Producing Music with Logic

Read an interview with Producing Music with Logic online course authors Jeff Baust and David Doms.

Some of today’s hottest artists—including The Killers, Akon, Brandi Carlile, and The Roots—are creating their music with Logic Pro. This powerful software gives you the ability to write, record, edit, and mix any project like a pro in your home studio.

Berkleemusic’s Specialist Certificate in Producing Music with Logic will teach you how to make the most of Logic Pro to create quality recordings. You’ll learn Berklee's renowned approach to production and explore the fundamentals of a great mix.

The first course in the program, Critical Listening 1, will teach you to identify the production elements that contribute to a well-balanced, artful, and professional-sounding mix. Through weekly training drills, analysis of classic recordings, and comparative studies of different mixing styles, you'll learn to identify the basic aspects of a mix: width and depth, frequency range, dynamics, and the specific mix technique used to arrive at a given result. You’ll learn what mix approaches work for what genre, when to break these rules, and how to properly set up your listening station for optimal results. You’ll also learn the trademark tricks and sounds of famous producers, and learn to do what they do—taking ideas from existing recordings and using them as a reference point as you zero in on your own perfect sound.

With the fundamentals of a great mix under your belt, you’ll apply this knowledge to your computer in Desktop Music Production for Mac. Through hands-on lessons and weekly projects, you will turn your Mac into a complete virtual recording studio, mastering concepts like digitization, signal flow, multi-tracking, EQ, signal processing, mix balance, reverb, and MIDI. You’ll learn to choose the right tools for producing your music, configure home studio hardware components, edit and create your own synthesizer sounds, use samples and loops in a variety of musical settings, mix multi-track audio projects, and make a final master suitable for distribution. Even if you have done some home production already, you’re sure to learn plenty of new tools and tricks that will help you excel in every aspect of music production.

Now that you’ve set-up your home studio and learned the basics of Logic, you’ll delve even deeper into all of the instruments, the editing environments, and the capabilities of this extraordinary software with Producing Music with Logic. You'll dive into MIDI editing, MIDI real-time control, audio recording and editing, and working with QuickTime video. You’ll explore the power behind Logic's software instruments, including the ES2, EXS-24, Sculpture, UltraBeat, and several other subtractive synthesizers and vintage instruments. You'll also study the elements of production design, such as creative considerations in composition and song form, and the arrangement tools in Logic that allow you to build and shape a song. You'll learn Logic's mixing tools and advanced mixing techniques, such as setting up software instruments with multiple outputs, sidechaining, and mix automation. This course provides many critical listening examples, interactive activities, and "power user" tips and tricks for using Logic Pro, which illustrate the extensive capabilities of this dynamic music production software.

By the end of your studies, you’ll be a Logic power user with a trained ear for a killer mix. In addition to having a complete recording studio at your fingertips, you'll have the know-how to produce creative and polished recordings like an expert.