How To Add Sustain In Logic Pro

 

In this post I will teach you how to add sustain in Logic Pro.

Learning how to properly add and use sustain in Logic will dramatically help your tracks sound more professional.

For example, you might have a piano track and you're scratching your head saying, "why does my piano sound like crap?" One of the biggest reasons why it might sound poor is because of sustain.

 

 

Either you're using it but improperly or you're not using it at all. A piano without sustain is like a house without a roof. It doesn't work!

There are a number of ways that we can add sustain in Logic and I'l teach you the two most popular methods:

1. Using a sustain pedal

2. Drawing in sustain notes

First though, it's important to get on the same page about what sustain is and what sustain does.

 

What Is Sustain?

From a musical perspective, sustain allows notes to be continued to be played, after you play them.

For example, if you say the word, "hello". The action of saying the world hello isn't really sustained. However, now say the work "hellooooooooooooo". The word hello is now sustained because you continue to hear it being played. 

It works the same in music. Let's take a more musical example now.

Let's say you walk up to an acoustic piano. You press on a c note. The piano responds by playing the c note. You hear the note and then it immediately goes away.

Now, let's add sustain. Adding sustain on a piano, is done so by holding down the sustain pedal. Take note of the image below.

 

 

If you press and hold down the sustain pedal on a piano and play the same c note. The note will be sustained. Even without you continue to hold down the note.

 

What Does Sustain Do?

What is actually happening behind the scenes is the sustain pedal inside a piano is holding down the vibrations of the c note string so you don't have to.

A sustain pedal is your friend, and they're very helpful. They allow notes to be held down or "sustained" so you don't have to continue pressing down on them. Other instruments can have sustain as well. Not just pianos.

 

 

How Do You Add Sustain If You Don't Play Piano?

This question comes up more and more because with the world of modern music production you can draw midi notes to create sounds, you don't necessarily need to play the instrument.

For example, when it comes to playing the piano, many beginner producers wonder, how can I add the sustain pedal if I'm drawing the notes in directly on computer with Logic Pro.

Let's first discuss how to add sustain in Logic by using a sustain pedal and then we'll do it manually. 

 

Adding Sustain With A Physical Sustain Pedal

This is my preferred method to add sustain because it is the most productive and will save you a lot of time having to do it manually, which I explain in the next section. First, you'll need to have a sustain pedal. Sustain pedals look like this:

 

 

You'll notice the input plug on the sustain pedal looks very similar to a guitar patch chord. You might be wondering, how do I plugin this into my computer? The answer, you can't.

You'll need to plug the sustain pedal into your midi controller or keyboard. If you don't have a midi keyboard, I use the Arturia Keylab 49: 

 

 

Look on the back of your MIDI controller or keyboard. There will be an input where you can plug in your sustain pedal. It might even say 'sustain' below or above the input.

 

 

Once you add the sustain pedal to your midi controller it will automatically work. There is nothing you have to setup in the software in order for the sustain pedal to function in Logic. 

There are two options you can sustain in Logic with physical sustain pedal, the options are:

Option 1: Play a software instrument and add sustain in real time with the pedal.

Option 2: Play a software instrument or draw midi notes, and add sustain afterwards with the sustain pedal.

 

 

Option 1 With Sustain Pedal

The first option requires that you know how to play the instrument with sustain in real time. For example, if you play piano, simply play as you would on your acoustic piano. Logic will understand what you're trying to do and it will code in the sustain into your midi data.

Let's take an example. Let's say you added a Yamaha Grand Piano track and you played it on your midi keyboard as you would in your living room on an acoustic piano. Take note of the midi data below:

 

 

Notice the midi notes that have been recorded on the track. More importantly, notice where the red arrow is pointing. These are grey vertical bars. These bars represent sustain in Logic Pro. It worked! On the other hand, if you played the exact same midi notes with the same instrument but you didn't touch the sustain pedal, the midi track would look like this:

 

 

No grey vertical bars. That means no sustain. Which ultimately means that piano won't sound very good. In my opinion.

 

Option 2 With Sustain Pedal

Option two is adding the sustain to your midi track after it's been played. This is a great option for those of you who do not know how to play piano. Therefore you might find yourself drawing the midi notes in or perhaps you're working with a midi pack or sound library that you'd like some added sustain. You still have the option to do it with the sustain pedal after the fact. 

In order to do so, highlight the track, you'd like to add sustain to. Let's take our Yamaha Grand example above and add the sustain back in by using the pedal.

 

 

All you need to do is re-record over the midi region and play the sustain with your foot. Logic Pro is smart enough to understand what you're doing and it will write in the sustain information on your midi track. Be sure not to accidentally play any midi notes on your keyboard or else those will be recorded in as well.

 

 

After you finish recording, you'll notice the grey sustain bars are now showing in your midi recording:

 

 

Adding Sustain Manually

In this section, I'll teach you how to add sustain manually in Logic Pro. Do do this method, you do not need a physical sustain pedal. We're going to do this manually within the Logic Pro software. 

In order to start, we're going to need some MIDI data to work with. You can get this MIDI data anywhere, from a loop pack, the Apple Loop library, you can record it yourself, or you can draw in your own midi notes. For the purpose of this example, let's draw in our own mellotron software instrument. 

To start, add a midi region in your Logic Pro session:

 

 

Start by drawing in your midi notes inside the editor window. You can draw in anything you'd like from chords to one note melodies.

 

 

Once you have finished drawing in your midi notes, it's time to add the sustain to our track.

We'll need to access the area where we add the sustain in Logic. We do this inside the "automation" area in the editor window. This is the same as doing any type of automation in Logic Pro. To open up the automation editor, you can either press "A" on your keyboard or click the automation button in the editor menu. Both options are show in the image below:

 

 

Next step would be do find the sustain area within the automation editor. Navigate to the left hand side in the editor window. Look for a drop down box. It should say "Ch 1. Note Velocity" by default. However, it's fine if yours says something else. Click this drop down and change the value to Sustain. Take note of the image below.

 

 

We'll use the grey space beneath our MIDI notes to manually add our sustain to the MIDI chords that we've prepared:

 

 

To sustain a chord or note we need to add the value of 127. To do this, left click in the grey area, this will generate an orange line for you.

Depending on where you click, the line will have a value attached to it. We want this value to start at 127. Therefore drag your line to the very top. It should be like the image below:

 

 

In the example above, everything is now sustained. If you play this track, it will sustain every single chord that is being played. In other words, it would sound terrible. We need add sections that stop the sustain. For instance, we need to mimic how a piano player would use the sustain pedal with their foot.

When the sustain value is 127, think of the piano player as having their foot down on the sustain pedal. When the sustain value is at 0, think of the piano player as lifting their foot off of the sustain pedal.

 

 

You should strive to have the chords being sustained until just after the next chord is played. If you do this, it will sound good.

Take note of the image below. The first chord is being sustained until just after the second chord is being played since the sustain value drops to 0 but then immediately picks back up to 127 to sustain the second chord being played.

 

 

If you want to drop the sustain bar to 0, click the orange sustain line. This will generate a dot on the line. You can drag this dot down to 0. If you want to bring the line back up to 127, click the orange sustain line again to generate another dot, and repeat the process.

 

 

Now is the step to re-create this across all your chords. You should end up with something that looks like this:

 

 

If you make a mistake, you can always erase and start over. You can click specific dots and delete them or highlight the entire section, like the image below, press backspace and start adding sustain from scratch again.

 

 

After you've manually added your sustain, take a listen back to your track. Are the notes sustaining properly? You may need to go into some of the values to do some clean up.

 

Troubleshooting Your Sustain Pedal

Sometimes sustain pedals will have a mind of their own. Everything is working fine and then all of a sudden, whenever you press the sustain pedal down, it does the compete opposite. This is frustrating. However, there's an easy solution. 

Step 1

Turn off your midi controller or keyboard (whatever your sustain pedal is attached too).

Step 2

In this step, you're going to turn the keyboard back on but hold your foot down on the sustain pedal as you're doing so. Basically, just press the sustain and then turn your keyboard on. After it's on, you can let go.

Step 3

You're done. That should have fixed the problem

If those steps, don't work. Try unplugging the sustain, turning off your keyboard, and reboot Logic Pro, or the DAW you're using. Repeat the steps above and it should work. You can also look for a switch on your sustain pedal that might reverse the polarity. Sometimes, you accidentally flick the switch and it changes things. So just flick the switch back to it's original position.

Not all sustain pedals have switches but if they do, they're usually on the bottom or side of the sustain pedal.

 

 

Final Thoughts On Adding Sustain In Logic

Adding sustain in Logic Pro is something you need to get comfortable if you're looking to create music and become a music producer. Without it, your tracks will become stale and noticeably junior. If you're curious how to take your chords to next level then you might be interested in this video where I take boring chords and turn them into lush beauty.

I'd also love to help you on your music journey in becoming a better producer, I recommend checking out my 6 free pillars to learn Logic Pro faster.