Logic 9.0 First Impressions
by michael
I haven’t gotten to play with Logic 9 (part of the new Logic Studio) too extensively yet, but here are a few initial reactions:
1. Looks pretty much exactly the same.
2. There is a light/white box around the part of the window that has focus (arrange vs. mixer vs. media/library/bin). Logic 8 lightly shaded the top but now it’s a fully surrounding white rounded-edge box. I guess it’s not that different but it’s perhaps more noticeable.
3. New icon in top right for Notes. I find myself putting lyrics or mixing/recording ideas into TextEdit documents all the time, so to have a dedicated area for “notes” in Logic is long overdue and very welcome. I approve!
Besides, if you collaborate with anyone else and share projects, it makes a lot more sense to attach your comments to the project than to an email or whatever.
Click to enlarge
4. The improvements to Take folders is great. Finally being able to drag audio around without flattening/splitting-up multiple takes is long-overdue. Why didn’t they allow for that in the first place in Logic 8?
5. Creating sampler instruments out of audio regions. In the past year or two I’ve been getting really into sampling sounds for songs. This was always a tedious process of bouncing a sound, importing it, dropping it onto an EXS24 instrument (unless there was an easier way I’m not aware of). Not that hard but time consuming meaning you’re being less creative and doing more grunt-work.
Now you can do all that in one step. This makes me so incredibly happy.
Creating MIDI instruments out of audio regions is easier than ever.
6. Flex-time. AWESOME. I haven’t done anything crazy with it yet, but even just dragging stuff around you can tell that this makes editing the timing of tracks soooooo much easier.
I’ve gotten pretty good at recording drums to metronome over the years, but there are always some hits that are off. The process of chopping, x-fading, and dragging those clips around was so annoying. Now it’s so much easier. Woohoo!
They give you 6 flex-time “modes”:
- Slicing – for drum slicing – preserves speed
- Rhythm – for “non-monophonic sources” like rhythm guitars
- Monophonic – good for vocals, melodies, bass lines
- Polyphonic – most straining on cpu. Complex sounds.
- Tempophone – to do retro tape-warping effects.
- Speed – just flat out changing the speed of the clip. Nothing new here.
7. There is a preference so that if you right-click on the arrange it opens BOTH the tools and options. So I can switch to fade/scissors/flextime tool OR the contextual options for doing stuff to a region. Big win, in my opinion!
Right-click context menu allows for both “Tools” and context-sensitive choices.
Concluding thoughts:
Overall, it’s not a big shiny diamond-coated upgrade, but there are some very solid new features that make me very happy, even if you could argue that some of them should have been part of Logic 8.
If I think of anything else I’ll be sure to update this post. I haven’t gotten to test it much in different situations or workloads so I don’t know if it’s more stable. Supposedly it is.
Reflecting on this post, I have to say that while I am geeking out over all this, it’s really not because I enjoy messing around with nitty-gritty details of software, but really because I love playing music. Recording music can be a real chore, and to me it’s all about the end product and getting to share that with others. I’d much rather be playing live than recording.
This is why some of the improvements in Logic 9 have me excited. I can spend less time to accomplish the same tasks, leaving me more time and energy to be creative and have fun playing music.
I quite enjoy recording, probably more than playing live, but perhaps that’s because I haven’t played live in years, and even then, it was rough crammed in a week or two of practices. I like sitting down and agreeing to nail a guitar part or come away with a new imagining of a song and watching it come together. I agree that I love the sharing aspect, but it’s also bittersweet b/c that means I no longer have a relationship with that song ( like I used to).
I think some of it has to do with me finally being at a point where I’m really happy with what I do in a live setting and I’ve been discovering the joy of preparing really well for it. I really like the feeling of practicing a lot and being truly READY and not feeling like it’s a matter of “winging it” when I get up on stage.
I’m also interested in raising the bar. For myself. For any of my friends who play shows. Not that they should be like me, but that they should work hard to really do a lot with their own talent.
Why not make the most of it? Before you know it I’ll be 40 and I won’t get the benefit of the doubt if I try to do this stuff.
yah for being able to make easy notes for collaborators.