I need Logic to Swing! I need it to be Anti-Straight!

Question

I need Logic to Swing! I need it to be Anti-Straight!

Well I mainly do jazz stuff, and swinging is a must, in fact, natural and I can't get Logic to understand that. I am trying to switch from Finale Notepad for writing out parts for my big band and combo stuff to Logic's score editor but I'm stuck on what to do to tell Logic to write swung 1/8 notes as standard 1/8th notes. I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking but anyone's immediate help would be better than trying and filing through the help material as I don't have a lot of reading time on me right now.

Also, since I'm going to be writing it out for specific parts, and since playing a MIDI keyboard for the parts and editing it out later is much easier, should I just make each instrument an instrument in Logic? How do I go about making a score for that with all instruments on one page (Typical orchestral/jazz layout) and then for each particular instrument - and if you can answer that, can I transpose that on the fly too?

I'm sure this power is there, but the Logic reader's guides I have do no justice, and Looking through Preview for Logic Express' Tutorial is just not as physical as flipping a page and harder for me to grasp, even though there's a search function.

Any help will do me well, and I appreciated it.

Posted on Sep 18, 2005 10:26 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 19, 2005 8:33 AM in response to Shawn Strickland

I needed a sort of blues shuffle, which is akin to swing, and I was able to write my drum parts using the Triplets setting in GarageBand. I haven't looked for Triplets in LE yet, but I am sure there has to be. I never had much luck with the swing settings in GB. It seemed like it divided the grid into an uneven grid, giving what was supposed to be some swing emphasis on certain beats, but I can do my own accents, and found I needed the grid to be symmetrical in order to write what I wanted. Triplets did the trick for me.

If there is no Triplets setting in LE, try setting the time signature to increments that are divisible by 3 instead of 4 perhaps? That may be how LE handles this.

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Answer 2

chellman

Level 1

135 points

Sep 19, 2005 8:51 AM in response to Shawn Strickland

Enter the notes as you want them to be displayed, i.e. as regular straight eighth notes. The way to make them swing on playback is to change their quantize setting. I usually do this in the arrange window.

I can go into more detail if you want -- is that enough?

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Answer 3

chellman

Level 1

135 points

Sep 19, 2005 8:53 AM in response to Scott Laughlin-Richard

Logic Express most definitely does triplets, and pretty much any other kind of tuples you want. It's a little weird, but it seems like triplets are always a little weird in any notation application I've used.

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Answer 4

Sep 19, 2005 9:00 AM in response to chellman

Joe, thanks for the input. I am afraid I haven't done any writing in LE, yet. So all I have to draw from is my GB experiences. I have finally finished remixing my GB songs in LE, so I should be ready to start some new projects soon.

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Answer 5

Sep 19, 2005 1:09 PM in response to chellman

It is hard for me not to swing. Period, are you sure there isn't a way for it to know that I'm swinging, and the calibrate it for that? Is there a better way to go about putting in 1/8 notes and rests so that after I have done my "swinging" I can go back and make it look like any jazz musician can read it... what I have tried by selecting a note and trying to write over it with another note it gets these really weird rhythms when all I want it to do is replace that note with another. That would save more time than playing something straight.

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Answer 6

chellman

Level 1

135 points

Sep 19, 2005 1:41 PM in response to Shawn Strickland

Oh, I see what you mean. I didn't see what you meant the first time around.

I've never really done this before, but I just gave it a dry run, and it seemed to work.

- Open the Score editor.
- At the top left, there's an attributes box that probably says "Default". In there is the Score editor's quantization setting. Set that to "8", which will snap the DISPLAY of notes to eighth notes, which is probably want you want to show on your lead sheets or whatever.
- Hit record, and swing away.

Logic is cool in that it stores your performance exactly as recorded, but can then transform it using Quantization while still maintaining the original performance. So, your score shows straight eighth notes, but when you play it back, it will sound like your swinging self. At least, it seems to when I do it.

If you need to change notes, select them and move them around with the arrow tool. You can't write over them, at least, not with the pencil tool -- that will just make more notes.

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Answer 7

Sep 19, 2005 8:56 PM in response to chellman

That helps a lot, except what happens when I want to record a triplet? I can't have both, I have to either quantize to 1/8th notes or end up having triplets that look like standard quarter notes. I tried selecting one set of notes that were swung and doing those so they appeared normal and straight to the untrained eye, but my triplet rhythms wanted to sway with it and I couldn't specify the certain triplets to appear as triplets with my other notation. Almost getting there, but what you have provided is really helpful and I appreciate it!

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Answer 8

Sep 23, 2005 12:42 PM in response to Shawn Strickland

Thats really not a hard question to answer, I'm not sure why no one has said it yet (unless I am misunderstanding something). When you quantize the notes, just choose one of the increments with a letter, the letter is the intensity of the swing. (1/8 Swing C, 1/16th Swing F). Then you can do to the matrix edit and perform a "humanize" function to make it less robotic.

Hope that helps.

And yeah, if you want triplets, choose a number divisable by 3, like 1/24th for example, that would be 8th triplets.

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