The Chord track is in the Logic Pro course. Two things go further: having Logic work out the chords from a recording, and letting one player ignore the Chord track and play its own.
Chord ID
Logic analyses an audio or MIDI region and writes the chords it finds.
- Open the global tracks and show the Chord track.
- Drag a region from the Tracks area onto the Chord track.
Logic analyses it and adds the chords as a chord group at the region's position. Drag several regions and you get a chord group per region.
Same job from the shortcut menu: select the regions, Control-click, then Chords > Analyze Chords. This writes the chords onto the region rather than the Chord track.
In 12.3 the analysis got noticeably better on both single instruments and full mixes - if you tried this on an earlier version and gave up on it, try it again.
Analyse only part of a take
Turn Cycle mode on and only the chords under the cycle area are analysed when you drag the region over. Useful on a long take where the middle eight is the only bit you actually want.
Moving chords around
- Apply Region Chords to Chord Track - promote what a region is playing so everything else follows it.
- Paste chords from the Chord track to a region - go the other way when one player needs to start from the song's harmony and then diverge.
Region chords vs the Chord track
A Session Player region holding its own chords follows those and ignores the Chord track. That is the whole mechanism, and it is how you get an arrangement that is not four players hitting the same triad:
- Keys on extensions - 9ths and 13ths in the region while the Chord track stays plain, so the bass does not chase them.
- A walking bass - region chords with passing notes the rest of the band never plays.
- A reharmonised chorus - one section's chords changed without touching the song's own progression.
You edit region chords in the Session Player Editor - they appear along the lower half of the region.
Finding the key
Analyze Key Signature in the Chord track's shortcut menu works out the key from a range of chords and writes it to the Signature track. Worth running before you start adding chords by hand, since new chords take their quality from the project key.