JeremyCumbo

Recently switched to Logic Express 8 as my editor and, while in general I’ve found it to be fairly intuitive, I’ve had to search a bit to discover how to do some things. So I’m compiling this list, which I hope will be useful to others, of tips and tricks for getting started using the program.

General

• How to get the playhead to snap to a barline/beat:
  In the ruler bar, click near the barline/beat and hold the mouse button down. The playhead will automatically snap to the nearest division as defined by the snap settings.
• How to get dragged regions or midi events to snap to a barline/beat, not to the position relative to the barline/beat:
  In the “snap” drop-down menu choose “snap to absolute value”
• How to get more than two insert slots for a track:
  Just fill up the first two slots and a third will appear, with more slots becoming available as they’re needed.
• Navigating between markers
  Control + Command + Arrow (left or right) will jump to the previous (left arrow) or next (right arrow) marker in the project
• How to jump to a specific marker
  Command + /, then enter the number of the marker in the dialog box which appears
• How to auto-zoom-in or out
  Command + Left Arrow (zoom out) or Command + Right Arrow (zoom in)
• Rename an audio or midi region
  Select ‘Text Tool’ from the ‘Left-Click Tool’ or ‘Command-Click Tool’ menus (top right of the arrange window). Then just click (or Command-Click) the region
• How to alter the velocity of a midi note in the piano roll
  There’s a velocity tool available from the drop-down menus in the top right of the piano roll interface (square with a ‘v’ inside it). Using this tool you can drag up or down to change the velocity of the note. The program helpfully plays the note repeatedly as you change it to give you a sense of the impact of your change.
• How to select multiple regions
  Two ways: simply drag the cursor to select a group of regions all together or click each region while holding down the ‘Shift’ key to select only certain regions.
• How to see a spectrum analysis for a given track
  While there are plugins available for doing spectrum analysis, the channel EQ in Logic has a built in spectrum analyzer. Just click the ‘Analyzer’ button near the bottom left of the EQ window.
• How to show the ‘freeze track’ button on tracks - used to reduce CPU usage
  Control-click on the ‘track header’ for any track (the section of controls where the solo, mute, etc. buttons are found) and choose ‘Configure Track Header…’. In the dialog box which appears check the box next to ‘freeze’ (green button with snowflake icon). You can then use that button in the track header to ‘freeze’ the track.

Score View

• How to move notes to a different staff in the score view
  Use the ‘Voice Seperation Tool’ found in the drop-down in the top right of the score view (where the ‘Pointer’, ‘Pencil’, etc. tools are found) to assign the notes you want to move to a different voice. Using the tool draw a line between the notes which should stay on the staff and those which should move. (Note: you may have to define the ‘voices’ prior to doing this).
• Not seeing the symbols you’re looking for in the score view?
  There are a number of buttons under the ‘part box’ menu - in the left column while in the score view. Clicking on the various buttons in the ‘part box’ will cause different symbols to become available for dragging onto the score.
• How to move symbols (dynamic markings, pedal markings) on the score view
  Use the ‘Layout Tool’ found in the drop-down in the top right of the score view to be able to drag symbols to where you want them.

Gotchas

• Track playing at different speed after tempo change?
  Recently freaked myself out when some of my tracks were out of sync with others after changing tempo via the tempo track. Then I realized that it was because the out of sync tracks were frozen and so were still playing back at the old speed. sigh…