Create Guitar Parts using Logic Pro's Session Player

As of June 2024, Logic Pro hasn't released a dedicated guitar session player, but I’m hopeful one will come soon. In the meantime, you can use the keyboard player to create some amazing guitar parts. Let’s dive in!

Setting Up the Keyboard Player

To start, create a keyboard player session musician by clicking the plus button and selecting "Keyboard Player." This will create a keyboard player region. For this video, I’m working on the second verse, so I’ll move the region there and extend it to cover the verse.

Transforming the Keyboard into Guitar

When you hit play, you’ll hear a keyboard sound. Our goal is to turn this into a guitar instrument. Since Logic Pro doesn’t have the most convincing guitar instruments, I’m using third-party plugins in Kontakt. First, replace the piano instrument with a Kontakt instrument. Mute the previously loaded plugins and load an acoustic guitar—specifically, the session guitar strummed acoustic.

This plugin works by holding down a chord to produce different strum patterns. We don’t want individual notes, so set the style to "Simple Pad" to get sustained chords. Now, when you press play, you should hear an acoustic guitar pattern.

Creating Electric Guitar Parts

Next, let’s create more melodic patterns with an electric guitar. For a more broken pattern, select "Arpeggiated" and load an electric guitar in Kontakt, such as the "Evolution Rock Standard" with an "80s Ballad" preset. Turn off the left hand of the piano to focus on single-note lines.

Adjust the complexity and range of the instrument to suit your needs. For instance, bringing the complexity down and adjusting the right-hand range will change where the notes are played:

Experimenting with Different Styles

You can also experiment with the "Freely" style. Turn off the left hand, adjust the complexity, fill amount, and movement to keep the chords in the same range.

Conclusion

I hope this gives you some ideas on creating guitar parts using the keyboard player session musician in Logic Pro. I hope you enjoyed the video and this blog post. See you in the next one!