The Session Players let you add realistic bass, piano, and drum performances to your project. Just like an expert backing band, the Session Players can quickly create musical performances and respond instantly to your input and direction in a near-endless variety of ways.
The Logic Pro for Mac Session Players feature the Bass Player, Keyboard Player, and Drummer. You can choose Session Players from a wide range of styles, from pop rock to R&B. Each Session Player comes with their own patch and a distinct playing style.
The harmonies played by the Bass Player and Keyboard Player follow the global Chord track or region chords. By using the Chord track, you can have multiple Session Players follow the same chords so that they play in sync. You can use region chords with Session Players so that the Session Player for that region plays chords different from those on the Chord track. For information about working with chords, see Overview of chords.
Session Player performances are contained on Session Player regions on software instrument tracks. You can create multiple Session Player regions on a track, each with a different playing style, allowing you to give different sections of your project a unique musical feel.
The Bass Player and Keyboard Player come with plug-ins—the Studio Bass and the Studio Piano—to give you control over the players’ sound. The plug-ins are optimized for the two Session Players and for Session Player regions. Each plug-in has a selection of sample-based instruments and settings that you can use to faithfully reproduce bass and piano sounds.
For even greater flexibility, you can influence the sound of Session Players by choosing patches in the Library, adding plug-ins, and adjusting plug-in parameters. With the Drummer, you can exchange individual kit pieces and edit their settings in Drum Kit Designer or Drum Machine Designer.
The Loop Browser features Session Player loops that you can add to your project the same way as other loops, which allows you to quickly build a song or find inspiration. See Add Apple Loops to your projects.
Click the Add Tracks button above the track headers.
Choose Track > New Tracks (or press Option-Command-N).
Use the New Session Player Track key command. (If you use this method, you can skip steps 2 and 3).
In the New Tracks dialog, choose Drummer, Bass Player, or Keyboard Player.
To choose a style other than the default, click the Details disclosure arrow to open the Details area of the New Tracks dialog (if it’s closed), then choose a style from the Style pop-up menu.
If you don’t want the Session Player region on the new track to use the default progression, deselect the Use Default Chord Progression for New Regions checkbox. See Use chord progressions.
Click Create.
If the project doesn’t have arrangement markers: A software instrument track containing one 8-bar Session Player region is created.
If the project has arrangement markers: A software instrument track containing as many Session Player regions as there are arrangement markers is created. The length and name of the regions correspond to the existing arrangement markers.
If the cycle area is on: A software instrument track containing a Session Player region is created. The length of the Session Player region corresponds to the cycle area (ignoring any arrangement markers).
If a marquee selection in active in the Tracks area or ruler: A software instrument track containing a Session Player region is created. The length of the Session Player region corresponds to the marquee selection (ignoring any active cycle area).
In the Loop Browser, you can find loops for all Session Players. Loops for the Bass Player and Keyboard Player are annotated with chords.
Click the Loop Browser button in the control bar.
In the Loop Browser, click the Loop Types button.
Select the Session Player loop type.
Drag a Session Player loop to an empty part of the Tracks area, below the existing tracks.
A new software instrument tack is created, and the loop is added to the track.
When you add a loop containing chords to the Tracks area, you can choose to have the chords copied to the Chord track so that they can be followed by the Session Players in the project. See Add chords from Apple Loops to your project.
In Logic Pro, do one of the following:
Control-click an empty area of the software instrument track, then choose Create Session Player Region from the shortcut menu.
Move the pointer past the end of the final Session Player region, then click the Add button (+) that appears.
Note: The Add button also appears after any final region on a software instrument track that has Session Player as the default region type.
You can choose whether a new Session Player region loads with the default chord progression for the style or loads with only the tonic chord of the key. See Turn off adding a default chord progression.
above the track headers.
in the control bar.