How to Use Logic Pro Studio Strings!

what's up everyone Nathan Larson here with another video for you home studio musicians and artists in this video we're taking a look at Logic Pro and maybe showing you how you can use the built-in strings in logic to create some really great and fantastic sounds so the first thing I want to say is that I've been using sampled string libraries for quite a while I think I was 19 years old when I bought my first sample library from Native Instruments because at that time I was doing quite a bit more music for like film scoring type music but I recently was working on a video and a track where I am only using Logic plugins and Logic MIDI instruments to produce the entire thing and I want to have some strings in it and so I was curious to see how good the strings were in logic because I remember when I first got started with Logic the strings were absolutely terrible in fact alchemy didn't exist of pitch flex or flex pitch didn't even exist a lot of that stuff was not a part of logic when I first got it so logic has improved a tremendous amount in last many years so here about a week ago I was experimenting with some of the string instruments built into logic and I was really impressed so I've only done a little bit of dabbling so I actually wanted to use this video a little bit as an opportunity for me to learn a little bit about how to use these string instruments a little better but also show you what kinds of things I'm looking at from the perspective of having used a lot of stringed instruments from native instruments all the way to east-west quantum leap and what different things we can do to make these samples sound as good as possible what things work really well and what things don't work really well so let's just go ahead and jump straight into logic all right so the first thing that we're gonna want to do is make sure that we amp open up I'm just gonna open up an empty channel strip via MIDI and then you can go over here you can see I haven't even downloaded everything in here we're gonna go to our kestrel X we're gonna go to studio strings that's what I've been experimenting with a little bit more so studio strings they actually sampled all of these instruments very similar to how you would get some of the samples out of like Native Instruments session strings Pro I'm actually going to show you a comparison of how these stack up to something like session strings Pro and so when you open this up right away you can see you can choose individual instrument group instrument groupings so you can choose obviously cello double bass viola viola and one violin too so what I'm going to do is this let's go ahead and open up studio violin one first things first let's just go ahead and take a look at what this actually looks like so we're gonna go over here and open up the instrument itself and it's got a very simple layout so I've already got my MIDI keyboard on [Music] okay and you'll notice that with a violin one you're not gonna be able to go below G below middle C so that's me I'm clicking the F key and nothing is happening that's because that G is actually the open string it's the lowest lowest pitch so that is realistic which is good so the first thing you want to look at is just the whole layout so monophonic mode you can turn that on or off so monophonic mode is off when you just opened up which means I can play a chord dynamics vs see see that's going to be via control is off automatically which means that right now it's going to go completely off of velocity how hard you actually play the note so I just barely touched it played it quite a bit harder dynamics on you can actually use your mod control your mod wheel okay so I'm gonna leave that on because I like having a lot of control with the mob wheel and this is also going to show you the last plate articulation which is sustained then we've got our cutoff this is going to be a low-pass filter so this is going to as 100% there's no reduction happening but as we let's say we do a 50% reduction so that's we're moving the top-end I suppose if you wanted to do that you you you could volumes can be set to negative 60 B so if you need a little bit of a volume boost you can do that I don't see why you would you got a resonance attack and release so the attack is at 0% which means as soon as I play a note let's go ahead and you're gonna hear it let's put this up to 50% ok the attack at 50% it's actually going to kind of fade and the release at 20% if we put that as 0 it's gonna like shut it off immediately like close it we put the Ridley's to 100% it's gonna hang on for quite a while so let's just put it back at 20% you can kind of mess around with these as you want now let's get into the fun stuff which is the articulation we've got the articulation bar up here if it's hidden they need to seem to open it up and you've got a lot of different articulations I'm not going to play through all of them you can certainly do that I'm going to kind of point out the main ones that I think are important so sustain is definitely a big one staccato and sacado are really good so the differences between spicata and staccato staccato means the string player is actually going to keep the bow on the string the entire time whereas picado with a piece picado they're actually going to remove the bow from the string so it's gonna basically bounce off so listen to this this is staccato [Music] okay now listen to spiccato it's a lot shorter has a little bit more kind of punch and attack to it the Falls the scoops the accented sustain all this stuff again you can kind of play around with it I never use this stuff I just I just don't do it pizzicato is definitely one you're going to want to use that's plucking a string I love that on the G it's actually the open note you can tell it's the open note the trill this is do that you might use that if you're doing something cinematic and then tremolo I love the tremolo I love trim level we could definitely use the tremolo for sure so this is again this is just taking a look at the violin one let's just open up a couple more one let's just do a full orchestra here basically so let's just go to see of strings studio violin - let's make this one viola this is actually how I would oftentimes do this I would just open it up and there you go so now we've got our violin one violin - viola cello and double bass so double bass let's go ahead and open this up dynamics I want to have that on so again the first thing I'm going to want to go in and do is turn all these so it's got dynamics via CC so that way I can control the dynamics with my wheel I think are you double bass yep there we go yeah double-bass I don't use it a whole lot to be honest with you but I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of write something out here really simple to give you guys an idea of what things we can kind of get away with and what things work and what things don't work so great so I'm gonna do is actually I'm gonna write something and then I'm gonna write a string part and show you kind of how I'm gonna do in the process I'm going through day to get that done so I'm just gonna open up a piano because I think it's really great to have piano with strings I'm just going to use the Giants and Native Instruments I absolutely love using the giant okay you know I'm gonna do I'm actually going to go ahead and track just a little bit of a song that I'm actually working on right now [Music] this is that much it's a little fast [Music] okay so I'm gonna do I'm just gonna start with a really simple like really high strings and then I'll kind of bring stuff in as we go so the first thing is I want to have a sustained patch going on now one of the things I noticed there's not a whole lot of reverb so and you can see here there's a compressor on this there's some EQ the fat FX is on there which is kind of like a multi effects plug-in I'm not going to mess with any of that because I just don't want to but the bus is I'm gonna increase on this one is a concert hall yeah I want some more reverb reverb is a fantastic tool when it comes to strings if you want to make your string sound bigger more rich then add more reverb for sure so let's just go ahead and come up with something this is gonna be a more sustained kind of a deal it's almost going to just like octave thing [Music] okay I'm just gonna do the octave start way down here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right that's cool I like that so let's just make this eighth notes I don't think I did anything else so the first thing I'll probably do is turn this down this is where cut off might be nice because it is a little sharp harsh [Music] and [Music] that's why so it's kind of boosted some of the high ends here so let's take us take some those highs out there we go [Music] I like that so let's make the viola tada [Music] let's turn that way down so lets you live so that's kind of let's pan some of stuff to make it sound a little more like it would actually would let's do it right there second time [Music] okay so kind of have a cool little thing going on there okay so then that one of the things you'll need to notice about and your quantizing these these strings instruments a lot of times the attack is quite slow so you do want to actually maybe kind of like move it ahead a little bit so let's see what I did there I kind of moved it forward on the grid and you're gonna want to get rid of this overlap because the overlaps gonna get muddy [Music] let's just take all of this I thought I did that but I apparently I didn't I need to move all of it forward a little bit [Music] again just make sure that there's no heavy overlap happening you also like right here you can see that there's space you don't want space either because that's kind of like re articulate that and that's going to sound kind of weird so this reverb is going to help kind of mask a little bit of the Unreal nosov it because that doesn't sound particularly great to me like that sounds like da da da da it doesn't really sound like how a real string player would would do this so this goes but that as we as we add layers is gonna sound more and more realistic [Music] okay so that I'm gonna add in I'm gonna add in that second violin there so the first violinist playing octave C's I'm gonna have the second violins two octaves on G so we're going to turn everything down here make some space to three [Music] it's kinda weird so I'm gonna do is make it so that octave G changes to something different that second time [Music] we'll see how that sounds [Music] cool so seen it kind of that's the expression issue so we can go into here the automation [Music] now when we add this cello that low-end is gonna add so much asking me great [Music] cool that sounds pretty good [Music] okay so I'm doing in here is I'm going into the automation within the MIDI okay into the piano roll so you can do is hit on the keyboard or just go to your piano roll and then you can open that up by going to this tab right here you can show or hide your automation you can go in and control which it is so modulation is going to be our control for dynamic so I'm making all these changes within here this is basically the hub of how I'm going to add our not articulation but dynamic [Music] boom that's a little bit more of a serious kind of a you know more of a wash I didn't end up actually using the double bass but here's how that would sound if I if I decided this kind of double what the bass was doing with the cello I would actually take this down the octave [Music] the other depth [Music] okay so that's something that's in more of that solemn somber kind of vein this is where cheaper products are gonna work really well if this was maybe something that was more cinematic something those more action let's actually go ahead and nope I don't want us to delete all that let's just start over here and create something new that's a little more like a little more action kind of driving so what I'm gonna do is just kind of open up a loop from damage caused image to kind of give us some inspiration and then I'm going to show you how I could use this to create something that's more epic and more cinematic so this is just damaged by Native Instruments this is super epic [Music] alright so the first thing we need to do is up the tempo just like 120 yeah baby [Music] cool so some something just like that just a little bit of reverb let's just make sure this quantized [Music] that's pretty dope I like that so this is not just to get job sold on damage but damage is awesome I love it it is the easiest thing in the world you to just get these massive percussive deals going on okay so let's just like figure something out we're going to want to change our articulation I'm gonna do spicata did it did it do you know what let's make our violin one is gonna do something a little more like and then our violin - we're gonna do something a little more epic with and then same thing with this other stuff will do spicata picado I'm gonna keep the double bass as is as it is okay so let's just do this like there we go there we go and then we'll kind of like loop that yeah I like that that's cool [Music] just like that take a ticket and then dip it dip attempt on accept I need to make sure this is sixteenth notes we're gonna turn damage down for sure actually if we can turn everything else up huh we can just go in here and fix it and there we go we've got that let's just loop it join the let's do the exact same thing with the studio violins this time [Applause] boom just like that I think as a pre saw performance all right let's do tell us none of them cool that's cool [Music] and again we're just gonna yep let's cut that all over again I'm trying to do this as fast as possible okay so I've got everything recorded except for the studio violins this is kind of listen to how this is all set [Music] all right so I need to make sure I have sustain yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] we'll call that and then what I can do here since I played that in octaves I am going to need to kind of mess with the modulation a little bit more to make us a much more expressive so I want this to be yeah I know what kind of crescendo into that see you all right so I need to this a little more all right I'm have to make this a lot more dramatic so one of the things you want to do is not make it like straight V's you want to kind of arc arch it a little bit so actually I'm gonna do I'm gonna do the automated curve tool oops no no no come on this is not what I want come on there we go don't want that space as much just bring that down just make this really dynamic yeah I think that's maybe a little too much let's do that it's also a little bit too much [Music] let's just try that and see let's so this curve tool is really awesome I love it [Music] [Applause] so that whole thing could be a dick word yeah and they could crescendo upward and it kind of like good Plateau and then go up and then Plateau and then come back down [Applause] could bring that down even more I think and then bring that up to finish it out all right let's turn from the top [Music] [Music] cool so there you go that's that's how you would do this just using logic now what I want to do is just show you a little bit of a comparison between logic and between the session strings Pro and east-west quantum leap just to kind of give you a little bit of sense I'm gonna take this exact same action sequence here and we're gonna go ahead and do it with session strings Pro first and then we'll do it with logic or east-west quantum leap next so I'm gonna go ahead and do this as quickly as possible so we want to open up contact violin one and I might copy that over this will be pylon to copy copy viola Native Instruments cello of instruments so staccato actually works a little better than spicata for Native Instruments I'm not going to say the difference for this video but just so you know now I'm not doing anything with in Native Instruments as far as reverb goes but I am going to go ahead and send it to the same reverb that you are hearing with in the other instrument so I'm going to send them bus three and bus 4 so it'll open up my mixer here plus 3 plus 4 okay so that way we can get a comparable feel and the kind of pan things out the same so that's also comparable so let's just copy all of this here name there we go I don't think I'd done double bass yet okay cool oh that's good okay so I believe [Music] okay so the modulation is reacting a lot differently within Native Instruments so I'm gonna have to make these a lot less dramatic oh that's also why I have octaves going and within the legato patch you cannot do that so I'm gonna do accent instead [Music] dan I think it's just a little bit too much articulation so each and each one's gonna be different in how its gonna need you to so even then the accent patch is maybe not the best one let's just do let's just do sustain [Music] perhaps the same thing here I am going to increase the velocity significantly there we go that's gonna sound a lot better [Music] okay now there we go so this is going to be Native Instruments session strings Pro modified to better fit the patch [Music] okay now let's do a comparison again to the studio strings [Music] I mean take a pic you can make each one of these work so then finally I'm gonna go ahead and do east-west quantum leap alright so now let's compare so the volume why is this sounds a little quieter to me but that is something you can easily boost [Music] okay now again let's compare that to what we started with [Music] one last time east-west quantum leap [Music] [Music] if I have more time for this video I would probably make more changes to the east-west ones to make it sound a little better the main thing is though that the east-west is gonna sound way more rich and full and has more depth to it east-west is also it takes way more time to make them sound as super great so the thing that I hear listening to this east-west a lot more rich and full and then the studio violin strings from Logic have a lot more top-end Piper it's okay oh there's a little more top end and then Native Instruments is somewhere in the middle to me so the really the point of this video though is to show you that you can get really great results from the Logic Pro plug-in by itself so obviously if you want to go out and buy professional tools and libraries you certainly can do that but really the point this video is you can absolutely 100% make do with what you're doing with just the logic plugins one of the things that I do and I'm actually getting ready to do this I'm gonna be releasing a video in the next week or two that demonstrates this is layering a live string player over top of the sampled instruments to add more realism add more depth and so I'm gonna be putting out of videos showing you how you can use one string player live to emulate an orchestra and you do that by layering and samples I'm gonna be doing that with the logic strings that's the whole purpose I got into this in the first place so you can certainly check that video out later if this video was helpful to you make sure you subscribe I've got plenty of other videos you can check out in the meantime and I'm really excited for some of the videos are you coming out here really soon you can also check out my website Nathan Jay Larson comm where if you're wanting to learn more about home studio production that's what I do help people out in that vein be more than happy to see if I can help you in that way

Channel: Nathan James Larsen

Views: 218,992

Keywords: logic pro x strings, logic pro studio strings tutorial, make midi strings sound real, how to use midi strings, logic pro x midi strings tutorial, logic pro midi strings, logic strings vs native instruments, native instruments vs logic pro strings, nathan larsen, how to use logic pro strings, how to use logic pro studio strings, using logic pro strings, using midi strings, making realistic midi strings, logic pro x tutorial, logic pro x, studio strings, midi strings

Id: HbtPIfwuJ0E

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020