One of Logic’s greatest advantages lies in its ability to be customized; but, out of the box, Logic is “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator. Not to worry. I’m going to pimp your Logic install. Follow the guidelines below and you’ll be off and running. You’ve been driving an automatic, economy car. It’s about to become a Formula-One monster. When we are done, all that will be left is for you to learn how to drive it.
If you just want to skip ahead, there is a way to do this all at once. See this section under “Preferences and File Management”. If you do that, here are a couple things to understand about what we are changing. Preferences
These settings are saved when exiting Logic and applied to all sessions (globally). Opening any one of them will bring up a tabbed window in which any/all of them can be changed. Settings that I recommend as important or differing from the default values are noted below.
IMPORTANT: If Show Advanced Tools in the ADVANCED tab is not selected (and all of the advanced tools activated), the settings below will not all be available. This is the first thing you should do!
General
Editing
Right Mouse Button: assignable as TOOL
this is possibly the single biggest time-saver ever.
Select Regions on track selection: ON
Select Tracks on region selection: OFF
Fade Tool click zones: ON
Limit Dragging to one direction: BOTH (piano roll/score, tracks)
Cycle
Pre-process: 1/96
Smooth Cycle: ON
Catch
When starting: OFF
By position if catch and link are enabled: ON
Audio
General
Sample Accurate Automation: volume, pan, sends, plug-in parameters (i.e. ALL)
Software Monitoring: ON
Input monitoring only for focused track… : OFF !!!!!
Independent monitoring level for record enabled channel strips: ON
Editing
Scrubbing with audio: ON (normal speed for both)
I/O
LRC-Lfe-Ls Rs
MP3
Use VBR: ON
Recording
These are important settings! Note that in Logic 10.2 they were in the “Song Settings” folder.
Overlapping recordings
Cycle off
MIDI: “Merge” — Audio: “Create Take Folder”
Cycle On
MIDI: “Create take Folder” — Audio: “Create take Folder”
Replace: “Region”
Midi
Should be okay left at default values
Display General
Wide Playhead: ON
Show Help Tags: ON
Show Default Values: ON
Show icons in New Tracks dialogue: OFF
Tracks
Background: Custom
Grid lines: Auto
Mixer
Show recent plug-in list: ON
Scale: Sectional dB-linear
Channel Order: SMPTE (L R C LFE Ls Rs)
Editors
Bright BG
Score Movie Automation Control Surfaces My Info Advanced
Show Advanced Tools: ON
ENABLE ALL!!!!
Project Settings
These settings are local to your current session/project file. But as it is very helpful to create a default starting template (see below), it is recommended to set these for the way you generally like to work.
General
Use musical grid: O
Synchronization Metronome Recording
When Beginning: Count-in: 1 BAR
Overlapping
This setting was moved to Preferences: Recording:
Tuning Audio
General
Pan Law: -3 dB compensated
Apply Pan Law Compensation to Stereo Balancers: ON
Channel Strips
Automatic management of channel strip objects: ON
Automatic naming of channel strip objects: OFF
MIDI Score Movie Assets Template
The next thing you should do is set up your project/session the way you like to work. This is where the fun starts. When you are done, you will be saving it as a “template" (not a song) so that you can use these settings as a starting point in the future. But before you do…
Start with a “clean” song
No, not one with all the cursing beeped out — I mean lets make sure that we don’t have lots of tracks, effects, and unnecessary stuff in our project. Start a new song or remove, rename, colorize things to your liking. Think:“simple” for now.
Taming the library
Easily the most annoying thing to a seasoned Logic user, the Library is a quagmire of presets. We will be using it rarely. Logic, however, will be trying to open it every chance it gets. For example when creating a new track. Let’s take care of that first:
New Track > “Open Library” checkbox: OFF
Now it should remember that setting
Re-claim your screen-space
Logic for babies-time is over. Let’s make things look professional
Mixer
View: HIDE LEGEND (this will give you easily another track of space)
View: Configure Channel Strip Components
Get rid of the icons
show colors
basically, check everything except ICONS and NOTES
I like track name set to “one line”
Inspector
Now do all the same settings (or adjust to taste) in the channel strips of the “Inspector” (left side of the arrange window). These settings are separate from the ones you set for when you view the mixer.
Track Header
This too, is configurable. Lets make available some of the cooler, advanced features, at the same time, getting rid of the fluff. Right click on the track and choose customize track header.
On/Off button: ON
Mute: ON
Solo: ON
Protect: …maybe??
Freeze: ON
Record Enable: ON
Input Monitoring: ON (but learn to use it)
Volume: ON
Pan: ON
Additional Name Column: OFF
Control Surface Bars: ON
Track Numbers: ON
Color Bars: ON
Groove Track: ON
Track Icons: OFF!!!!!!!!
Track Alternatives: ON (but learn to use them)
Toolbar
Hide it! You’ll almost never need it once you learn some key commands
Control Bar
The control bar comes pre-configured for different types of projects. The problem is that none of them are probably yours. You can always go back to the old “Beats”, etc. settings, but we are going to create a custom control bar that will give us all the info we need at a glance and provide a bunch of cool buttons. Customize Control Bar and Display right-click the control bar or choose this from the main view menu. Save it as the default when you are done.
Views
I turn off:
Toolbar
Editors
Transport
Get rid of all the transport elements
LCD
Here are what I think are some good settings for smaller screens:
Under the LCD section dropdown choose: CUSTOM!
Positions: ON
Locators: OFF
Sample Rate/Punch: OFF
Varispeed: ON
Tempo/Project end: ON
Signature/Division: OFF
MIDI activity: ON (*screen-space permitting)
Load Meters: ON (*screen-space permitting)
Modes and Functions
Master Volume: OFF
This is the most important. This is a disaster waiting to happen. TURN IT OFF!
Tuner: OFF
Auto Input Monitoring: OFF
Pre-Fader Metering: OFF
The rest is up to you. My favorites:
Cycle
Solo
Count-in
click
REMEMBER TO SAVE THIS AS THE NEW DEFAULT!
Song (Changes to Default)
Tools
Super-important: Set up your new tool (the one we enabled in Preferences>General>Editing)
This will open up very fast navigation and editing combinations.
I suggest:
Left-click: POINTER (arrow)
⌘-click: SISSORS
Right-click: ZOOM (magnifying glass)
Snap Settings
Smart Snap
Snap to Zero (from dropdown menu)
Drag Settings
X-Fade
Global Tracks
Let's turn them all off except for the “Marker” track.
Track > Global Tracks…
Key Commands
I could write a book on this. The default is Option-K. Get to know this screen! Create your own set or pull from the preset list.
Preference and File Management
Okay, I get it. That’s a lot of stuff to do. So what if I just want it set like that without reading all of that? Well, yes, there is a way to do that. You need to understand a little about how Mac OS handles preference files, where it keeps them, and what changing them involves. Because I am hesitant to change your system preference for you or to do anything that is difficult to reverse, I have found a fairly simple way to take care of this.
Setup new Logic prefs… automagically!
Install Preference Manager
This FREE software from Digital Rebellion will backup and restore preferences from various applications.
Backup your existing preferences (just for Logic — although you can backup ‘all’ if you like)
Unpack this file to your desktop:
The .plist file goes to:
~/Library/PreferencesOpen Logic (re-select your own key commands or choose the defaults, otherwise you will end up with my personal, crazy key commands).
You will be greeted with a “Welcome to Logic” screen. This is normal.
Close Logic again. This will make sure they are saved.
Backup the preferences (with a new name) again using Preferences Manager.
Now you will have a way to undo all these changes. Next you will need to create a default template. I’ve already done that for you as well: Open the other file
This is a Logic project. When it opens, save it as a template:
File > Save as Template…
Accept the default location. This template will now be available to you when you start a song. You can even set Logic to open a new project using this setting every time you launch the app. This setting is found in Preferences > General
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