Since buying Logic Pro X back in 2020 my partner Mo and I have been reworking some of our old songs and writing some new ones. I used to record our full band live to get at least the live drums down. Then I’d over dub everything else. Now that we are back to working as a duo it makes sense to use what’s now available in my laptop and we are doing that more and more. Recording guitar “in the box” is part of that.
The possibilities offered by Logic have been an eye opener. I thought it’d be fun to look at a recent song, Open Heart – featured in the video below – and how I did the guitar parts completely “In the box”. So here goes.
Elsewhere in this blog I talk about my beloved Boss GT100. I usually use it for recording my guitar parts but I’ve found a few sounds I really like in Logic so I decided to use those for this song. I also decided to use the copy and paste possibilities within Logic – in fact any DAW. Rather than playing repetitive parts all the way through they’re done in short sections. Since the song is quite simple and uses drum loops – again, Logic Pro’s built in Apple loops it kind of fits the overall feel.
Cut’n N A Paste’n
I know purists among you – and I used to be one – will be horrified by this, but It’s just how things are done these days and it makes life much easier. These days I actually use the arrange function to do this with entire songs. But I digress….
There are 4 guitar parts in Open Heart: The Main riff, a Wah Wah rhythm part, a clean rhythm part and a distorted lead part. I played them all on my 90’s MIJ Strat. The Rhythm parts use Logic Pro’s Brit and Clean (Vox AC30) Cinnamon Tweed (50’s Fender Tweed) and Classic Rock Hall (AC30 with overdrive, compression and a huge delay)
Recording Guitar In The Box With Logic Pro
Since we are dealing with a 3 chord song here there’s a lot of repetition. I just played each part a few times, selected the best takes and cut n pasted them as required. I’ve drawn in a little fade between each so that they blend better.
I also tackled the bass on this song. Digging into Logic’s cold perfect heart again (I’m not a great bass player) I used Flex time to correct my timing. It actually did this too well in places making them sound a little artificial. We both decided we liked the sound though so left it in.
The same approach was taken with the keyboard parts. Cutting and pasting midi parts is nothing new to me. I did that with my ancient Atari and Cubase back in the day. Its quicker now for me to correct any mistakes with the mouse than it is to ask Mo to play them again.
Love it Or Hate It?
This is like anything digital. Its either a process you embrace or hate. I’m certainly a fan of recording guitars through real amps. I don’t think anything beats the sound of real drums played by a great player. But that all takes so much time and space. These days digital amp modelling is pretty amazing. IT makes recording guitar in the box very convincing. The sounds in both my GT100 and in Logic are a million times better even than my old Pod which in its day was pretty amazing. I’m a huge fan too of Easy Drummer, which also makes drum machines of old sound laughable.
One of the things Mo and I have always argued about is drums actually. In Open Heart they are a variety of Apple loops straight out of the bag. Her argument is that as we are not a band why should we attempt to sound like one. She has a point and I’m coming round to her way of thinking. But……
Logic Pro also offers the chance to create Project alternatives! So we can have the best of both worlds: An EDMish version and one with traditional drums. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
