks Andrew.
Another great video, Jono. Thank you!
Cheers Matt!
Thank you very much, Jono! Great video! Until now I hadn't noticed the existence of the Studio Piano and Studio Bass... Thanks for your very clear presentation of the possibilities of the Studio Piano!
You’re welcome BF! Hope the Studio Piano proves useful.
Thanks again Jono for pointing out things I overlook and present them like you do!
Pleasure!
Sounds great and lush.You play with real feel.
Thank you!
Nice work Jono - cheers mate!
You’re welcome!
Subbed. Thank you for this dive into the new piano instrument in Logic. I found it very useful and informative.
Thanks Nick. Great to have you here with us! New full-length Logic episodes are published here each Wednesday, with a new Short on Saturdays.
Awesome. Thanks Jono.
My pleasure! Thanks Ben.
There is a kind of percussive element to the upright piano with the arp & warped space, sounds cosmic ! Oooooof indeed.... :). Thanks Jono.
Thanks John!
great overview! thanks,
Thanks so much, Michael.
Studio Piano and Studio Bass are some of my favorite additions to LP11, right after Stem Splitter and the improved MIDI routing. Really good sounding instruments. Vintage Upright being my fav piano from that selection :)
Agree with all of that! Thank you.
Wonderful! Can't wait to play around with it. Those chord progressions were wonderful, Jono Buchanan! Are they from a particular composition or did you do them just for the lesson?
That's very kind, Jennifer. Just a little bit of improvisation led by where the piano took me. They're - for me - Logic's most inspiring pianos (so far) to play. Hope all's wonderful with you.
I spent a day and a half with studio piano immediately after it came out. I was really hoping it was going to be an improvement. It sounded pretty good. But I was significantly disappointed by it. It wasn't really any better than what I already had. Not nearly as good.
Then I compared it to what I already had. That sounded a lot better than studio piano, and what might be surprising about that is what I typically use as my standard lead instrument is the standard pianos in Logic. I've found ways to make them sound much better than the raw versions of the patches, or the gussied up samples in studio piano.
In particular, if you take the Steinway grand, which is a Steinway D, and layer that with the Bosendorfer, lower the gain by 4.6 dB on that, use the velocity processor to change the dynamics of both to match, pan the Steinway six clicks to the left and the Bosey 8 clicks to the right, that blows studio piano completely out of the water.
(There are a couple notes that are too soft or too loud in those patches as delivered, so the best way to cure that is go into the sampler and fix each note to where it really should be, then save that.)
The Steinway by itself sounds a little harsh in the fourth octave, but when you layer the Bosey underneath, which has more of a woody, mellow sound, you get a piano sound that has the attack of the Steinway and the body of the Bosendorfer, and it sounds light years better than either of them by themselves, if EQ-ed properly.
Other than the upright, the pianos in studio piano are all just standard Steinways. And they don't sound really any different from the Steinway that's been a part of Logic for over a decade, because they aren't any different. It wouldn't surprise me if they aren't using the exact same samples. All studio piano does is put a pretty interface over the top. Pretty much the same thing studio strings does.
The already existing pianos in Logic are already 'stereo miced' in that as the keys get higher from middle C, every three keys are a click panned farther to the right in MIDI, and in the notes below middle C every three keys are a click panned further to the left in MIDI. If you want them to sound like one mic, completely monaural, that can happen very easily. You don't need studio piano to do that.
In anything other than just solo piano, especially any mix that has any sort of density (and it doesn't have to be that dense), the bells and whistles, pedal noise, key noise, release samples, sympathetic resonance, etc. do nothing but clutter the mix and make it less clear. Pedal noise, key noise, and release samples are actually defects.They are therefore essentially useless in almost all genres. And if you really want sympathetic resonance, you can layer in the Electro Harmonix patch which simulates that beautifully, and allows you to control how much there is. and if you want the clickiness of key noise to give it a little more attack, you can easily and effectively add that using the Enveloper plug-in.
And all the other things, panning, compression, delay, reverb, etc., are all still available whether you use studio piano or not. Arpegiator? Please. Nothing could be more boring than that. It's about as sophisticated and creative as a drum machine from 1982. The only valid use for that would be to cure insomnia. It's in no way a shortcut to creativity, because there are no shortcuts.
There are other acoustic piano patches that also are very good and can be used, but those are not in studio piano and those are not in Logic. If you want an acoustic piano as a lead instrument, sometimes a better choice is The Grandeur, which has harmonics almost like a female soprano voice. It just soars above, and cuts through the densest mix. It's well worth the hundred bucks. Sometimes I'll layer that into that combination I mentioned earlier of Steinway and Bosey. That's 1000 times better than studio piano could ever dream of being.
There are eleven velocity layers. Not two. There are over 2,500 samples. When they recorded The Grandeur they blocked off traffic for blocks in London for weeks (which is why $100 seems like a bargain).
I also have a patch from Korg called 'compressed piano' which has a nice tack piano sound to it. But studio piano? Meh.
Thanks for sharing your experiences/choices. I’m by no means suggesting Studio Piano is a silver bullet but I do think that it has some qualities which I don’t hear in Logic’s other piano options, particularly its upright piano. But it’s a range of opinions which keeps the creative world turning!
It amazes me how you glide around that mini keys keyboard.
Thanks so much!
@@jonobuchananmusic I'm a guitarist but have enough piano skills to use in recording....but mini keys I never quite got on with.
Again, thanks for the information. I have experimented with the session players , but didn’t realize they are using new instruments. That, and internal midi routing and chord tracks have been drowned out by the “AI” noise. I also think the last update made Logic a lot more stable.
Agreed on all fronts. There are lots of good things in Logic 11 which were indeed hiding behind the headline noise. It was important to address those things first but it's great now to be able to shine some light on some really useful developments.
Great video. I’d never thought of the studio piano’s and I hadn’t found my way to the built in arpeggiator in Logic. I’ve been busy playing with the one on Spire. But some more great insights helping the old ideas come back.
Thanks Mikey. Absolutely, that’s exactly what I hope this channel is all about. One idea always prompts another. So if simply adding an Arpeggiator to a piano subconsciously prompts a series of decisions which lead to multi tap delays, reverb clouds, polyrhythmic counterpoint, ambient washes or even backing vocals… great! Sometimes just locating a rabbit hole is invitation enough to dive down one!
@@jonobuchananmusic absolutely! Love the content you have a big fan here 👍🏻
Oof is the right response to that majestic sound!!
Ah! Thanks so much.
Cheers, Jono! I completely missed the Studio Piano. Still dont think I've found a Piano library that fits.
Hi Chris. This one is a step in the right direction without being a magic bullet. Depending on what you want, I would definitely recommend the Woodchester piano plug-in, alongside Soundiron’s Emotional Piano.
Hi there Jono, I am presently taking your course (orchestration) on line in Teachables and I am having real problems doing a simple command you seem to do very easily in your Logic Pro project. It's the part where you copy a region into another midi track and then add another region from another track into it to edit both music lines. You say to select and copy the first region to the new midi instrument track and then just select and copy the next one in the track below and drag it into the same new instrument track and do command J to insert the 2 regions into one track and then be able to edit them in the editor. I have tried for an hour to do that and I get an error message saying I can't join them because there is only one region. So it seems like whatever I am doing, the second region is not appearing in the track with the first one. What I did to get around is duplicate both tracks and regions into new tracks and regions and then I was able to select them both and join them. I then have to delete the duplicates which is kind of a drag... Anyways, I did not find a place where I can interact with you in the course so I am reaching out in this video. Thanks
Firstly, thank you so much for signing up for the Teachable course. I hope that it's proving useful to you.
Secondly, there is a Community page on Teachable where you can post any queries, comments or join in any discussions, including starting a topic of your own. I don't mind answering questions here on UA-cam at all but I'm hoping that, over time, the Community page will become a valuable place where everyone can help, advice and get the information they need, as the range of courses there expands and the questions become specific to those courses. The link to the Community page is here: jbmusic.community.teachable.com/
Now, let's see if we can get this issue fixed! As you have said, it's important to note the difference between Tracks and Regions. In many of the musical examples on the course, I've joined together two Regions and, if I've read your question correctly, this is the technique which isn't quite working for you. Everything I'm about to suggest will only take 2 minutes, so please try this to see if it works. Open up a new, completely empty Logic Project. Create a Software Instrument track for any instrument you like and then press 'T', which will bring up the Toolbox. Select the Pencil Tool and click anywhere on that first track to create a new, empty Region. It will only be a Bar long and it won't contain any notes. Then, still using the Pencil Tool, create another empty Region a few bars later, leaving a gap between the two Regions. And then create one more Region on the same track a few bars later again. Now you should have 3 regions, all separated by a few empty Bars. Press 'T' again and select the Pointer Tool.
From the error message you're getting, it feels like this next part is going to be most relevant to your query, as it sounds like you only have one Region selected before you're trying to join two Regions.
To join Regions 1 and 2, you need to select them both whilst NOT selecting Region 3. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The first is to click once on the first Region, hold down Shift and then click on the second Region. This will highlight the first two but leave the third one un-highlighted. Let go of 'Shift'. If you then press Command-J, Regions 1 and 2 will join together and the gap between them will become part of the Region, meaning you'll have one long region, followed by your original third Region. To practice joining these again, click anywhere (apart from on either of the Regions) in the Main Page to de-select the Regions, then click on the first long Region, hold down Shift, select the short second Region to highlight it and then let go of Shift again. Now use Command-J to join them.
Hopefully all of that works. But that's all on one track! Press Command-Z to undo a few steps until you've got your 3 empty Regions back as they were when you created them.
Create a new Track by pressing + at the top of the Tracks area. Again, select any Software Instrument. Next, you're going to copy the first Region on Track 1 to Track 2. To do this, click once on the first Region to highlight it. Then hold down 'Option' and don't let go. Use your mouse to drag the first Region down to the second track and you'll get a copy of it directly underneath the first Region on Track 1. Only when you've finished dragging it with your Mouse or Trackpad can you let go of 'Option'. If you do that too soon, you'll move the Region instead of copying it.
Do the same thing with the third Region - copy it to Track 2. Then, let's Join together the copied Regions 1 and 3 on Track 2. This time we're going to select them in a different way, rather than using the Pointer Tool to click and select Regions. I want you to use your Mouse to click and hold anywhere you like in the empty Main Page area under your two Tracks. In that dark grey empty space below your regions, click and hold down your Mouse button whilst dragging outwards. This will create a 'box' which you'll see as a blue area as you drag outwards. Let go of your Mouse click and it will vanish and you'll need to click and start again. Anything which you 'click and drag over' with a blue Box like this will auto-select. So I'd like you to select those two new Regions on Track 2 using a highlight Box, until they're both highlighted. Then, let go of your Mouse and use Command-J to join them together.
Hopefully you can now return to your main project and use these techniques. If not, please let me know via the Community Page in Teachable and I'll happily help you out.
@@jonobuchananmusic Thank you very much for this and hopefully it will work. By the way, I just love your course! The delivery and contents are amazing so I am hooked to teachable!
@@danielel9191 Thank you so much. Do let me know if you need any more help and feel free to start a new thread in the Community Page on Teachable if you'd like to about this or any other topic relating to the course.
It would be nice to have a piano plugin that can have a sustain built in that you could control.
Hi. If you have a sustain pedal, plug it in, press it down and don't let go! If not, go to Track > Other > New Track With Same Channel. That will create a second track routed to the same instrument. On that second track, create a region with the Pencil Tool which lasts for the entire duration of your track and then open that region, open Automation (in the Piano Roll Display) and use the drop-down menu to select MIDI CC#64, which is Sustain. Draw a single point/node at 127 which will last for the entire duration of that region. Then, on the track above (the original piano track) play whatever you like and the sustain pedal will be permanently 'on'. Or create the Sustain on/off messages you want in post-production, having recorded the piano part you want.
@@jonobuchananmusic Great, thanks for the detailed solution.
It would be nice to have this in MainStage.
As I'm not a regular MainStage user, I must confess I wasn't aware that it hadn't already been ported across. I'm sure it won't be long before it's there.
👍
🙏