How to Get Logic Strips the Same Size Again

Whether you lot're an experienced or a novice Logic user, going dorsum to the starting time might show you a thing or two.

The sheer scope of Logic can make it daunting for the novice user, and fifty-fifty for the DAW ace there may be quite fundamental aspects of the programme that remain unclear. Consequently, we thought we'd take time out this calendar month to epitomize some of the basics.

In much the same way as any other DAW, Logic uses several different track types (Sound, Software Musical instrument and External MIDI) and produces 'Regions' alongside them as you tape. If y'all're a Logic novice, yous've bought Logic and fired information technology up. You've got a good idea of what it does, but now, shut up, it's hard to know where to offset. Are there some decisions to make and settings to change offset? And where exercise you lot observe everything?

On The Menu

There are two types of menu in Logic: the main menus and the local menus. The main menus are at the top of the screen, and here you'll discover items relating to the whole projection, such equally opening and saving files, window selection and the misleadingly named 'Undo History'. Then, in the Arrange and Editor pages, at that place are local menus where you will find options relating to the function of each detail window; for case, settings related to tracks and regions on the Arrange page and those related to graphics and music fonts on the Score page — you get the picture! We'll look at some quicker means to access these in a minute.

Single File!

When you start Logic up and select File / New, you'll exist offered a variety of templates — basically, songs that are pre‑configured for a detail purpose. The ones y'all get with Logic are designed to demonstrate various features of the application and not more often than not intended every bit a starting point for a song. What y'all demand for your new masterpiece is 'Empty Projection'. Withal, you'll probably desire to make your ain custom templates with a few favourite instruments and a couple of audio tracks prepare to tape a quick guitar and vocal, for instance. (To practise this, get to File / Relieve every bit Template). Like Microsoft Word '.dot' files, templates are protected from overwriting.

If yous've used earlier versions of Logic Pro or Express and accept simply carried over your default song, you could exist inviting problems, due to differences in the mode the mixer now works, so I strongly recommend yous create a new template to take advantage of the newest features. Try to store the 'cleanest' template you can, as it can be very frustrating having to weed out sends, inserts and especially automation, which were great on one project, but could make their presence felt in a baffling way as y'all kickoff mixing.

Logic will ask yous where yous want to store this song, and it will default to the Logic folder in your habitation Music folder on your startup disk. This may non be the ideal identify, and here'due south why…

Back in the days when no ane had heard of DAWs, an early antecedent of Logic emerged, living entirely on a diet of MIDI. He and those like him were called sequencers, as all they did was put things in sequence. This is essentially what your Logic song still does, although now it has the accumulated baggage of audio files, software instruments and effects settings. Similarly, sampler instruments need their family of samples to go with them wherever they go, then these need to be kept together. Nosotros thus terminate upwardly with a raggle‑taggle band of mutually dependent files that make up our Logic project. The whole household is typically fabricated up of the following:

Making sure that everything is saved in the right identify is important, as your Logic project requires all manner of files to exist saved alongside it. With every vocal you'll find accompanying sound files, bounces and fade files, for instance, that volition demand to be accessed by the project file.

• The Logic song
• Sound files
• Bounces
• Fade files
• Projection file backups
• Sampler instruments
• Samples
• Undo information

You might likewise add to that a picture, lyrics, and annihilation else that the obsessive compulsive within you tells you lot to keep in a safe place.

With much of this needing to stream quite rapidly from the disk, it makes sense, if yous can, to designate another disk as a work disk, where you are not competing with the computer's own system for disk admission. Subsequently that, Logic will look after its own filing while you get on with the music.

Tracks & Channels

There are iii types of track in Logic:

• Audio: For live sounds, whether through a mic or plugged into the interface. This is also what you lot desire for loops.
• Software Instrument: This gives you a visible, editable rails of MIDI data, while the resulting audio — from Logic's synths, organs, Ultrabeat and EXS24 sampler — is treated in the same fashion as an audio track.
• External MIDI: Although this will address your external synths and racks, it doesn't have whatever provision for returning their output into Logic's mixer. If you want to use an external keyboard or rack sound source, you should use a software musical instrument runway and, from the list of instruments, select External Instrument. A little dialogue box will inquire you for the MIDI number of your instrument and which input channels of your audio interface you lot have plugged it into. This turns it into a hybrid track sending MIDI and streaming the audio from your instrument into the Logic mixer. You can set up an External MIDI musical instrument to behave in a similar way to a Software Musical instrument.

In Logic's mixer y'all tin can have five types of channel strip. Besides as the aforementioned inputs — Audio, Software Instrument and MIDI aqueduct strips — there are Auxes and Outputs. Auxes are used every bit buses for sub‑grouping things that you lot might desire to treat as i, like backing vocals or a drum kit, or for hosting effects, such as reverb and delay, that you lot might desire to utilise to several things in unlike proportions (for example, having one instance of Infinite Designer on an aux that y'all send to from lots of channels is more efficient than having lots of instances of Infinite Designer on individual channels). Just click on a transport and select a bus from the pop‑up menu to create a ready‑configured aux. In the same way, if you lot select a new output on any aqueduct strip, that output will magically announced at the right‑manus end of the mixer.

Information technology's worth remembering that although the channel-strip meters testify input signal levels, the fader controls what you lot hear out of Logic, non the record level. You take to gear up that with the knob on your interface (or mixer, if yous're using one.)

You volition also have seen the inscrutable 'Primary' fader. You lot only need this when you are mixing in surround, then you can just click the 'Chief' button at the top of the mixer to get it out of the way until then.

The Inspector

On the left of the Arrange page is the Inspector. Although it takes up valuable space on your screen, it has some handy shortcut features. The two faders at the bottom are for the track and the aux or output that information technology's routed to, so a lot of the time you don't need to open up the mixer. If you click on a send button, the 2d fader turns into that send's destination, then yous can quickly modify or adjust the relevant consequence without leaving the Accommodate page. At the top left‑manus corner of the toolbar is the Inspector push to toggle the Inspector should you lot need to reclaim that extra chip of space.

In one case you've created your channel strip, you can select a software musical instrument from the popular‑up list in the I/O panels but to a higher place the fader. Or, for an audio channel, prepare the input and you can modify that 'raw' sound by inserting furnishings. Alternatively, by clicking on the 'Setting' button on the channel strip, yous can avail yourself of fix‑made channel strip settings. To get you started, Apple take included many possible combinations of instruments and effects. Y'all can store, retrieve, copy and paste these and, perhaps more usefully, shop your own channel strip settings here.

With tracks installed, yous tin go for a take. Equally you record, a block appears on the runway. This is a known as a region and can represent sound or MIDI information. Yous tin copy and move these wherever you similar, although a MIDI region won't play in an audio rail, and vice‑versa. Yous can make an alias of information technology (Alt‑Shift‑elevate), which will reflect whatever changes you make to the original, or get in loop (tick the box in the Inspector, or mouse upward to the acme right‑hand corner of the region and, when the cursor changes to a circular arrow, elevate to the right). This loop tin be any length; information technology doesn't have to be a multiple of the length of the original.

Tools Of The Trade

The tools are pretty self‑explanatory, but the 'Swiss Ground forces Knife' of them all is the Marquee tool. Just equally in any graphics application, dragging with the marquee tool defines a free‑sized area (covering multiple regions, if yous like) for further operations. You tin now do a variety of things with the selected area: fix locators, play only this area, punch‑in record, mute, cut and copy, along with a thousand (or so) more operations.

If zooming is something you similar to do (and I think you do), notation that if y'all drag out an area ('rubber‑banding' information technology) while holding Control‑Alt, that area is enlarged to fill the screen. Property Control‑Alt and clicking zooms y'all back out to where you started.

Help Yourself!

A lot of new user enquiries are what those in the support concern call 'RTFM' issues, whose chief characteristic is that the solution tin be easily be found by consulting the included documentation. But since Apple accept commendably adopted a greener packaging strategy, Logic no longer ships with a bulky tome of instructions.

Yous do notwithstanding get ane, though. Information technology'south there nether the Aid menu. Although this won't aid you if what you need to learn is how to launch Logic itself, for other enquiries it is invaluable and offers a fast‑paced introduction, as well as dealing with the instruments and effects in detail. At the risk of actualization pedantic (moi?), I propose that a few hours exploring hither will relieve weeks of your time later. It's groovy, besides, to have this searchable document at mitt for when problems do arise. The Help menu as well directs yous to Apple'south discussions on the web, where you can share your frustrations (and solutions) with others. It'south well worth making friends with the very knowledgeable and generous community at the Logic Users' Group (world wide web.logic‑users‑group.com).

Relieve & Prosper

You tin fix Logic to proceed the previously saved copies of your song — up to 100 of them (look in Preferences / General) — simply in case you discover some earlier corrigendum and demand to scuttle back. This is very reassuring, as is the Disengage History, which goes back to when you launched the song. You can't undo selectively, however, but return to a previous snapshot state, which might also involve undoing some actions that you would otherwise like to keep. Some audio functions are not undoable, though, and since y'all're actually altering the original audio file, it tin can be worth your while creating a copy to work on as y'all perform a destructive function. To practise this:

For actress backup you tin convert specific regions to audio files. This is a proficient idea when you're almost to perform a destructive function, equally it gives the option of restoring exactly what yous were working on, rather than using the Undo function.

1. Cut out an area from the audio region you want to change.

2. Select Audio / Convert Regions to New Audio Files.

three. If information technology doesn't sound right, y'all tin employ the Undo History to get back to that beatific land before you lot began the whole sorry procedure.

I accept found it useful to develop a nervous left paw that hits Control‑South whenever I brand any changes — every five or x seconds, I should say — as trying to retrace your steps since the last salvage, following a crash or freeze, ever leaves you feeling that information technology's not as adept equally you had it before.

Settling In

The extent to which yous can customise Logic can be quite daunting, but that shouldn't prevent you lot from trying a few adjustments to your working environment. Key commands and screensets tin exist a adept starting bespeak. Logic'southward user interface is highly customisable. From pocket-sized actions, such equally is shown here, to completely irresolute what appears in the toolbar, you tin can really make yourself at home!

It can exist very dull and long-winded to use the mouse and menus for every operation, and while you will have quickly found the key commands for the transport controls, there are plenty of reasons to explore the Aladdin'due south cavern that is the key commands folio (Alt‑One thousand). Y'all'll find commands for things that you didn't know Logic could do, even for things that you lot can't imagine a demand for. But you'll also discover some things that delight you.

Note that you can select commands past 'cardinal characterization' or 'key position'. This ways that you could have, for example, numbers i-0 at the top of the keyboard to take yous to Markers, while the numbers on the number pad perform a dissimilar part: recalling screensets, for example. I besides have a key for dropping markers on the wing at of import song points, giving me a snappy way to navigate the song. If you lot desire to movement a mark, or drag it out of the timeline entirely, you lot volition need to concord down Alt get-go.

One of my favourite fundamental commands is 'Play From Selection', but your method of working will determine exactly which commands you lot find most useful. The Toolbar at the top of the Adapt page is a identify to keep buttons of your favourite functions to hand. Click and concur in the Toolbar area, and select Customise Toolbar from the menu that falls open up under your enquiring touch.

You probably know that screensets enable you to recall the size of various pages in a layout that yous discover useful. If you're working with express screen space (and who isn't?), you can easily flip between unlike views, or instantly tidy up your workspace later you've been editing or browsing lists and libraries.

But that'due south non all: at the acme right‑hand corner of the Adjust and Editor pages prevarication two tool icons. These are the default left‑click and Command‑click tools and, at Preferences / Editing, y'all tin choose to add a 3rd for right‑click. There is a dissimilar choice for each editor likewise. Cull the ones you use most in each page and then save the screenset so that they come back side by side time yous need them.

There is an Car Zoom button in the toolbar that zooms just your selected rails, saving both space and eyestrain. Click and hold the bottom left of the track header (where the open hand changes to a pointing hand) to adjust the corporeality of zoom.

Some other clutter buster is to limit to only one the number of effects windows open at whatever one time. Open an effects window and click on the link icon in the top left‑hand corner — it will glow purple — and as yous select another consequence, the window of the commencement one will dutifully vanish. Clicking the link icon in the top of an furnishings window will hateful that, when y'all open up a second effects window, the first will close, thereby saving valuable infinite on your screen.

Prepare, Set...

As for setting upwards your Logic system, you will, for the most part, be quite alright getting started with the default values. All the same, one that you might want to check is the I/O buffer size. This is a bit like the amount of cash that banks are required to hold against the adventure of liquidation, in that if the buffer is too depression, y'all risk instability problems! Playback also might stutter, or you could start to hear clicks and pops. If the buffer is too loftier, you get problems with latency (the filibuster you experience when recording, betwixt the live signal and what yous hear back once information technology'southward passed through Logic). Ideally you would take the buffer lower when recording and higher when mixing. Realistically, though, you want to just fix it and forget information technology. Go to Logic (Pro or Express) / Preferences / Sound / Devices / Core Audio and try a setting of 128. You can movement up to 256 if you start to detect pops and clicks. If you're suffering latency problems, you might effort lowering your buffer settings. Ideally, the buffer would be lower for recording and higher for mixing, but setting it at 128 is a skillful start and you might be able to just leave information technology at that place. If you starting time to hear clicks and pops, try moving it up to 256.

A few other settings may grab your eye on this page, beneath the Buffer Size drop‑downwards menu:

• Universal Manner: Using this ways that you can have stereo channels instead of two linked monos.
• 24‑bit recording: Why wouldn't you?
• Software monitoring: Leave this ticked unless latency is driving you lot mad, in which case you will have to rig upwardly an alternative way of monitoring your live input with the already recorded track.

Settings in Preferences employ to Logic universally, but similar controls may be constitute in File / Project settings, which are saved with and apply only to your electric current project. These include whether to save used Sampler Instruments and their samples with the project (which you just demand to do if y'all're going to work on it elsewhere), the corporeality of count‑in earlier record, and the sample charge per unit for recording. For nigh of united states of america in the UK, 44.1kHz is fine, only you tin can up this equally far as 192kHz if y'all accept disk space to spare and the marginal quality difference is important to you.

Annotation that this is only for Logic's internal use, and when you bounce to create your master, other considerations apply: When bouncing your tracks, tick MP3 in the Destination list to create an MP3 file alongside whatsoever other format you lot're creating.

• Output format: What yous output depends on what yous or your client are going to do with the mix. If it'south going to CD, 16‑bit WAV or AIFF at 44.1kHz is what y'all need; otherwise go for 24-bit. TV broadcasters similar 48kHz, and WAVs accept a time stamp so can exist hands laid into a soundtrack edit. Also, cull interleaved unless y'all're sending the mix to a Pro Tools user.
• MP3: If y'all want an MP3 to send to a friend, Logic will bosh yous ane out at the same time if y'all bank check the box. A setting of 128 to 160 kbps is a reasonable trade-off betwixt compact file size and unlistenability.

Logic has grown into a hugely versatile and immensely configurable application that seems to reverberate each individual user's personality. We all have to find our own way, merely if you have previously encountered mists of confusion, I hope yous tin at present discern a track that might bring you nearer your own personal Nirvana.

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Source: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/apple-logic-back-basics