200 Part III: Making Music with Virtual Instruments

Performing Your Orchestra

Your orchestral patches come with several velocity levels and different articulations to help you create realistic sounding performances. The patches also load with smart controls designed to make your performances expressive and dynamic.

Select a track and open the smart controls (B), as shown in Figure 12-6. Note the Legato and Staccato buttons in the clarinet smart controls; these switch between two articulation samples. You can quickly assign these buttons to your MIDI controller; for details, see Chapter 3.

	Figure 12-6:
	The wood-
	wind smart
	controls.
\		\
			Sampler instruments are often a surprise to play. You never know how many
			different samples or velocity levels you can experiment with. Designers of
			great sample instruments give you instruments that are instantly playable,
			and the Logic Pro X patches deliver on that promise with their intuitive
			design. But if you want to know exactly what your instrument can do, there’s
			no better place than the EXS24 sample instrument editor. A good patch on
			which to perform a sample autopsy is the Orchestral Kit:
\			1.\ Select the track that has the Orchestral Kit patch loaded.
\			You should already have a track with the Orchestral Kit patch loaded
			if you followed the instructions in the “Choosing Your Orchestral
			Instruments” section.

\2.\ Open the EXS24 by clicking the center of the instrument slot in the

inspector (I).

		Chapter 12: Conducting a Virtual Orchestra 201
\	3.\ Click the Edit button in the upper right of the EXS24 interface.
\	The Instrument Editor window opens.
\	4.\ On the instrument editor menu bar, click the Show Velocity button.
\	The velocity area shows above the keyboard and zones/group area.
	Note how some of the keys have multiple levels of velocity, as shown in
	Figure 12-7. Depending on how hard you hit your MIDI controller, different
	samples will play. Each sample turns blue as you play it. Watching the veloc-
	ity of a multisampled EXS24 instrument as you play is a great way to get to
	know the feel of your MIDI controller. Working with the instrument’s preset
	velocity will help you to play a sampled instrument more expressively.

Figure 12-7:

The EXS24 Instrument Editor window.

\\

Visit http://logicstudiotraining.com/lpx4dummies to download a template that has the natural ranges of the orchestral instruments written in the track notes.

Traveling the World Instruments

As a composer, the ability to use instruments from other cultures provides the opportunity to create authentic scores and satisfy artistic and client needs. In addition to the full orchestra you already have, you can create a project alternative that includes groups of world instrument patches. To create a new project alternative, do the following:

\1.\ Choose File Alternatives New Alternative.

\	The new alternative dialog opens.

202 Part III: Making Music with Virtual Instruments

\	2.\ Enter your new alternative name and click OK.
\	A new project alternative is created, duplicating the current project
	settings.
	Here are several groups of patches you could add to the full orchestra:

\\India: Indian Bansuri Flute, Indian Shehnai Oboe, Indian Sitar, Indian &

Middle Eastern Kit

\\Africa: African Kalimba, African Kit, South African Singers, South African

Voice Effects

\\Medieval: European Folk Kit, Celtic Hammered Dulcimer, Celtic Harp,

Medieval Lute, Celtic Tin Whistle, Medieval Recorder, Irish Bouzouki

\\Asia: Asian Kit, Indonesian Gamelan, Tibetan Singing Bowls, Chinese

Erhu Violin, Chinese Guzheng Zither, Chinese Ruan Moon Guitar,

Japanese Koto, Chinese Dizi Flute, Chinese Xiao Flute, Japanese

Shakuhachi Flute

\		You need to download the World instruments from the Additional Content
		window, as you learned previously in the “Choosing your orchestral instru-
		ments” section.

With these patches and your new orchestral template, you can follow in the footsteps of John Williams and pull the heartstrings of movie watchers. You can learn from the masters and input scores of composing giants Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. You can add a string orchestra to your next rock

song or record an Indian raga. There’s so much you can do, and now that you have your orchestra saved as a template and a patch, you can add it to any project that needs a virtual orchestra.

Part IV

Arranging and Editing

Your Project

\	Discover the five fundamentals of building wonderful arrangements at www.dumies.
	com/extras/logicprox.

In this part...

\\ Arrange tracks and regions in the tracks area and make global changes to your arrangement. Discover arranging techniques to create interest and create groove templates to enhance timing.

\\ Get to know the audio and MIDI editors. Create composite takes, edit pitch and timing, and repair audio glitches.

\\ Input and edit MIDI notes and data. Adjust the timing of your MIDI recordings and view your MIDI as notation.