How To Edit MIDI In Logic Pro

MIDI stands out as one of the most revolutionary inventions in modern music production. Short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, MIDI is a universal language used by many software and hardware developers in music production and sound engineering to use virtual instruments. Whether you want to work with a drum machine designer or digital synthesizers, MIDI helps you reach your creative goals.

One of the biggest advantages of MIDI is its flexibility in editing and making adjustments. Apple’s Logic Pro is widely known as one of the world’s most popular digital audio workstations (DAWs). Among the vast array of features available in Logic, MIDI editing tools allow producers to create intricate tracks with software instruments.

Learning how to edit MIDI is more than just moving notes around on a grid. If done with precision, a doll and monotonic MIDI region can turn into a dynamic and attention-grabbing track. Without further ado, let’s go through different methods and strategies for editing MIDI in Logic Pro.

Getting Started: Creating MIDI Regions

Logic Pro comes with numerous native virtual instruments you can take advantage of in your projects. You can use MIDI to trigger notes and sounds within these virtual instruments.

Once you’ve added a new Software Instrument track, you have three main ways to create a MIDI region for your track:

1. Use a MIDI keyboard controller to play notes and record what you play in real time in Logic.
2. Use Logic’s built-in musical typing feature to use your computer’s keyboard as a MIDI controller.
3. Use the piano roll in the Editor menu to create MIDI notes using your mouse.

Note: you can also use the Step Sequencer feature to create pattern regions for your track. Click here to learn more about how to use the Step Sequencer in Logic Pro.

To use the piano roll, control-click on your virtual instrument’s track row in Logic’s main workspace and select “Create MIDI Region.”

Then, you can open the Editor menu by pressing “E” on your keyboard. There are a lot of things going on here, so let’s break it down:

As you see in the screenshot above, opening the Editor window for a software instrument track gives you a piano roll to the left with a grid in front of it dominating most of the window. Your MIDI notes will be laid out horizontally by time and vertically (according to the piano roll) by note pitch.

The first thing you wanna look at is your primary and secondary clicks (1). By default, your primary click is the pointer tool, and the secondary is set to the pencil tool. You can change these according to your workflow. I will go through some of these tools later in this tutorial.

Then, the Snap tool (2) allows you to determine the nearest grid position that notes snap to when you move or resize them. Your zoom sliders (3) let you navigate through your MIDI region better. You can also use your trackpad or dedicated key commands (Command + arrows) to zoom in and out.

For now, you can use your secondary click (Control + Click) to add new MIDI notes on the grid.

Each rectangle that represents a note carries various information that you can adjust and manipulate. Let’s take a look at some of the fundamental changes we can make to these MIDI notes.

Basic Editing Tools: Note Length, Pitch, Velocity

The first thing you notice is that when you have the Editor window open, you can click and drag notes using the pointer tool. Dragging them horizontally across the grid changes the position while dragging vertically changes the note pitch. Another way to transpose notes is to select them and press “Option + Up/Down Arrows.” Moreover, if you click and drag each end of a note, you can adjust the note’s length.

As you see in the screenshots above, all my MIDI notes are green. The color of each note indicates the velocity. Velocity is a value that defines how hard the note was played. Lower velocity values tend to result in quieter sounds, but it is more than just volume.

One of the ways you can adjust velocity is to use the dedicated slider from the bottom-left of the Editor menu (1). Also, you can change one of your clicks to the Velocity Tool (2) and change a note’s velocity by clicking and dragging your pointer up or down.

The velocity value of a note is a number from 1 to 127. Logic indicates higher values by orange and red, whereas notes with lower velocity values tend to be blue and purple.

Other click tools worth mentioning are the Scissor and Join Tools. The Scissor tool allows you to easily trim notes, which can come in handy for spicing up your chords. The Join tool does the opposite; it glues two notes next to one another.

More Advanced Options: Quantize And Humanizer

Imagine you’ve recorded a MIDI region with your keyboard, but the notes are out of time and don’t align with the grid. Moving each note one by one in the Editor menu can be time-consuming. Instead, you can use the Time Quantize tool to snap all the notes to their nearest time division.

Adjust the time division you want your notes to be quantized to and click “Q.” You can also adjust how hard each note snaps to the grid by adjusting the Strength slider.

More often than not, having all of our notes fall perfectly to the grid makes our tracks sound robotic. A part of what we call the ‘feel’ when a musician plays a live instrument are those subtle imperfections. One of the easy ways to make MIDI sound more natural in Logic Pro is by using the “Humanize” tool:

•  Click “Functions” from the top-left of the Editor menu.
•  Hover your pointer on “MIDI Transform” and select “Humanize.”

The Humanize tool allows you to randomize the position, velocity, and length of each note by a defined margin. I like to first quantize all notes and then use this tool to make notes ever-so-slightly off-beat.

Final Thoughts On Editing MIDI In Logic Pro

The tools for manipulating and editing MIDI notes continue beyond there. These are merely some of the fundamental methods that I find useful based on my own workflow. Make sure to explore different functions and click tools to see what suits your projects’ needs best.

For a more linear tutorial towards songwriting, producing, mixing, and mastering, check out my Free 6 Pillars To Learn Logic Pro Faster guidebook.