(upbeat piano music)
- In this movie, we'll cover how to get going
recording live audio into Logic.
First, we'll need to go over some initial setup options
to get the most out of your recordings.
Once these are in place,
you'll be busy recording tracks in no time.
Here we have a new project we just started.
Notice the name, which is "Untitled"
because I haven't saved it yet.
Now here's a really crucial tip.
Save your session before recording anything.
This will automatically set your audio recording path
so you don't have to do it manually
and you don't just start recording audio files
in random places on your computer.
So let's go to File, Save As,
and we'll call this "my recording,"
and I'll just go ahead and place this on the desktop,
but I'm going to organize my project as a folder,
and I'm going to include audio files,
and that way anything I record will end up
in the project folder.
So click Save, and that'll set our recording path.
Now assuming our audio interface is properly set up,
we'll need to decide on three options
for the audio files to record.
We're going to decide on file type, sample rate, and bit depth.
Let's first choose file type.
So let's go up to Preferences, under Recording.
Now these are global preferences under Recording,
and here we can choose one
of three file types: AIFF, WAVE, or CAF.
Now the industry standard is WAVE.
These are all uncompressed file types.
They don't have any differences sonically.
They're just the way the file is written.
I'm going to go ahead and choose WAVE.
Now notice underneath that, we have the option
to make a 24 bit recording.
Let's keep that on.
I recommend it.
It's really the best audio quality
and it has the most dynamic range.
If you were to uncheck this,
you'd be recording at 16 bits, which sounds okay,
but we might as well record at the higher bit depth.
And the only downside to that is
24 bit recording will take up a little bit more room
on your hard drive.
To look at sample rate,
that's actually in a different setup page.
It's in the setup page that's attached to your project.
So it's in the project settings.
And you could go to the project settings
from the File menu.
File, Project Settings,
or they make it easy to pop over
to the project settings from the general settings.
So you can click here to get to the same spot.
And here under Audio is where we can choose the sample rate.
So the project sample rate currently is 48 kilohertz,
which is a good high quality place to begin with.
And some people like to record
at higher sample rates like 88.2 or 96.
I think 48 kilohertz is a good baseline
and it's a high sample rate to record at.
A lot of people are working at 24 bits, 48 these days.
So I'm going to recommend 48 for now.
So now that we have file type, bit depth,
and sample rate set, we can go ahead
and see if we get input onto our track.
So notice I made a guitar track.
I loaded this up.
It's a predesigned patch from the audio library.
So I chose Clean Guitar, Brit and Clean.
And this guitar track, I can close the library.
This guitar track, notice it's set to input one.
Now my guitar that I'm holding
in my hand is actually connected
to input one of an Apogee Duet.
That's the interface I'm using.
And the cool thing about Apogee Duet
and Logic is that they actually talk to each other.
And you notice I have these options
at the top of the channel strip.
This lets me decide what input type I'm using.
So right now it's set to Instrument,
but I have the opportunity to change it to Mic,
or Line Levels, which are these two, -10 and +4.
Because I'm on Instrument,
I actually can plug my guitar directly into the Apogee Duet.
Now keep in mind, if you're using a different interface,
you may not see these options here at the top.
And to set my input level,
I can actually use this Trim button here.
Again, may not be available if you're not using an Apogee.
I can also set the input level on the Apogee Duet itself.
So I spin this knob,
and notice my level is turning up on the input level.
Now this is just something to keep in mind
if you're new to this, changing the track volume will make
the output of the track louder,
but it has no bearing on your input level.
So you want to go ahead and play your guitar
as I'm about to do.
(guitar strums)
Playing an E chord.
And notice I have the I button checked.
That's allowing input into the track.
And as I'm strumming the chord,
I can set my input level that way.
Now notice it's a little bit loud,
because if I hit it hard,
(guitar strums)
It's almost clipping, right?
So I want to go ahead and maybe back off the volume,
the input volume, which I can do on the interface itself.
Or in this case, because I have these options,
I can turn the input gain down a little bit.
(guitar strums)
That's a little bit better level there.
It's not in danger of clipping the input.
Again, output meter, that's only the sound going out.
So you're going to want to set your input level
on your interface.
Or if you have an Apogee Duet, you can set it here
in the top of the track.
Now when I was playing that E chord,
(guitar strumming)
I'm actually hearing the level
(guitar strumming)
come back a little bit later than when I'm playing it.
This is called latency.
It's sort of the dirty word of digital audio.
So anytime you send audio through your computer,
latency is caused by the roundtrip time it takes to go
from your guitar or whatever your input device is,
maybe it's a microphone, into the computer system,
then back through the computer system,
back to your monitors or headphones.
So computers have to use a memory buffer to stay ahead
of what's coming in.
And this is our buffer size.
And this can cause latency if it's not set right.
So let's go ahead and take a look at our buffer setting.
So if I go up to Logic Pro once again,
Preferences, and here I'm going to go to Audio.
And notice the IO buffer size is set to 1024 samples.
Now that's the highest buffer size.
So that's going to give us the biggest buffer
which can allow for more software instruments and plugins.
But the downside of this is my resulting latency
as you read below is a whole 45.3 seconds.
And that's why when I strummed the chord,
I'm hearing it come back
to my headphones a little bit after.
So what you want to do here
when you record is do a lower buffer size.
So if I go down to, for example, 128,
notice the resulting latency goes way down in size.
And now when I strum my chord,
(guitar strumming)
I don't hear as much of a echo or a late signal coming back.
There's also another place we can deal with low latency
and that's the low latency button in the Transport window.
Let's open the Transport float window
from the Windows pull down.
Now here, as long as I'm showing the full Transport float,
so I'm going to go ahead and choose Customs
so I see everything,
and I'm still not seeing it.
So I'm going to say Customize Control Bar.
And here I want to show Low Latency Mode.
And when I say OK,
I've got this little button here that showed up.
Now, okay let me just review that,
because when I opened the Transport, it wasn't showing that.
And if yours isn't showing it, there's a way to get it.
You just right click on it,
and then you say Customize Control Bar Display.
And you want to make sure that Low Latency Mode is checked.
Now that I have that, I can also click here.
In addition to going into the settings
and changing my buffer size,
I can click here, and that turns Logic
into a mode where it's going to selectively bypass plugins
and other processing to lower the latency
so that when you record,
you get the least amount of latency
so you hear the audio pretty much directly
without any echo or time delay.
And remember, when you get back to mixing and editing,
you may want to turn this off,
but I wanted to show you that that's there in addition
to changing your buffer size here in the Preferences.
So now that we've got all that good stuff set up,
I can go ahead and start recording.
We're almost there.
Now, one last thing.
What will the recording files be called when we record?
You can control this
by naming your track before you hit Record.
So instead of something generic like Guitar One,
I can call it Scott's Guitar Take
or whatever I want to say.
And that'll then name each of the regions I create
Scott's Guitar One, Scott's Guitar Two, et cetera.
So that's just a way to control what the files will be named
before you start recording.
Okay, we should be ready.
Notice I added a drummer track
because I prefer recording to that instead
of the old generic click track, or metronome.
It's a little more groovy,
it's a little more fun to play to.
So I put the Brit Pop Drummer on here
and I'm going to try to play something
out of Manchester circa 1992.
Here we go.
I'm going to type the R button on my keyboard,
and that'll get us rolling.
It'll give me a pre-roll, and then I'm off and running.
(upbeat rock music)
And when I hit Stop, you can see the region was named
after the track name Scott's Guitar 01.
Congratulations, we've now made our first audio recording,
and now you know all the required steps
to set up Logic to record audio.
You're going to want to check these settings each time
you record to ensure you got the right sample rate,
and bit depth, and that your audio is going
to the correct place.
(upbeat music)