From Garageband to Logic

Don’t you hate it when a company comes out with a killer new program just when you’re starting to get settled in with the one you bought last year? Well this week a friend of mines bought Logic Pro 8 by Apple and I was blown away with it. For months I’ve been trying to find a recording set-up that was practical, fast to work on without compromising sound quality. Basically something that would allow me to spend more time wearing the creative hat and less time with the technical hat. So far this Logic seems to be able to do that for me better than anything I’ve used before.

Between a full-time day job, 2 hour commutes, and spending quality time with my family, the time I have to write & record music is very limited. So far I’ve been able to dedicate 3 hours a night 3 days a week for it. But that’s not much for someone who has to get material out to publishers and libraries which I’ve developed a good working relationship with on a regular basis. So, finding a recording set-up that allows me to just turn it on and start working without jumping from an edit screen to a mix screen, to instrument screen etc, is very important to me.

If you’ve read some of my previous post you’ll know that in the past I’ve used Pro Tool, Cubase, Garageband, Ableton, Reason and a host of others. In some cases I’ve even used 1 or 2 of these programs in conjunction with each other via ReWire. So far Garageband has proved to be the program that worked the best for me. In fact, a recent review of the songs I’ve forwarded to publishers and libraries showed that about 75% of them were done in Garageband. However as easy as the program is to work with, it is missing some features that make it a bit less productive for me sometimes. For example, the lack of midi-out doesn’t allow me to use sounds from my Triton keyboard as midi. This is a shame because although there are a lot of good plug-ins out there, the triton does have some really good sounds I can use now & then. Also the inability to record multiple tracks at the same time forces me to bounce only 1 midi instrument at time whenever I want to convert them to audio (which is all the time).

Thankfully Apple seems to have really picked up on all these issue with Logic Pro 8. I use to own a copy of the old Logic when it was still available for Windows, and although I loved the transparency I got on my mixes, it was a not particularly a user friendly program. The Graphic User Interface(GUI) was not intuitive enough and just like Pro Tools and Cubase, you had to go from one screen to another just to get the most simplest task done. With Logic Pro 8 all that hassle is gone. Starting with the GUI. You can actually work for long period of time without getting much eye strain as before.

But the feature I love the most is the single window design. Just like in Garageband, everything is available in one screen. It also has a very intuitive browser which allows you to find instruments and plug-ins easily off the same main work window. You can however toggle to other screens like a mixer window if you like, but the core of the work is done in one place. Of course just like any other top DAW you can record multiple tracks at the same time. For me this means I no longer have to waste endless amount of time bouncing midi to audio. I can simply route each midi instrument to an individual audio track, set them to record, and Wha-La, everything is saved into one handy folder ready to be backed-up.

No a program like this doesn’t come cheap. It currently sells for $499, but it does come with a host of other really cool stuff. Like 18,000 Apple loops (that’s a heck of a lot of loops). It has surround sound as well as “Soundtrack Pro” which is a great program for post video production. Another cool application that it comes with is “Main Stage” which allows musicians to play live with software instruments. But if you’re like me who don’t really need all that extra stuff and can’t swing $500 bucks so easily, Apple has a simpler version for $199.00 called Logic Express 8.

Basically this program is only missing 4 or 5 features that are on its older brother. No surround sound, no TDM support, and no support for high end control surfaces like Euphonix or SmartAV consoles. It also doesn’t have Distributed Audio Processing. All features that I really wouldn’t miss at all. Just like with Logic Pro 8, you can open any existing Garageband project on Logic Express 8.

So is this my do-it-all recording software? There’s a good chance that it may be. It has all the features that I’m missing in Garageband yet keeps GB’s simplicity, also if I do decide that I want to get more technical on a particular project, there’s nothing in Logic that would stop me from doing that. You can basically say that Logic Express 8 and Logic Pro 8 is Garageband on steroids. A lot of steroids.