How to Make a Click Track in Logic Pro X

If you are a musical director, recording artist, or performer who regularly uses click tracks, then knowing how to create one is an important skill to have. Today I will teach you how to do just that in Logic Pro X. There are multiple ways to create a click track in Logic Pro X, so I'll walk you through one method.

First, create an empty track by clicking the plus button at the top of the screen and selecting "Software Instrument" from the dropdown menu. Then, go all the way down to Utility, then "Klopfgeist" and choose "Mono." This will create a new mono channel strip that's just for your click track.

Play your connected MIDI keyboard and you'll hear the click sound. You can adjust the pitch of the click, making it more tonal or "blippy" if desired.

Record 1 to 2 bars of a quarter note for your click. We are going to loop this region so you don't have to play more than 1 to 2 measures. Double-click on the recording to select all of the notes and quantize them over on the left side of the screen to ensure they're in 100% in time. Next, you'll want to set the velocity of all the notes to the same value. You can also opt to make the downbeat a higher velocity if your music is all in the same meter. To adjust the velocity, go to "Functions" > "MIDI Transformation" and choose "Fixed Velocity." Set it to 127 for a max velocity. Click "Operate" to apply this change to all the highlighted notes in the region you have selected.

If you play back your track, everything will be in time and snapped to the grid. To loop the region we just created, drag the cycle tool (the semi-circle with an arrow) to create a loop that covers the entire section of your song.

If you want to adjust the tempo at certain points in the song, use the drop-down arrow next to the tempo bar graph. You can then plot your start and end points and adjust the tempo. This is especially useful if you have a slowdown or fermata in your song.

Another way to adjust the tempo is by clicking along the tempo bar graph itself and dragging the little blue dots to change the tempo as desired. This allows for fine-tuning of your click track and ensures that it matches the pacing of your song.

In Logic Pro X, you can also create tempo adjustments using the event window at the top right corner of the screen. However, this method doesn't allow for creating tempo curves, which is a limitation of this approach. Once you've created your click track, you can treat it like any other audio track by soloing it or bouncing just the click track if needed.

I hope this has been helpful! If you are a more visual learner, check out the official video version of this tutorial below.