Logic Pro X.

LOGIC PRO X

A$249.99

Mac OS X

www.apple.com.au

Logic Pro X is largely used by musicians and bands to record music, but it is increasingly being employed to score films. Whether you write your own music or just want to drag-and-drop readymade music clips into place, Logic Pro X provides a smooth and efficient way to create a soundtrack for your film.

For many years, Logic Pro was expensive and used only by professionals, but with the new release being sold for A$249.99, its popularity has grown. For many Mac users who had made music with GarageBand, Logic Pro X heralded the arrival of an application that enabled truly professional results--you could record your own music with just quality instruments and a good microphone. For filmmakers, the power of Logic Pro X may not be immediately obvious, but it is an excellent workstation for adding music to a him.

Any video that can be played by Apple's Quicktime can be imported into Logic Pro X - which means that you can work with an array of file types, including MOV, MP4 and MPEG. Once your video has been imported, the program displays an image of it in a small box on the left. If you need to see more detail, you can double-click this image to enlarge it and check the exact frame that you're on. In the timeline itself, the video is displayed as a strip of thumbnails across the top.

Things get interesting when you set Logic Pro X to automatically detect scene breaks. The first step in making music for a film is called spotting, and involves going through and seeing which parts of the film require music. Logic Pro X makes this process a breeze. In just a few seconds, Logic Pro accurately analyses your movie and shows where the scene breaks are by putting markers above the clips in the timeline, which you can then rename and colour. Getting organised when making films is a core skill, and Logic Pro X saves you time by automating this first step--as the music often ends at a scene break or begins in a new scene, this is an excellent way to speed things up. Additional markers can also be added as you go through the movie so that, before you even add a note, you have some idea of where the music will come in and where it will fade out. This overview lets you see how much music you need to create, and helps you work out how much time you'll need.

What comes next depends on your musical experience. If you are not a musician, you can add and mix Apple loops to create your own music. By dropping in these prerecorded loops and layering a few of them together, you can build up a rich, deep track in a matter of minutes. This isn't as limiting as it sounds - there are thousands of loops for hundreds of instruments, and once you drop them into the timeline, you can change their sound. So if you like a piano melody, for example, you can easily have it played as an electric guitar or even an orchestra.

If you are more experienced, attaching a MIDI keyboard gives you the option to play hundreds of simulated and sampled instruments live, and record them as you go. Logic Pro allows you to record yourself playing and then adjust the notes to perfect your performance. This process can be automated with quantising, which makes your notes hit the rhythm of the song with one click. A slightly wobbly performance can be made to sound like it's right on the beat. You can also record real instruments or vocals, and these too can be flexed into place if the performance you've recorded is a bit off. Notes that aren't quite right can be pitch-shifted until they sound as though they were performed perfectly. For more ambitious users, all this means that live recordings can sound fully professional. And if you prefer to compose by writing music, you can bring up the Score Editor and draw in notes manually. The music you write here can be played as any of the thousands of instruments and sounds that come with Logic Pro.

Although it's possible to work with a rough cut of the film, composing is usually best done when the film itself has been locked off and no more edits will occur. It also helps if there's a rough sound mix, so you know what levels of noise and volume will be going on in the background. Using the automation function, you can adjust the levels of volume and other effects over time. This means you can have gentle background music rise slowly, almost imperceptibly. Timing these changes in volume and levels to hit the cuts in video is a skill that can only be learned with practice, but the tools in Logic Pro make it easy to learn.

When your project is approaching completion, you will move on to mixing, which is when you adjust the volume to more exact levels and also when you finalise effects settings. The number and quality of effects is quite staggering, with everything from simulated guitar stomp boxes to the reverberation of a concert hall. While it is possible to add effects such as reverb and delay as you go, if you add effects to every track, it can over-stress your computer's processor and stop Logic Pro from playing sound in real time. The real skill lies in using the mixer to add effects in varying amounts to each of your tracks. Logic Pro is largely intuitive, but when it comes to mixing, you may need to study an online course or spend a lot of time with the manual to get the best results.

Creating the final output can be confusing because the command is called Bounce rather than Export, but after working with Logic Pro for a while, these naming conventions will stop being bothersome. The full-quality tracks can then be handed off to a sound mixer to blend the music with the film's audio. Alternatively, you can perform the final mix of music, vocals and sound effects in Logic Pro itself by importing all the film's tracks from Final Cut Pro and blending them with your music.

Through its combination of instruments, simulated amplifiers and effects, you can create original music that sounds like it was recorded by professional musicians in a studio. Logic Pro X is a genuine recording studio on your computer and runs without crashing, even on quite low-end machines and laptops. For users who've worked with GarageBand, the move to Logic Pro X should be easy. For video editors who've worked with Final Cut Pro X or Premiere, it should also be simple to learn your way around Logic Pro. The two main requirements when scoring a film are the ability to see where you are in the film when scoring and during playback, and access to high-quality sounds and effects. Logic Pro has both, making it the ideal program to use when scoring short films or even documentaries and features.

Christopher Kenworthy is a writer, director and FX artist who published the filmmaking book Master Shots. He directed his first feature film, The Sculptor, in 2008.

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Title Annotation:	SOFTWARE REVIEW
Author:	Kenworthy, Christopher
Publication:	Screen Education
Date:	Oct 1, 2014
Words:	1225
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