I wasted months fretting about how to begin working with Logic Pro. Looking at all the controls was so daunting. So I thought it might be useful if I gave you a very basic template that you could download and save to begin your Logic Pro journey. Load it up and save it. Then you can record your practice sessions and also use it to create your own projects. And as you get more familiar with the program, you can adjust it to your liking or just scrap it and create a template of your own.
It doesn’t look like much, but there is much “under the hood” that will allow you to explore recording with the program. When you learn the features, the underpinning is there.
Some of the things that are included that you won’t have to worry about (which you will come to understand as you learn the program.):
Chase notes
- This is a function that makes sure your MIDI instruments sound as they should when you locate to a new position and start playback. You shouldn’t have to nudge your region to get the first notes to play.
Autopunch/replace
- Once you get comfortable recording, this will allow you to correct small errors. You can use the Piano Score editor to fix the odd note or two, but say you’ve recorded a great take, but you screwed up bars 17 and 30. You can use this feature to re-record just those bars without recording the whole tune again.
Cleaning up Score editor
- Setting the pedal position to 0 in the Score editor so that any recordings you want to save and print will be clean and easily readable. (I save mine to PDF format instead of printing.)
Capture Recording
- I just figured this out, and it’s really quite useful. (It’s the red button with a circle around it to the right of Record.) Say you’ve been playing, but not recording, a tune and feel that what you played was really good. Click on Capture Recording, and it automatically creates a MIDI track of what you just played. NOTE: if your metronome is on, it captures that as well. This is a real time saver for when you’re noodling around and want to save what you’ve done for later review.
Create take tracks
- This is especially useful when you’re working on improvisation. Used along with the Cycle feature, you can set the area you’re working on and play that section over and over. Each take will be recorded, and you can unpack it and review all the takes, selecting the one you think is best–or make a composite of several takes. NOTE: To turn on Cycle, use “Command U.” It’s one of the commmands you’ll want to learn first off. After you record something, turn on Cycle so that you can loop what you’ve recorded. Otherwise, every time you hit play, you’ll have to manually stop the playhead and rewind.
Like I said, these settings are all “under the hood.” Don’t worry about them. As you work with the program, this will slowly start to make sense. The best thing you can do is just set aside a portion of your practice time to learn one or two features every day. How do you record? How do you set the tempo? How does the metronome work? There’s a lot of good stuff on the internet, and there are online courses similar to PianoGroove dedicated to learning Logic Pro. One I’ve mentioned before is Ask.Video https://www.ask.video/. A one-month subscription should be all you need to get up to speed. (I’m not affiliated with the site; I 've just found it useful.)
I hope that this will help you get started with your recording so that you can share with us, and do that in the Learning Logic Pro thread instead of here. Have fun! 
Basic practice.logicx.zip (784.5 KB)
