Midi Tips and Tricks in Logic Pro

Midi is one of the most important things to master in music production. If you're creating your own music, you will run into midi very early on in your journey.

It is extremely flexible because it contains musical information that can easily be edited, unlike recorded audio which is more complicated. It contains data about note pitch, note start, note length and strength (velocity) as well as much more.

Midi regions in Logic Pro 11

It has no sound until you give it a sound. By choosing a virtual instrument it then makes the note information come alive! As it is just data It is easily transferable across different instruments, which is really cool! You can simply move the midi notes / data from one instrument to another. For example: you can very easily change a piano part into a guitar part in just a few clicks.

This is why getting a midi keyboard is a good idea when you start producing because it will allow you to produce the sound of any instrument in your DAW. It is much easier than drawing it in, even if you are not the best keyboard player.

When working in Logic Pro, you will use software instrument tracks to use midi rather than audio. In this article we shall explore some useful tips to master midi in Logic Pro 11.

Tip 1: Duplicate Midi

You can quickly duplicate midi notes in the piano roll by drawing one in and then hitting CMD + R.

It will create another the same length where the last one ended. This is great for programming in hi-hats, or whenever you need a lot of notes quickly. For instance, working with 1/16th notes, perhaps for a driving bass part.

Tip 2: Velocity Variance

Music is all about feeling. However, if every note is the same velocity (strength) then the music sounds robotic. Songs rarely have the the same level of emotion throughout. Also real guitarists, drummers and pianists would never hit every note with the same strength.

Therefore adding in velocity variations makes your midi sound A LOT more realistic. You can do this individually for each note, however this can take some time. To speed this up you can use the Midi Transform function 'humanize' to do this for you. See below.

Tip 3: Quick Transpose

If you want to move midi around quickly you can use the shortcut Alt (Option) + up/down arrows to quickly move notes in the piano roll by a semitone up or down.

Or if you want to jump an octave (12 semitones) at a time, hold SHIFT at the same as Alt (Option) + Up/Down.

What's extremely cool about this is that it also works in the main arrangement window. Furthermore, it can be applied for audio regions as well as midi regions. You may notice some slight warping of the sounding with audio.

This is great to quickly hear how a part might sound in a different octave or a perfect 5 up (+7 semitones.)

Tip 4: Quantize Time and Scale

One thing that is awesome about midi is that you can Quantize it. Which means that you can click a button and instantly put it in time. Neat!

So if you record something in with your keyboard and the timing is all over the place, you can instantly fix it!

While this seems amazing, and it is - it is also easy to over do it! You may find if everything is quantized bang on the beat, that it loses some overall 'groove' or 'feel.'

A solution for this is to back off the strength slider to 90% to keep some of that lovely feel. See below.

In the image above you should also notice the Scale Quantize. This is extremely helpful if you struggle with music theory.

This will quantize any notes you recorded - or drew in - to a particular scale. For example, if you know that your song is in the key of D major but you don't know what notes are in the key. You can chose the scale of D major and hit Q button. That will make sure all the notes you played are forced in that key.

There are many other keys available from the drop down menu - like the pentatonics, blues and the modes. Now you can quantise to the key that you are working in. Magic.

Happy MIDI-ing! If that's a thing...Master the skill of midi editing and your productions will massively benefit.

P.S: Learn how to master midi in Logic Pro in this beginner course designed to help you complete your first song!