why is logic pro so hard??

Mark Stockwell wrote:

I'll start by being a little flip, but I can't resist it. In the movie Amadeus, the Emperor complains about one of Mozart's compositions in this exchange:

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

Yes, and as we found out Joeseph II was technically challenged amateur, with money, title and fortunately a patron of the arts

Once you understand the relationship of the Environment to the Arrange page everything falls neatly into place, (relatively)

Here's a trivia shot, this is Logic 5.5.1 on the "other" platform. I have two compatibility computers, a PC with 5.5.1 and a G5 with L7 I use to update my old projects and those of local clients to newer versions of Logic.

Note; the version of Logic in this picture is about 10 years old now.

Hi

The Art Of Sound wrote:

Hi Edgar,

Just a quick note / fyi about the sig with your website address in it... that you keep using in your posts.

It's actually against community rules which is why, every so often it gets edited out by the mods...

Really?

https://discussions.apple.com/static/apple/tutorial/tou.html

Item 2.6 specifically..... states..... the requirements......, which I believe .....are being complied with here.

CCT

Hi Edgar,

With hindsight (and slightly more sleep than I had had at the time... 🙂 ) I can see how my comments could be misinterpreted.....

So...

Hope this helps you in some small way....

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6981

Cheers..

Nigel

Hi Mikey.

So I understand well your frustration.

Normal reaction, switch to an unknown software could be very dificult.

Logic (when you know it) is absolutly perfect to do all stuff

But Fruity Loops is an awsome Daw as well, i love it too.

For good starting, can advise you on the drums programming .

Learn about the EXS24 sampler, a very powerful plugin.

Open the EXS24, and on the high right corner you have a little tab "EDIT"

Then an Edit page will open.

Drag and Drop your samples. and it's done!

+++

Anthony

mikey-p_s0n wrote:

ive been a fruity loops user for about 4 years now but decided to jump on the apple bandwagon and get a macbook.

so now im stuck with having to use logic because fruities doesnt work on mac, which is kind of okay because ive been looking to try out a more professional software anyway but logic is soo hard!!! all i want to do is put a kick sample into piano roll, make a pattern, then loop that pattern. and do the same with other samples. its like apple have purposefully made music making hard. i know if it was easy everyone would do it. but im sick of spending hours on logic and logic tutorials for no results at all.

Apple purchased Logic, they didn't come up with the original design.

All I can say is..... what do you expect from professional software? It's not made to coddle you, it's made to produce complex pieces of music all the way from Electronica to Full Orchestral Arrangements and it requires user input to get the job done, Logic doesn't produce music for you, it is a tool that you use to produce music.

I suggest you take a 180 degree turn and instead look at it as an opportunity to educate yourself. If all you're looking for is instant gratification I would recommend software that's designed for a specific purpose, that's what Fruity Loops is, it's designed for a specific kind of music making and doesn't have all of the options that Logic has. FL is very good at what it does, some people here might put it down but I've seen users that know what they're doing produce some amazing tracks.

Anthony made a good suggestion, the EXS24 sampler Instrument is a good place to start.

Use an Instrument track, add the EXS24 to the Instrument slot and load a drumkit. Add a 2, 4, or 8 MIDI bass drum beat in the piano roll editor, close the piano roll, go to the Inspector on the left han side of the Arrange window and turn on looping for that track. Don't worry about sounds for now, just get used to using Logic's tools.

In short... this will take some time!

Wow, people get so sensitive these days.

My point was that Logic is a Pro app and you have to expect that it is "deep". Nothing personal, really.

I wanted to be brief in my first response, but because you seemed to misinterpreted that comment, let me respond to your statements in more details:

"im stuck with having to use logic because fruities doesnt work on mac"

Why are you stuck? If you bought a new Mac then you have Garageband for free on your system. And as kcstudio suggested, this might be the better tool for what you want to do.

"apple have purposefully made music making hard"

You are not serious with that statement, are you? Panceter told you already where Logic is originated and I would argue that Logic became easier since Apple bought it.

"but im sick of spending hours on logic and logic tutorials for no results at all"

No results at all, really? Maybe this is a hint that this is the wrong app for you. I would argue that lots of Logic users have spent hours it with and got great results.

"Ill definitely have to persist and keep going with logic"

No, you don't have to. You tried already for hours (with no results at all), then why you want to continue. Above all, music making should also be fun and it seems that you aren't getting any out of using Logic.

Finally

Even though you excluded me from your cheers, I don't have any hard feeling and instead, in the holiday spirit, I want to offer you a little Christmas gift. Click on my name in the header, there you find the link to my website with my contact email address. Send me a note and I'll email you a free copy of my book "GarageBand 11 - How it Works", the pdf version or the ibooks version for the iPad. Then you can decided if this app is a better, less frustrating match for you.

Cheers to everyone, including mikey-p_s0n

Hi Mikey,

I hear you! Logic can be very difficult, especially in the beginning. But it is well worth the effort, believe me! Did you consider some online training?... macProVideo tutorials are amazing and very well produced:

http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorials/logic-application

There's a lot of stuff there and you can either purchase the tutorials or subscribe to their tutorial library. It covers pretty much everything you need to know...

Could be helpful to you!

Good luck!

mikey-p_s0n wrote:

ive been a fruity loops user for about 4 years now but decided to jump on the apple bandwagon and get a macbook.

Welcome to the club!

mikey-p_s0n wrote:

so now im stuck with having to use logic because fruities doesnt work on mac, which is kind of okay because ive been looking to try out a more professional software anyway but logic is soo hard!!! all i want to do is put a kick sample into piano roll, make a pattern, then loop that pattern. and do the same with other samples. its like apple have purposefully made music making hard. i know if it was easy everyone would do it. but im sick of spending hours on logic and logic tutorials for no results at all.

What you describe here is the typical thing happening to people trying to apply a workflow to a software, which has a different workflow.

To help you in your case:

Create a new, empty song. Add a new track with a software instrument. Put an EXS24 on it, load it with a drum kit. As a shortcut, you can select a drum kit using the Library on the right side of teh arrange window for this.

Now, you see a track in the arrange with no regions on it. Ctrl-Click on the track (not the track header) to get a contextual menu. This offers to create an empty MIDI Region. Do that and couble click on it to open the piano roll. Switch the pencil tool (press ESC to get a tool selection menu) and draw your notes. In the arrange, cycle the region (press the cycle button in the transport section and adjust the cycle area, the green bar in teh time ruler), press play and enjoy the show.

Hope this helps!

DaCaptain.

Logic Pro is deep and vast....i ll tell u what i did to get better at using Logic....it may work for u too....no guarantees tho....to understand the basics i watchd Lynda's tuts....read Logic Pro 9 Power (rather still reading) to familiarize myself with every single tool,feature,luxury,etc that Logic has to offer us....watched vids on utube to understand common production techniques....icing on the cake is reading the manuals that apple provides for all the fx, synths, samplers, instruments,etc used in Logic.....by the time i did all this i was head over heels in love with Logic.... it may sound boring to do all this....but i bet its not boring to actually get down to it n doin it !!!

i hope i didnt break any rules by mentioning non apple products!!!

Cheers!!!!

why is logic so hard

Given that Logic is extremely feature rich, I guess the opposit could be said: they have managed to implement a lot of features into Logic *without* making it the user interface cluttered or complex.

But there are a few things you need to know in order to use Logic (in addition to realizing that it doesn't work the way eg FL works):

You can change tools easily by pressing Escape. (You can use the Pencil Tool in order to enter your kick frum notes.)

The Plus button at the top pf the track list lets you create new audio, MIDI or Software Instr. tracks.

If you want eg. a drum preset on your software instrument track, click (at the top of the channel strip) on Settings, and select something from the Submenu called Drums and Percussion.

If you are looking for a key command, go to Preferences>Key Commands, which is the first option in the leftmost menu. This window has a search feature.

If you look for a menu option, type a word into the Search area in the Help menu. If you type eg. the word tempo, and hold the mouse over the resulting options, an arrow on the screen will help you find that menu option.

Click everywhere to see what happnens. You'll learn a lot by just doing that.

And - maybe more importantly - click anywhere while holding down the Control key. This will reveal loads of useful functions relevant to the area you click on, which could be the bar ruler, arrange background, the stop button, a region, a single MIDI event, a track name, the Global Tracks area and *lots* more.

I'll start by being a little flip, but I can't resist it. In the movie Amadeus, the Emperor complains about one of Mozart's compositions in this exchange:

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

To some extent, the problem with Logic is "too many notes". This is complex software and it does a truly amazing amount of stuff. To make it easier to use, the simplest solution would be to throw out a bunch of the functionality. But which?

Apple tried this with Final Cut Pro. They removed a bunch of stuff and started again from scratch. For my needs, they did a fabulous job and made movie creation substantially easier. But there are a lot of people that depended on the missing "notes". Those people are furious and many have threatened to move to other NLE's and many probably have.

For what it's worth, there are rumors that a Logic X version is being worked on and will be coming "soon". If the Final Cut Pro experience means anything, it will be a complete re-imagining of how to record and create music, but it will lose (at least temporarily) a lot of the stuff that's in the current Logic. This will cause prominent musicians to gnash their teeth and render their garments, but it will probably be just great for you and me. And those patient enough to wait will be rewarded by the second or third release with a lot of the stuff left out of the v1.0 release.

What I can tell you is that I find Logic really pretty easy once I've figured out the part of it I'm currently using. The software is not especially "discoverable", but once you find instruction in the manual or in a youtube video, I find Logic to be fairly sensible.

Just remember, easy for "you and others" is dull and stupid to some. (Look what "easy" has done to the Mac user base) "Why is Logic so hard... wah!" I won't comment further but I'm astounded at some of the posts I see in this forum, people that barely know how to use their computer purchase Logic and try and add canned looped music to their girlfriends picture. Shame on Apple's face!

I find that the "work" is what makes the music, the desire to learn, curiosity, to grow.. I don't want something that hands me plastic music on a platter and I don't mind being challenged by a piece of ingenious software, in fact I relish it.

A good musician can make great music on a pair of chopsticks, if you/we want to improve, it's the individual that needs improving.

And as a side note, I was assured by a couple of people "in the know", that Logic would not make the same mistake as FCPX, which was released as "barely" Beta software. Apple "used" it's fan base as beta testers. It's not so much that FCPX left out a lot, it's that what was there barely worked at all. Several PBS stations that I work with have moved on to other video creation software.

There's nothing that says that well-designed software necessarily results in "plastic" music. I would suggest that the less accessible complex functionality is, the more the music will sound the same, since so many people would be relying on default options.

I am looking forward to the new Logic. I imagine that it will be significantly better, but I expect it will still be non-trivial to learn. It's the nature of the beast.

For what it's worth, my experience with FCPX was that it was significantly more stable than was its predecessor.

From my perspective, the issue was the marketing. If they had just announced that it was the new platform, but was only partially fleshed out and not yet ready for those doing full-length commercial projects, I think it would have been a huge hit. Instead, they insisted foolishly that FCP was dead and it was time for everyone to migrate to the new platform. Not even close.

It's not so much that FCPX left out a lot, it's that what was there barely worked at all. Several PBS stations that I work with have moved on to other video creation software.

I also found that to be the case with several of my own clients but since then, all but 2 have now switched back to FCPX once the initial issues were resolved and they all seem very happy with the program.. it's capabilities and workflow... It's stability now.. and the updates... and the type and frequency of updates being released that have continued to add to both the stability and usefulness of FCPX. I'm not a FCPX user myself so i can only relate the feedback i have received via my client base... YVMV.

Using a client base of that type and nature.. as a 'Beta test group" for FCPX was, in my opinion.. one of the 'dumbest' things Apple has done in a long time and I hope (and, from what little i know... that will not be the case with the next major version of Logic. That's not to say the next Logic will not have all the usual teething issues and bugs that all new Software has...but I truly hope and believe that the frustrating situation that occured with FCPX upon it's initial relase, will not be repeated...and as i said, from what i know, that will not be the case.