Cubase-style 'Play Order Track' or Equivelent?

Hi,

If your regions are only midi, then you could look into using 'Touch Tracks' (refer to the LP9 user manual search for 'Touch Tracks) where you can trigger midi regions, and folders, via midi notes you assign, then play the arrangement in real time by triggering the assigned notes to the specified regions. (Intro-Verse-Chorus1-Verse2- ...etc.)

There is a limitation to this, basically, it will not work for 'audio regions'. The LP9 user manual also mentions, that you can get around this limitation, by loading your audio regions into the exs24 sampler as files, and trigger them with 'Touch Tracks'.

Obviously, not a very neat system, when compared to Cubase's Play Order track, which is perfect for arranging your music into sections, repeat a section x times, and move sections around in a very elegant dedicated GUI/Window.

I have mentioned this LP limitation few times on various LP related forums, and quite honestly find the lack of this feature, a major weakness in LP from a purely musical arranging point of view. I was hoping to see something new in LP9 that will help arrange musical sections in an elegant manner, but sadly, they have not added this functionality. IMHO, this is not a fancy feature request, but quite an important, and very useful functionality in a music DAW, that has not been implemented in LP.

Hopefully, this will be looked into by the LP9 development team, and possibly could be added in future update of LP9, I don't think it is difficult for the LP9 development team to add an arranger track feature, with a dedicated workspace for editing sections of an arrangement. Actually, I even think 'Garageband' has something close to this, It's implemented using markers, I'm not sure, but I think it's called the Arranger Track or something similar, but then, it's still not as elegant as Cubase's arranger track feature. Hmmm.... I guess I should look into using GB once in a while.

I personally have never bothered using Touch Tracks, due its convoluted setup, and limitations.

Hope this help a bit.

Cheers.

It is a pain that Logic doesn't have this - it's something that makes Ableton so appealing.

However my workaround is this:
1) Select all of the objects in each section (Verse 1, Chorus, etc) and
2) pack a folder for each one of them.
3) Rename each folder with whatever section it is.
4) Pack all of the sections into another folder and rename it "Arrangement Test"

Then you can go into your "Arrangement Tests" Folder and move around the sections to wherever you want. If you do it all in the same file as you are working on, just solo the Arrangement folder whenever you want to hear it.
You can save this version as its own file so you don't change the file you are working on.

Unfortunately, everytime you change something in the original sections, it wont be reflected in the Arrangement Folder, but this has worked for me.

Here's work around I use. Cubase's solution would be more elegant. But this works fine for me. It will deal with both audio/midi.
I create region markers ( top of arrange page - intro, verse1, verse 2, chorus) etc- I color them too, easier to visualize what's happening. When I want to re-arrange order of parts (verse, bridge, verse, chorus, break,) etc, I highlight a certain region region marker, and (cut-copy-paste-delete-move) I do this until I've gotten the order I want.

If one of the regions you cut has a long midi note - you may have to 'clean that up'. Some times you can respond with 'shorten' other times you may want to go back in, and lengthen or join the note again (assuming it was something like a sustained string note etc)

Then listen to that. Of course you save each of these experiments with a different name, so you can get back to where you need to go.

Truly is ridiculous that this is not just integrated into the marker track as there are 9 alternate marker tracks that can be selected and each of these could be alternate arrangements for ones compositions. If the markers were not sequencial then you could just tell logic to place your markers in order to test the arrangement. Obviously the next feature I would want is the ability to have Logic create an arrangement folder with whole song arranged according to these "arrangement Markers".

I use a solution akin to Jonathan Uman, only difference is that I create an arrangement master folder that my song always resides in and when I am ready to move things around, I create a new empty folder tracks underneath, I copy the arrangement to these, and I cut it up and rearrange it and see how it sounds. You have to remember to make all of your loops real copies before doing this or it will likely mess up your song since the loops wont carry over to the cut folders.

I make sure I paste the cut ups back together before I modify or add tracks within any of these folders or it creates a mess when pasting things back together after the fact.