Radio advert write up

In this write up, I will be detailing how to make a radio advert through the use
of logic, an interesting program used to create music, I will also be detailing
how to use logic for a first time user, such as yourself. Hopefully this guide will
be of some help to you.

The history of logic

First of all, before I actually explain how to use logic, you should probably be
told what it actually is and how it came about. Logic, simply put, is software
used to create music, edit music, copy music and do various things relating to
music. The technical term for this is a DAW or digital audio workstation.
However, it wasnt even logic in its infant stage, it was actually a program
called Notator, a program bought into the USA from Germany in 1988 at
version 1.12. This was a large change for those who were trying to do
electronic music on computers at the time as other programs were
not as developed. A company named C-LAB, which later became
known as Emagic, developed notator. Digidesign was their early US
distributor. There was also a version called Creator, that came out a
year or so earlier, that was the same as Notator without the notation
editor, a part that made notator what it is. Creator got rave reviews
in the trade magazines and when Notator arrived it quickly became
the program to have according to the growing ranks of serious
midiphiles. Notator ran exclusively on an Atari ST (1 meg), which
had its debut in 1985, and the new more powerful Mega ST (2 meg).
Later on, the company Emagic that I mentioned earlier was only starting up. In
these early years, they wanted to make a cross-platform solution following
Logics general idea that was labelled Notator Logic. Later on, Notator was
dropped from the title and it was only called Logic.

Due to the rise of personal computers in more households, the Atari platform
showed signs of slowing down and being unable to compete with the
competition so it quickly closed up, this made Emagic realize they had to pick
someone else and they decided to choose Apple Macs. Logic released
version 1.6 around 1993 and finally bought audio to logic, this was a
groundbreaking event.
Audio was bought into Logic through DAE and that stands for Digidesign
audio engine and the developers of sound tools, who had just changed their
name to pro tools before this event, made that. The major audio cards for
Logic were the AudioMedia I and II, SoundTools 2, and the new
Session 8 all by Digidesign. Depending on what you had installed,
you could expect 4 to 16 tracks of audio.
As soon as 1995 came around, the pc version of Logic also did which
started up a battle of Mac v PC. PC quickly lost. The Mac versions
were just so much more advanced and therefore PC couldnt
contend, it didnt have as many features as the Mac. July 2002 saw
the windows version of Logic (The PC version) drop its support and
slow to a halt and Mac only progressed even more, releasing Logic 6
shortly after.

Version 7 of logic came in 2004, consolidating over 20 different

Emagic products which included all instrument packages and Pro
Tools TDM support to name a few. This was all put into a single
package. Apple also released a scaled down version of Logic called
Logic Express, replacing two previous versions that filled that
position called Logic Silver and Logic Gold. Apple began promoting
Logic Pro as one of its flagship software Pro applications for the
Macintosh platform. Logic was also used as the basis for a modified
application titled GarageBand, included as a part of OS X iLife.

The world saw Logic 8 on September 12, 2007. Well, they saw it in
the Logic Studio Suite but this was a good thing as it had a new
design and many new features, some were even considered
revolutionary at the time. Changes were made for Logic 8, these
changes included a new processing plug-n called the delay designer,
quick-swipe comping and multi-take management. It wasnt just
features they made changes to either, it was also ease of use for
people who had never used Logic before. Mainly, the interface
became much more streamlined and more directions and labeling
were used in the program. This helped a lot as Logic is not a single
window interface as each plug-in opens up another window with all
its uses inside, this does save space in the actual logic window as
you can move the plug in windows about and resize them.

Currently we are now on Logic Pro X and this is the one we will be
taking a look at in this guide, I will explain each aspect of it then
when the aspects are explained, there will be a walkthrough on how
to make a radio advert using Logic Pro X.
The Radio Advert

Now that you know how to use Logic, were going to make a radio advert on it
(To make the radio advert, I will be using Logic 9 to create it, there isnt much
difference apart from a slight difference in the layout.)
Making the song
For us to pass, we had to make 3 different adverts, same product, 3 different
lengths that consisted of a full minute, 30 seconds and 10 seconds so
obviously, we used the same track on each one, shortening it when needed
and adding a bit of glamour to the full length minute one and the 10 second
one, leaving the 30 second one as the original beat.

For the full-length minute one we added a harry potter theme when we say
about how the stick (which is our product by the way) can double as a wand
and then for some reason we put a car crash sound in. I dont get it either.

I guess it could be for making sure our audience is still listening to our advert,
I wasnt the one who put it in anyway. In the full-length version, we added a
different synth to the main melody to jazz up our track; this would add
something different for the audience to listen to.

In the 30 second one, again, we kept it very close and true to the original
song, not only did this save time, but it was a valid option for the middle advert
as people usually remember the longest and shortest of something, very
rarely is the bland and boring middle section even bought up so we thought it
would be a safe option to keep the 30 second one as loyal to the original
piece as we can.

The 10 second one, being the shortest and quickest of the bunch, had to
make a little more of an impact on our audiences minds so we thought it
would be best to put another instrument in, a slightly more aggressive
sounding one which is why we chose a bass but a mute bass, we didnt want
anything to crazy. This adds that hard-hitting tone we were going for, some
more fleshing out of the track and something to make the short 10-second
variant a little more memorable.

Obviously since we have no kind of visual aspect to the adverts, we needed

someone to talk in them to explain what the product actually was, that person
was I.

I recorded 3 different versions, one for each advert. The first one I did was the
full-length minute one, this introduced the product, told of its uses and
capabilities as a wizard wand.

Our 30-second one told much of the same, just no wand part and more a
persuasive way of getting the public to buy Stick by saying it would give
them a use for sticks and they would no longer be considered clutter on the
ground.

The 10-second one gave the base outline of what our product was, how much
it costs and why you should buy it.

Of course, this wasnt made in a single day and we had to use a program
called logic express, a very easy to use system that allows the general public
and students, really anyone for that matter, to make music.
How you can make your own
I shall now guide you through the steps needed to make one of our adverts,
the 10-second one.
Step 1 is to first get a clean track open, one with no music or sound on it at all,
to do this you must open logic express, go to file and click new and this will in
turn open up a new, clean track for you to use on this program.
You will also need to click on the plus sign; it should be in the top left of the
screen.

Now, a grey box shall appear, this gives you the ability to choose the number
of tracks needed for the song, lets go with 6. Now, you may have seen other
boxes saying software instrument, external midi, ECT. Dont worry, we only
want software instrument and we want 5 of these tracks, the last 6th one will
become an audio track.

This box here.

Right, now you have 6 tracks but you need to decide whats to be put on each
one, lets get a drumbeat going, we are going to be making the drumbeat
simple, so its easy to follow, not using 3 different ones in one like I did. First,
open the library, the pull out holder icon on the far right. Theres a lot of kits
here, too many to cycle through quick, lets just choose Rock Kit and with
that, you now have a drum kit ready for making music.

Now, play your beat in, this is going to serve as our introduction of the advert
jingle. Oops, I didnt tell you to press the record button, press the record
button, which is a circle icon, and play your jingle in again for the drumbeat.
Now we have the intro, you need to make the main drum beat, play another
drum beat in to fill the 10 second time slot and make sure you pressed record.
There we go. Drum beat out the way.

Now, just before you do anything, you better make sure its in the time with the
song, click on where your beat is recorded, yes the box with white lines in. It
should open up another box down below, showing your beat zoomed in,
select piano roll if it isnt already.

Highlight all of the little lines, AKA your drumbeat so they go a slightly different
color, these notes are now ready to be quantized. Now look around the left of
the box and you should see a little Q symbol, push it, this makes the entire
amount of notes selected fit nicely in time with the BPM (Beats Per Minute) of
the track.

Now, you have 10 seconds of an introduction and a beat, yes the only
instrument is a basic drum kit but we can remedy that pretty quickly. Now, we
need to add the nest instrument, dont we? Lets choose a nice classical
acoustic guitar, he reasoning for this is its a very nice sounding instrument,
also a very well known one, it also sounds happy and we want people to
associate our product with being happy so it fits. Play in a melody, one that
roughly matches the beat you made earlier and quantize the rack after playing
it in, as always.

Next, I decided to put a bass on, nothing dramatic but again, it needed to
make the 10-second version more hard hitting for when the audience listens
to it. This beat was very much the same as the classical acoustic guitar but

with a slight variation added, there were less notes than the guitar one. Try to
play something like that in and remember to quantize it; this should lead to the
instrumental being complete apart from your vocals (if you are putting vocals
in, if not you are now done).
I wrote down a few quick words about my product after, telling my viewer why
it was the best thing ever, by the way, the audio track of me doing so is not a
software instrument; it is an audio track. After learning the small amount of
lines, I had to get a mic so I could record it, this mic had to be plugged into the
midi keyboard to actually function however.
After the vocals were recorded, I quantized everything once again to give it a
final check and low and behold, my track had been made, it sounded perfect
when played back and I couldnt be any happier with the finished product.

Guide to Logic Pro X

Firstly, the version of Mac we will be using is an OS X Yosemite version
10.10.5 Mac mini from late 2014. It has a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8
GB of memory, the graphics card is an Intel Iris 1536 MB and this is the Mac
we will be using today.
It looks something like this, as seen in this block diagram

This should be your setup.

Once you have that all setup and own a copy of Logic Pro X, we need to
make sure you know how to get it open. First off, if its on your desktop, simply
click it, if not then you need to use Finder on your Mac. Click on finder and up
will pop basically a screen of documents, look in the left panel, there should
be some buttons and one is called applications. Push it. Then all you need to
do it press it and up opens Logic Pro X.

Logic
Theres a lot to look at here, thankfully the explanations will be very
streamlined. First of all, lets have a look at the layout. The layout of logic can
be quite hectic to look at right off the bat. If we look at the top bar you will see
a lot of stuff, I will cover the more important buttons here. The 1 st button is the
library, this is where all of your available instruments reside, click on this and
16 sections of instruments will come down, you can then click on a category
and you will get many different kinds of that instrument, for example, if you
press guitar, you will get many different kinds of guitar like classical and hard
rock.

The next icon along is the inspector, this allows you to put plug-ins, different
effects and other mixes into your song and they affect your instruments. The
parameters displayed depend on what item you have selected, which working
are has key focus and what you have clicked at the time.
Apart from the other parts, which we will get to later, the other main part you
should be looking at is the workspace, this is where your music will actually be
recorded and placed, your tracks will be shown here and this is the primary
area for recording, editing and arranging audio, midi and drummer regions,
divided into different track types.
Midi/Midi Keyboard
The midi keyboard is basically what you play in all of your music with if you
dont draw it in that is but we will touch on that later, yes we will. This is a
photo of what one looks like.

It comes equipped with 2 sets of C to B keys, layer button, octave button, an

output node, input nude and many more features. Using the push to enter
button you can select how you want each keyboard to sound. This is what you
use to play in single notes, chords, black keys and white keys to make your
song. The one I use is an Alesis make. Now midi in the actual program is
quite different from a midi keyboard, usually your main use with midi is the
midi note event; this represents a midi note or command, which you can edit
the same way as regions. Next, we have a midi effect slot; essentially this is
what you use to add an effect to a part of the music. To do so, click the midi
effect slot, and then choose a plug-in from the pop-up menu.

Place the pointer above or below an occupied midi effect slot, click the green
line that appears, and then choose a plug-in from the pop-up menu. Then as
you choose one, a new window will open containing the plug-in where you
can use it to edit the part of music to your hearts content.

Software Instrument/Audio Channels

Software instruments and audio channels are the way you put tracks in, either
your track is going to be an audio channel which involves either singing or
playing your instrument into a mic and recording it yourself or your software
instrument which is one of the instruments from the library.

You see that picture I posted up there, yeah? Well that is accessed by
pressing the little plus icon located in the workspace underneath the top icons,
you should find it soon enough. Click this and up pops that screen, you add
tracks to hold your recordings. As soon as you add a track, you choose the
track type, the format of it, input source (if its an audio track) and of course
the output, you can use this to create multiple tracks all at once! As soon as
you make a new track, a new channel strip opens up as well.
If you want to make an audio track, you need to choose the input channel or
channels. As soon as this is done, you need to make sure you have a
microphone attached to the midi keyboard, as this is what enables you to
record the melody you play in.
For software instrument, its a bit simpler. As soon as you select software
instrument, you very easily select the instrument plug in you want and just use
it to play the song.
The Transport Bar
Now, the transport bar is a little bit more segmented than anything else in
logic so I will be covering everything in it using sub-categories.
The Play Button
The play button is in the shape of an arrow pointing to the right. You press the
play button and it plays your song from the start or it will play from where you
have selected in the timeline if you have done so.
Stop
The stop button is on the transport bar to, it is in the shape of a square and it
stops the song when pressed. It will stop the song at the point it is in at the
timeline.
BPM
BPM or beats per minute is the beat you follow in a song, there is usually 4
beats in a bar. You can change the bpm however on logic using the bpm
modifier. You drag a dial up and down to change it.
Metronome
You use the metronome button to enable a small clicking beat that plays
throughout the song, this is a beat that follows the bpm and is used to keep an
instrument in time.

The Inspector
Again, the inspector is very much in categories that I will explain individually to
ease your learning process.
Pan
The pan button is used to move the source of the sound over to one speaker
or one headphone, the left or right one. This is usually used to create an audio
effect or have some emphasis on dynamics.
Fader
The fader on logic is used for fading in and out a sound, to bring the beat back
in or let it slowly fade out, this is used to usually transfer to different sections
of the songs.
Inserts
Logic uses inserts. An insert is used to edit an effect plugin or change and
insert an effect plug in. You can also use them to edit synthesizers and many
other parts of a song.
The Tool Box
Last but not least, this is the final section is which I will be detailing each
individual aspect of the logic feature, this time, the toolbox.
Pencil
The pencil in logic is located in the toolbox, as are the scissors and the eraser
but we will get to them after the pencil. The pencil is used to draw in notes on
the piano roll instead of playing them in which some people find easier.
Scissors
The scissors is used to cut a part of a song out, split it or chop a note in half,
basically doing the job or removing things or separating them completely.
Eraser
The eraser tool does exactly what it says on the tin, it erases things, be it a
note, full section of music or effect, the eraser will get rid of it for you, its
basically backspace now that I think about it.
Quantizing
Quantizing is essentially putting the notes of a song in order, it helps if you
couldnt play them in yourself and saves you a lot of time instead of having to
reorder them, and you wonder how to quantize? Easy. Basically, next to the
piano roll there is a little Q icon, if you highlight all of your notes together and
then press the Q, which will put them in line with the beats per minute.

Automation
Automation is useful to advanced users of Logic. To open up the automation
menu, you press a on the keyboard, this will extend the sections of music in
the workspace and lines will pop up, these lines can either be used to edit and
add effects or control the volume at exact points of the musical section and
not just the whole section, sort of like for fading in and out at a more exact
point.
The Piano Roll
The piano roll is one of the most important parts of logic, this is used to look at
your notes under a magnifying glass essentially, and this allows you to move
notes, edit them, add effects and remove them completely. This is also where
you draw in notes and can use the scissor tool on them to cut them in half;
this is why its a very important workstation in logic.
Conclusion
This is my guide to Logic. I hoped this helped you on making whatever song
you wanted to create or just to learn the basics of Logic.