Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Morula

June 2nd, 2009 – As I’ve discussed previously, I am a Logic Studio (formerly Logic Pro) user. With all the choices out there, I thought I’d touch on why I use it, and what I perceive to be its strengths and weaknesses. Through an examination of its features, I’ll also discuss why I don’t exclusively use Logic.

My history with recording music goes back a decade and a half ago. I, like many young wannabe musicians, was in a band with my friends. We played covers but also wrote a lot of our own material. We wanted to record our music for posterity’s sake; I don’t think there was ever an expectation that we’d get signed to a record deal or would even be able to sell our music beyond our parents.

At the time, there wasn’t much available to aspiring independent engineers, with summer holiday job money. We could either rent studio time, buy a 4 track cassette tape recorder, or use what gear we could scrape up between us all. Luckily, the father of our bassist fancied himself a vintage gear enthusiast, so we had 4-track Tascam tape reel recorders.

Because we had 4 instruments plus vocals, and the drums needed several mics, we combined our tracks down in a couple ways. One way was to input several mics into a mixer, and then output a stereo track to the tape. This would take 2 of our 4 tracks, and would allow room to add 2 more tracks. We would also record to all 4 tracks on one tape, and then bounce those 4 tracks to one stereo input that would be recorded onto a fresh tape, leaving us 2 free tracks again.

The big problem with all of this, is that once you bounce instruments down, you’re left with tracks that have been mixed together and can’t be unmixed and adjusted again. There’s no undo, so you have to get it right the first time, which we failed to do time and time again. Regardless of our difficulties, we were able to get a full 12 song CD recorded.

Interested in the recording process, I started doing some research and discovered the new frontier of DAWs. My first experience using a DAW was Cakewalk Studio in the mid-1990′s. It was limited, slow, and finicky, but I immediately understood that DAWs were game-changing when I saw the simple “add track” and “undo” features.

Life got in the way, I went to university, but I never lost my interest in recording music. Fast forward to 10 years ago, and I decided that I would once again pursue music, but this time seriously. At that time, DAW’s had progressed incredibly. There were many options available, all much more powerful, and much faster than those I had experienced just a few years before. At the time, Cubase and Logic were becoming major players, along with the ubiquitous and expensive Protools.

I’ll be honest here, I tried them all and I had no idea what I was doing. I was at an utter loss, not because the programs were difficult to use, but because I had no idea how the analog world I was used to, translated digitally. Later on, I realized that it was an error in my thinking, and that the software was, actually, attempting to emulate the physical world; but at the time I was lost. I decided to attend an audio production program to get myself up to speed.

The platforms the school taught were Protools and Logic. I didn’t know this going in, nor would it have mattered if they taught Nuendo and Ableton Live. So there is the simple answer of why I use Logic: it was taught to me, so I know how to use it. Of course, there are reasons why I continue to use it, and why I champion it, but the reason I got into it is that simple; it was there. Protools was taught to me because it is the industry standard, and this school was there to prepare you for the real world jobs.

Ok, time for a little off-tangent rant. I know many of you love Logic, Ableton Live, Cubase, or any of the countless other DAWs out there, and I also know everyone argues that the platform they use is the best. But what cannot be denied is that Protools is the standard. This does not mean that it’s the best or most powerful, it simply means that you cannot work in the industry without knowing it. It’s the Microsoft Office of the audio world. I don’t care if your personal studio runs without it, but no professional studio that you can rent for yourself or a client, can survive without having it as an option. /endrant

When I first used Logic, I was amazed. I was not necessarily stunned by any of its features, but by all of its features together. For the price, Logic is easily the biggest bang for the buck. Not only does it have the the base DAW, it includes a great sampler, mixing plugins, and a huge library of loops and instruments. Unlike with Protools (although Protools 8 does include some plugins and instruments), you can start creating music right out of the box, without having to go searching for sample instruments and sounds to use.

Whiners will tell you that, even though Logic Studio is only $500 for everything, you have to step up to an Apple computer which costs you big dollars. That Apple computers have a premium is a fact that I will not dispute. I, at the risk of being flamed by anti-Apple-ites, like Apple’s OSX. What the computer looks like doesn’t really bother but until recently, OSX has not been available on PCs. Now that the hackintosh is possible, I’m not sure that I would need to spend the premium. So now that the equipment costs have been equalized, the software prices can be compared directly. Logic is a bargain.

So I like Logic for its included content, what don’t I like about it? For one, Logic 8, in the interests of making its software less of a leap up in difficulty from Garageband, did away with some of the complex routing possible in Logic Pro 7. This means some of my legacy projects didn’t route properly and had to be remixed. Secondly, and I’ve posted about this many times before, audio editing in Logic is irritating. It’s not so much that they’ve messed up the basics of cutting, copying, etc., rather it’s that they haven’t really thought through how their audience are actually using it.

Back in the day, Logic was known as a great tool for composers. Its users were mainly using its excellent sequencing capabilities, and its included, and 3rd party, synthesizer and sampler plugins. Logic could always record audio but, even in its latest iteration, I feel like this is an afterthought.

In my work as an engineer, I’m mostly concerned with recording a client’s vocals. The instrumentation and production is usually recorded, and performed by me, so if it takes some time to get something right, it’s not a problem. When I’m recording a client, time is money and it’s hard to get another chance at recording. If any parts aren’t recorded in the initial session, then the feeling of the artist may have changed, which makes that portion stand out. As such, I like to at least record the main vocal lines in one session.

To get the best possible performance in as little time as possible, I try to get as many takes as possible, in as many possible styles. Later, as I edit, I can then comp the best parts of all takes. Protools allows easy punch ins and comping of vocals with intuitive audio editing on the arrange page. In fact, I find it so intuitive, that I usually edit as I’m recording. As an example, you have two regions of audio on one track. In Protools, putting one partially on top of the other will remove the overlapped section in the lower region. This means that Protools is essentially doing a perfect cut for you. Of course, if you change your mind, you can re-extend the edge of that region back to its original length. In Logic, the one that’s on top takes precedence, which would normally be ok, but if you want to crossfade the two audio portions, you might get unwanted audio from a region fading in. To avoid this, you need to manually trim down the edge of that region. It seems small, but it annoys me to no end.

As well, if you copy and paste a region in Protools, each pasted section becomes completely independent. This means that if you have a whole bunch of cloned cymbals playing, and you want to reverse one of the cymbal envelopes, you can do so without affecting the others. If you want to do this in Logic, you will need to manually make that region a new section (instead of a portion of the original as is default), and then do the change. Again, it’s not difficult to get the job done, it just takes time which hinders my workflow.

If Logic alone, updated these peeves of mine, I would have no reason to use other software, but as it stands, I find it much easier to record and edit audio in Protools. Because of this, I usually produce the instrumental tracks in Logic, record the vocals in Protools, and then mix the whole project in Logic again.

Because I’m not particularly a fan of Protools except for its editing and recording abilities, I’ve been taking a look at other software. Right now, with the release of Reaper 3, I’m looking at it as a possibility. So far, I like that it doesn’t differentiate types of tracks. But the best thing about it so far, and it’s also a feature I saw in Cubase, is that multiple comps can be housed in one “track”. The days of seeing 16 tracks of vocals taking up my entire arrange page may be over. Reaper can roll it all up, so I only see the comped track. That really appeals to the OCD part of me.

At the end of the day, any DAW is just software. The reason I started using Logic was because someone decided it was important and taught it to me. I have kept using it because I know it and don’t want to waste time learning new software, and it’s a very good bargain. Is it perfect? No, but it suits my needs and I can work around its deficiencies.

Is Logic right for you? If you want software that can do everything, and includes a wealth of resources right out of the box, all at a reasonable price, then yes. If you have a complete library of 3rd party samplers and plugins already, then you might want to try other cheaper alternatives like Reaper. If you want to work in someone else’s studio someday, then go out and get the cheapest version of Protools out there. Happy DAW’ing!

Update 6-4-09 : After commenter Malcolm James pointed out that there is an option to choose “no overlap” as well as a method to roll up multiple takes, I loaded up Logic and discovered that a lot of what I complained about has been changed and improved. My mistake. Thanks Malcolm!