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Arpeggiator

Lesson 15 from: Songwriting in Logic Pro X for Electronic Music Production

Tomas George

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Lesson Info

15. Arpeggiator

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Writing Drums and Bass Part Introduction

01:11
2

Making Drums Beats with Ultrabeat

14:27
3

Beats with Ultrabeat and Drummer

08:48
4

Writing Bass Parts - Part 1

15:03
5

Writing Bass Parts - Part 2

04:53
6

Writing Drums and Bass Parts Assignment

00:44
7

Writing Chords Introduction

00:56
8

Writing Chords

19:38

Lesson Info

Arpeggiator

OK. Now we're going to have a look at actually adding an Arpe Gator. This is a great way of creating a counter melody and a great way of actually making your music have a bit more movement and sound a little bit more interesting. So what we're going to do is create an Arpeggio by using the Arpe Midi effects. So let's actually find this piano part here. And now underneath this, let's create a new software instrument. And this time, let's choose es two synthesizer again and then hit crete. Now we're going to actually copy all this piano information time. Let's actually rename this by double clicking Ar Por. And the reason we're using this information is because it plays each note of the chord. And what an AR P does is it plays each note of the chord in whatever order you set it to in the midi effects. Now, let's just solo this and create a loop. OK? And now over here we go over to midi effects. Let's choose the first one which is our por so we have loads of different things here. We have...

notes order. So we have going up going down, up and down, dining up then random. And a few of ones who have different variations for each different octave ranges, different rate. We can also, you can also draw in patterns here with the grid. But for now, we're just going to use a default. Let's just choose chord cycle one, we can go through and change the rate. OK? I think this one works classic cycle one, the order is up and down variations, variation two octave range number two, I do recommend going in and studying this, but it is best in my opinion when quickly writing the song to start off with a preset and then go in and tweak this and change it around. So let's hear this in the mix. We can always go into the ES two synthesizer and change some of this around. OK. Great. Now, wherever the piano plays at the moment, there will be an arpege, we can also add an arpe into this breakdown section here, just going to actually copy this over. I'm just gonna add the last two courts and drag this over. And that's basically how we can add NP to logic pro It's really simple. What we used to have to do is either buy an external third party plug in that was an Arator or manually go in and write the notes. You can still do this. But I just like using the Arator Midi plug in because it makes it so much easier. Mhm. The only problem with this now is it does kind of clash when this rift plays. So, what I recommend is actually going through and not having too much of the Arpa Gator. So whenever the riff plays, I might get rid of the Arpa Gator and then whenever the riff isn't there, I put on the Arpe Gator because if there's too many notes, there's too many melodies, there's too much going on. The listener will get confused. I won't know what to listen to. So a lot of this is about arrangement. It is about putting the right amount in. It's like baking a cake. You don't wanna put too many ingredients in. You just want the perfect amount of ingredients and the perfect type of ingredients. That's really what songwriting is. That's really what composition is, is putting the right ingredients into your track. It is something called too much like right there, there was too much going on and the best thing to do is to take stuff out. So let's have a quick listen to this now with the RPJ in. OK. So what I'm going to do now is just change the sound of the Arpeggio to a little bit just so it suits the song a bit better. A lot of this is about sound design. You might think of being a songwriter, being a composer, is just about writing the notes just about writing the melodies, but it's not sound design is extremely important. You don't really want to rely on the producers to do this for you this day and age. You really have the option to do it all yourself. So I recommend do it yourself. Even if you're a single songwriter, even if you don't see yourself as a producer, just learn some of the basics, learn the basics of sound design and synthesis. And then if you do give it to a producer, they'll be able to do a lot more of it because you've already done the basics, you've already done the fundamentals. So remember to go through it in your synthesizer and just basically tweak some of the knobs is a good idea to learn stuff like oscillators, filters and envelopes. But if you don't know this, I recommend start off with presets and then just go down to the macros and just do it by ear, see what sounds good. And also look what the macro does. If it moves certain knobs or dials, look what it changes and try and work out why it's doing that. So now I'm going to go down and just find a sound. I recommend you do the same. I'm gonna fast forward this section, but all I'm really doing is scrolling through the presets and I'll show you how I'm going to tweak the sound, found this SIM sound called wave pad, groove free. And let's listen to this with the Arpeggio. Let's change the blend over to the left. OK. Great. I'm gonna leave it like this and maybe de tune it slightly. All I've really done is change the wave, decrease the attack time and change a bit of the modulation and resonance. So let's have a listen to this in the mix. OK. So this is basically how we can throw an arpege into the mix really quickly and we can use this as a counter melody a really quick way of actually adding some more movement and making our songs sound more exciting. Next, we're going to be looking at arrangements.

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