Slapdelay

Here’s part 2 in the series on my experience with the brand new Logic 8. For this proper first day I have the following goals:

* Setting up Logic and my controllers.
* Doing some audio recording (guitars and bass).
* Sharing this with you!

First thing’s first, reboot OSX and make some coffee! It’s early in the morning here and if I’ll be able to survive in Logics Environment I’ll need to stay alert!

For control in Logic I use a BCF2000 in Logic Control emulation mode along with a little app called LC Xview which emulates the display on the original Logic Control. I also use a PCR-50.

I launch Logic with the BCF and… Voila! Now that is impressive. Logic immediately opens the controller screen, recognizes the “Logic Control” and the faders on my BCF2000 fly into position. Good work Apple/Emagic! The bad news is that the Xview won’t cooperate. I had a little problem with this on Logic 7 but got it to work in the end, but it looks dark here. Oh well. Anyway, seems like I won’t need to jump into the Environment.

The rest of the setup is quick, I don’t change much, and it looks about the same as Logic 7 so it really isn’t any problems finding what I am looking for.

Coffee is ready!

On with the recording. I drag in a drum loop from the Apple Loop browser and quickly record two improvised guitar tracks. This is not about making a great song, but trying new software.

The new comping features looked really impressive when I first saw the clips of it on Apples website so I look forward to try them out. What I’ve done is loop recorded three takes and then simply choose to unpack those takes. They end up on different “lanes” but not different tracks. Users of Logic 7 knows what I mean. That’s pretty much how I comped in Logic before. I go through them lane by lane, mute/unmute them, and drag the best parts to the “main lane”.

I decide to try it the other way. This way you keep the takes packed and you can then choose from a little drop-down menu which take you want to audition. From the videos on the web you’re supposed to be able to cut the take and still be able to audition the cut pieces. Looks like a really sweet solution. “Don’t even think about it!” is Logics reply. In fact, it even starts playing an entirely different take just by cutting! WTF? Switching to another take then switching back solves this. But still, this is very annoying. This kind of strange behavior happens a few more times when I move regions. The funny thing is that the waveform stays the same. Add this to your Logic 8 buglist.

After comping (in truth there wasn’t much of it, I just wanted to try it) I set up a delay in a send for the guitar. Here’s a few great new features in my opinion. If you set one of the sends to a bus, Logic automatically loads the aux for it! Sweet! Also, double-clicking the send highlights the aux. As you can see on the picture, there are two channelstrips to the left on the screen. If your selected track has a send, then you will see the aux there. If one track have more than one send, you will see the send you have clicked on. Smart huh?

That’s it for this time. You can listen to the track at Audival. Here’s a direct link.