i’ve recently enrolled on the producer uncovered course at the colston hall in an effort to improve my skills with logic pro and thought i’d share my progress here as i reach certain points with it

so far we’ve looked at using ultrabeat and synthesis. ultrabeat is an onboard drum pattern instrument that allows the user to program beats step by step and then insert them onto the timeline for further adaptation. there’s a library of drum collections you can choose from as a starter point, which can be refined and pushed through oscillators and filters to shape the sounds. what i like about it is the fact that you can map each drum to individual mixers and then apply effects to them, allowing you to add a reverb to a snare, or a delay to a kick, without affecting the other drums. a revelation to me and a really useful tool, one i’d been wondering about and now i know

week 2 saw us looking into synthesisers, in particular the es1, and how a simple note can be processed to a sound of your choice. i’d played around with these before but with little knowledge and result. now i understand what each part plays in shaping the sound i’ve worked through oscillators, filters, envelopes and lfos and am loving what can be achieved. logic pro has many synths available, each having its own character and i feel much more confident using them to achieve the sound i’m after

on week 3 we began incorporating samples and learning how to time stretch them to fit a tempo, or converting a project’s tempo to fit a sample. the possibilities are really opening up, not just for playing with samples, but to adapt my own music more. it’s getting really exciting

so here are two examples:

the first is a 3-minute version of ultrabeat and synths at work, namely the es1, esp and eso synths

the second is a fun play with sampled beats, plus a sample from smoke on the water, demonstrating aligning tempos to fit 16 bar

the course still has a few weeks to run and i’m expecting to learn more about production to improve the overall quality of tracks using compression, mixdown and mastering techniques, plus other useful production methods to make my recordings better. can’t wait…