You know Drummer. Logic now has the other two members of the band: a Bass Player and a Keyboard Player. Between them you can put a rhythm section under an idea in about a minute, and they all follow the same chords.
They are not loops. Each one generates a performance that reacts to the chords you give it, the style you pick, and how hard you tell it to play. Change the chords and the parts change with them.
The three players
- Drummer - acoustic kits through Drum Kit Designer, electronic kits through Drum Machine Designer.
- Bass Player - plays through the Studio Bass plug-in. Follows your chords, and you can tell it how far to wander from the root.
- Keyboard Player - plays through Studio Piano. Left and right hand are voiced separately.
Bass Player and Keyboard Player also have Synth Player styles that run on Alchemy instead - Modulated Pad and Rhythmic Chords on the keys, Pump Bass, 808 Bass and Sequenced Bass on the low end.
Add a player
- Click the Add Tracks button above the track headers, or press Option-Command-N.
- Choose Drummer, Bass Player or Keyboard Player in the Session Player button.
- Open the Details arrow and pick a style if you don't want the default.
- Click Create.
What you get depends on what is already in the project, and this is worth knowing before you click:
- Nothing set up yet - one 8-bar region.
- Arrangement markers in place - one region per marker, named and sized to match your sections.
- Cycle area on - one region the length of the cycle.
- Marquee selection active - one region the length of the selection.
So mark out your verse and chorus first. Logic will build the parts around the arrangement instead of you cutting regions afterwards.
Give them chords to follow
Bass Player and Keyboard Player play the harmony on the Chord track. Put your progression there and every player in the project locks to it. Covered properly in The Chord Track.
A region can also carry its own chords if you want one player doing something different - the keys on extensions while the bass walks, say. That is region chords, and it lives in the Production course.
More than one feel in a song
Each region on the track can have its own style, so the verse can be brushes and the chorus can be sticks on the same Drummer track.
- Control-click an empty part of the track and choose Create Session Player Region.
- Or hover after the last region and click the + that appears.
Session Player loops
The Loop Browser has Session Player loops - click Loop Types and select Session Player. Bass and keyboard loops come annotated with their chords, and when you drag one in Logic offers to copy those chords to the Chord track so everything else follows them.
When you want to take over
Control-click a Session Player region and convert it to a MIDI or pattern region. You lose the generator and get the notes, which you can then edit anywhere you would edit MIDI. Do it once you're happy - there is no converting back.
Editing the performance itself - complexity, fills, voicings, phrasing, regenerating - is in the Production course.