Using main stage and Logic Pro at same time?

If what you're trying to do is record the stereo output of Mainstage you can do that within Mainstage. In the prefs you set to the output pair that you want to record, then hit the record button in the toolbar. You can also specify where the audio file gets created in the prefs, but by default it will get put in your Music folder. If that button isn't in the toolbar you can add it by customizing the toolbar, holding the control key while clicking the toolbar should get you there.

In general it's not a particularly good idea to run Logic at the same time as both apps will be fighting for CPU resources. But if you want to go down that street you can. You might think about using Soundflower software (it's free) to pipe the audio from Mainstage into Logic.

yep ... I do it like that all the time.
Soundflower is your friend for piping audio out of mainstage into an audio track in Logic.

http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/

To capture midi, just create an empty software instrument in logic and leave it record enabled (i.e. uncheck "open library" when creating it, and then just never select a software instrument to go on the track). This will record all the midi messages you send to mainstage.

Granted, that only gets you so far. Playing that midi track in Logic isn't going to make any sound until you assign a software instrument to it, but it can be handy.

A lot of times I'll record jam sessions with my band this way. Usually I'm playing pretty simple patches. 90% of the time it's just the Steinway samples, or NI B42 for organ stuff. If we do something particularly brilliant, but I flubbed the keys, I'll go into logic and manually assign whatever patch I was using in mainstage to it, then edit the midi.

You could, in theory use something like the IAC device to route midi back OUT of Logic, into MainStage (and then capture the audio out of mainstage back into logic with soundflower). Essentially making MainStage into one big software instrument in Logic. I've never tried it, but others on this board have posted about doing this before, and I don't see why it wouldn't work.

I really wish Apple would just setup Mainstage to work this way out of the box. It'd be an incredibly powerful tool.

Hi all,

Sorry about revising this slightly-dusty thread. But the subject line is perfect. I am curious whether there's a way to record midi AND audio events from Mainstage back into Logic. I'm new to both programs, so feel free to point out something that would be obvious to an experienced user.

My thought is to load up a patch list in Mainstage, perform it there as a scratchpad and then move over to Logic Pro to tidy things up. So I need some kind of audio AND midi-event "pipes" from Mainstage to Logic. Or at least a "record" button that would let me record the audio and midi-events of the Mainstage performance in a way that could then be opened in Logic.

Thanks Andrew!

I keep finding that I have "habits of limitation" left over from the Windows world. For example I would never have thought of running both Logic and Mainstage at the same time. But I just tried it and sure enough, both programs see the midi events simultaneously. Sheesh... Too simple.

Same goes for audio -- I forget that Macs allow multiple programs to see audio streams at the same time. I'm gonna give Sunflower a try, but I'm also going to play around with WireTap (which I've used to do some other tricky audio stuff). Thanks for reminding me not to make this more complicated than it needs to be. 🙂