Logic Pro workflow overview

To give you an idea of the possibilities, some major steps in putting together a Logic Pro project are described below. You don’t have to do every step, and you might perform some steps in a different order. You could, for example, go all the way through mixing and adding effects, then add more recordings or media files to your project before finalizing the mix and sharing the finished project.

Create a project

You start working in Logic Pro by creating a new project to hold your musical material and all the changes you make. You can add tracks for your recordings and for media files you want to add to the project. Media files and other assets can be saved in the project, or referenced in their current location.

Record your material

Add musical material by recording your performances in the Tracks area. You can record vocals, instruments, and other sounds on audio tracks. Using a USB keyboard or other MIDI controller, you can play and record a wide variety of software instruments on software instrument tracks. You can also record MIDI regions to play back on external MIDI devices, such as synthesizers and sound modules.

Add Apple Loops and other media files

Add Apple Loops from the large collection included with Logic Pro. Apple Loops are prerecorded audio and MIDI files optimized to create repeating patterns that can be extended to fill any amount of time. You can also add audio files, movies, and other prerecorded media files to a project.

Create the arrangement

Organize your recordings and other media to build an arrangement in the Tracks area. Recordings, loops, and other media files appear in the Tracks area as regions that you can can copy, move, resize, loop, and edit in other ways. You can also use arrangement markers to define and easily rearrange entire sections of a project.

Edit regions

Logic Pro offers a set of editors you can use to edit both audio and MIDI regions in a variety of ways. For audio regions, you can also precisely edit the timing of individual notes and other events using Flex Time, and adjust the pitch of notes using Flex Pitch. You can also edit Drummer regions in the Drummer Editor.

Mix and add effects

As your project takes shape, you mix it to balance the individual parts and blend them into a cohesive whole. In the Mixer, you can adjust volume levels and pan (balance) positions of tracks, and use routing and grouping to control the signal flow. Logic Pro features a set of professional-quality effects plug-ins that you can use to enhance particular song components and create a polished final mix. You can control changes to mix, effects, and other parameters over time using automation.

Make global changes

You can manipulate different aspects of an overall project using global tracks, including the Arrangement track, Marker track, Signature track, Tempo track, and Transposition track. For movie projects, you can also access the Movie track to view video frames and synchronize them with musical events.

Share your project

When your project is ready to share, you can export a stereo file of your final mix in one of several standard audio file formats. You can also produce multiple stem files, formatted for most common surround encoding schemes. Projects can be shared to iTunes, shared to other devices using AirDrop or MailDrop, and can also be burned to a CD or DVD.

Helpful?

Logic Pro User Guide