How to make Chill House + Logic Pro Template | Live Electronic Music Tutorial #362

How to Make Chill House in Logic Pro X Using Only Stock Plugins — A Real-Time Walkthrough

In Episode 363 of his Live Electronic Music Tutorials series, producer Mas builds a chill house track from scratch in real time, using nothing but Logic Pro X’s built-in instruments and effects. The whole point of this episode is to prove that the stock tools — Drum Machine Designer, EFM1, Sculpture, and Alchemy — are more than enough to lay down a rich, finished idea without reaching for third-party synths like Serum. Built at 122 BPM in the key of E, the session covers everything from programming drums to layering pads and effects.

What you’ll learn

• Programming groovy MIDI drums with Drum Machine Designer’s Deep Tech kit
• Writing and shaping a bassline with the EFM1 FM synth
• Using a high-pass send and delay to add width to the bass without muddying the low end
• Applying sidechain compression so the kick pushes through the bass
• Building reverb sends and EQ-ing pads, textures, and ambience for depth
• Recording arps, plucks, and lead melodies with Alchemy and Sculpture

1. Program the drums with Deep Tech in Drum Machine Designer

Mas starts on the rhythm, recording MIDI from scratch into the Deep Tech kit inside Drum Machine Designer at 122 BPM. He keeps the kick velocity and timing consistent, then builds outward with the most fundamental electronic-music elements: kick, snare, and hats. He deliberately chose this kit for its open hat, noting that hats give a track much of its character. The kick is dropped an octave to set the root, then he layers a snare to mark the beats.

2. Add character with extra percussion and delays

To make the groove feel alive, Mas adds a second snare placed a half-beat before the bar end, then drops in block hits slightly off the grid so the elements “speak to each other.” He adds a rolling closed hat everywhere except where the open hats land — otherwise the open and closed hats choke each other. A shaker built from the kick pattern rounds out the percussion.

3. Use a sample delay to spread the shaker in stereo

For the shaker, Mas reaches for the Sample Delay. A key tip surfaces here: the plugin works in samples, not milliseconds, so small offsets of around 10 and 20 (left and right) widen a signal that otherwise sits flat in the center. The result spreads the shaker out and makes the percussion feel more dynamic, sitting it back in the mix.

4. Write the bassline with EFM1

Mas loads the EFM1, a very old and basic FM synth, to lay down the bass. He sketches a simple, slightly longer pattern (E, A, G) that leaves room to jam over the beat, records a couple of takes, and keeps the version that feels right rather than overworking it.

5. Send the top of the bass to a delay

To add movement without losing the low end, Mas creates a bus send and high-passes it so only the top of the bass — roughly above 230 Hz — is fed into a stereo delay. This keeps the “chunk” of the bass clean while the upper harmonics get the delayed, widened treatment. He keeps the feedback modest so it doesn’t bleed.

6. Sidechain the bass to the kick

Next he adds a Compressor on the bass set to sidechain, keyed from the kick input, with a 4:1 ratio. He prefers not to push the threshold past around −6 dB — enough to give the kick a clear push through the bass without the heavy-handed pumping some producers use.

7. Build a reverb send for the pads

Mas loads a retro pad in Sculpture for its melodic, housey feel, then creates a dedicated reverb send using SilverVerb with a big-room preset that reacts to how hard it’s fed. Following his instinct, he records a pad melody, then uses a favorite trick: copy the MIDI part and replicate it elsewhere to find happy accidents. He even accents the last note of a melody with a different synth, splitting a single line across instruments for contrasting feels.

8. Layer leads, textures, and ambience with Alchemy

To bring in modern color, Mas opens Alchemy for pad and lead patches, leaning into melodic and deep-progressive house territory. He stresses that MIDI velocity is where much of a track’s emotion lives. He then layers a soundscape texture and a sound-effect hit, high-passing everything under 200 Hz to keep the low end clean, and finishes by adding fat strings as a call-and-response answer to the main melody — quantised so it lands just in time for each cycle.

Get the project file: Mas turns this session into a fully mixed, ready-to-use chill house template. Download the template →