Lesson6.Editing MIDI in the Matrix Editor

Lesson 6. Editing MIDI in the Matrix Editor

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APTS_Logic_7 > Song Files > Lesson 6 Project Files > 06Begin.lso

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APTS_Logic_7 > Song Files > Lesson 6 Project Files

This lesson takes approximately 1 hour to complete.

Learn about the Matrix Editor

Create and modify MIDI events in the Matrix Editor

Use HyperDraw to automate MIDI control-change data

Create HyperDraw nodes and curves

Learn how to quantize notes in the Matrix Editor

Experiment with note velocity

Logic began life as a program called C-Lab Notator (1987) for the Atari ST, and it quickly became the darling of music producers everywhere. One of Notator's key features was the Score Editor, an editing window that used a musical score and actual notes to let traditionally trained musicians "score" music just as they would in the real world, with pen and paper (hence the name Notator). However, most of the people making music then, as now, did not come from a traditional music background. So the creator of Notator, Gerhard Lengeling (the author of this book's foreword), cleverly included what would become the primary MIDI editor in not only Logic, but also every audio production program since the introduction of Notator: the Matrix Editor.

The Matrix Editor has a graphical user interface that provides a keyboard along the left edge. Notes are represented as beams of varying lengths aligned with the keyboard keys. The longer the beam, the longer the duration of the note. You can think of the Matrix Editor as an electronic version of the rolls of paper that scroll through an old-fashioned player piano: The holes in the paper tell the piano which notes to play, and the longer the hole, the longer the note is held. Same concept, different century.

Because the Matrix Editor is graphical and intuitive, it has grown to become the main MIDI editing environment in Logic. This chapter focuses on the Matrix Editor, providing tips and tricks to speed you along your way to making music with MIDI.