Richard Pryn
Writing/ Logic Pro X

How To Pitch Bend in Logic Pro X

In this post I show you how to pitch bend in Logic Pro X. Pitch bend using your MIDI keyboard Most MIDI keyboard come supplied with a little wheel or two. One of these wheels is…

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In this post I show you how to pitch bend in Logic Pro X.

Pitch bend using your MIDI keyboard

Most MIDI keyboard come supplied with a little wheel or two. One of these wheels is called the ‘pitch bend wheel‘.

It looks something like this:

To get Logic to ‘record‘ your pitch bend you have to have enabled recording on the MIDI channel you are using.

Then play the part you want to play and move the pitch bend wheel up or down depending on how much you want to pitch bend by.

Logic will then record this MIDI information in the MIDI region.

You can access this data by pressing ‘P‘ to open the piano roll, then pressing ‘A‘ to open up the MIDI automation window.

From here click on those two little arrows on the box that reads ‘Ch. 1: Note Velocity‘ (as you see in the image above).

This will open up the MIDI automation options menu where you will see the ‘Pitch Bend‘ option.

Select Pitch Bend and the MIDI automation will show you the MIDI automation data the Logic recorded from you playing the pitch bend wheel.

You have now learnt the first way to pitch bend in Logic.

Cool huh.

Now you can move on to the next approach to refine that automation data. Which I often have to do because I am rubbish at playing my pitch bend wheel the way I want it to sound.

Pitch bend using MIDI automation

In this approach we draw in the pitch bend data into the automation window.

You should have this open already otherwise just follow the steps above to get you to this screen.

From here we can draw in the pitch bends that we want.

For a short cut you can hold down ‘cmd‘ to use the draw tool.

Here you can see I have drawn a lovely picture of the ocean in my pitch bend data.

By using the draw tool you can create however much pitch bend you want.

Combine this with your ability to fade out and you are really starting to become an automation wizard.

TOP TIP

Make sure you keep an eye on the start and end of your pitch bend MIDI data. The next region will “remember” the last bit of data and use it as its starting pitch. If you don’t want this to happen make sure your region pitch bend data ends at 0.

Black and white circular portrait of Richard Pryn smiling
💁🏻‍♂️ Richard Pryn has been writing music professionally since 2005. Since then, it has been his mission to share his knowledge and experience to help make writing and producing high-quality music easy and approachable. Each year, he continues to help other composers and producers create music that lights them up 🔥

Happy composing!Rich

Logic Pro X

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