How to Connect Your External MIDI Instruments With Logic Pro For Maximum Creativity

 

These days you don’t have to travel far to use some of the best sounds and patches available to date.

In fact, Logic has a ton of amazing software instruments. From Alchemy to Retro Synth, Sculpture to Sampler, the sounds at your fingertips are tremendous 🙂

But let’s not forget there’s an entire world of hardware out there as well! And many creatives would love to integrate their external synths and drum machines with Logic to get the best of all worlds.

And we’re not talking about your basic MIDI controllers and drum pads. These devices don’t actually generate any sound of their own. USB controllers simply send MIDI messages to Logic know when to play Alchemy or Retro Synth.

Whereas external synths, drum machines and other instruments generate a sound of their own. So not only do we need MIDI data to pass back and forth from these instruments and Logic. We need to hear and record their sound as well.

That’s why Logic provides us with an easy way to “pipe” these instruments in. And that’s with the fantastic External Instrument plugin.

But before we even think about Logic, you’re going to need a couple of things first:

1. An external instrument
2. An audio interface
3. A MIDI interface (or an audio interface that has MIDI In and Out ports)
4. A 1/4″ audio cable(s)
5. Two (2) MIDI cables

What you’ll need to do is:

1. Connect the audio outputs of your external instrument to the inputs of your audio interface
2. Connect the MIDI Output of your instrument to the MIDI input of your interface
3. Connect the MIDI Input of your instrument to the MIDI output of your interface

Connecting the MIDI ports on each device will allow Logic and your instrument to send MIDI data back and forth. And connecting the audio ports on each device will ensure you’ll be able to hear your instrument in Logic.

Once you have everything connected, it’s time to load an External Instrument track in Logic Pro 🙂

Check out today’s video above for all the details. Let’s get you up and running for maximum creativity with your external instruments!