Logic Pro questions from a noob

[HomespunEffects]

I’m having a lot of trouble using Logic Pro so I’m going to ask some questions. @Sascha Franck offered some help in another thread.

Feel free to ask in case you've got questions. I'm on Logic since 1998 or so.

When I create a MIDI region it makes a 1 bar section. I almost always need a 4 bar section. What I do is make a 1 bar region, use the flex tool to stretch it to 4 bars and then do my MIDI piano roll stuff. If i use pointer tool it just does an alias repeat of the original 1 bar section.

If I do piano roll first and then use the flex tool it stretches the MIDI out which I don’t want. Sometimes I want a 4 bar to change to 8 bars so I need to be able to change the length of a MIDI region.

How can i make a MIDI region longer without stretching the MIDI events? Or better yet, how can I just get 4 bars from the get go?

 

[Sascha Franck]

Just grab the lower right corner (you'll see the mouse pointer change) and drag. No need to ever use the stretch tool, unless you really want to stretch (and even in that case, lower right corner dragging + OPT does the job).

 

[Sascha Franck]

 

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, when you grab the upper right corner instead, it'll create loops (kinda like copies, just with the same content as the source, sorta "autoupdating" their content when you alter the source).

 

[DrewJD82]

I’m not sure if there’s a way to generate an automatic 4-bar track, I always just do what Sascha displayed in the gif with dragging it out. You can also do the same thing when you’re on the Piano Roll screen.

 

[Sascha Franck]

If you really need to do that all the time, save a template with some empty regions. But corner-dragging is so fast that it really wouldn't matter to me.

 

[HomespunEffects]

And fwiw, when you grab the upper right corner instead, it'll create loops (kinda like copies, just with the same content as the source, sorta "autoupdating" their content when you alter the source).

Yeah, that’s what I’m getting but it seems that dragging the bottom is the flex tool.

 

[JasonE]

I dislike Apple so much that I get my Logic information from Google. I am not even kidding. I ask my phone the questions and Google looks them up for me and reads them back to me. It is honestly an easy thing to do if I am in the middle of something and need a quick answer.

 

[HomespunEffects]

I dislike Apple so much that I get my Logic information from Google. I am not even kidding. I ask my phone the questions and Google looks them up for me and reads them back to me. It is honestly an easy thing to do if I am in the middle of something and need a quick answer.

I do that too but it’s every step and it has no answer for this question.

 

[JasonE]

I do that too but it’s every step and it has no answer for this question.

For me, I usually know what I am looking for an trying to figure out how it is done in Logic so it usually is just occasionally that I do it and can get a quick direction.

 

[HomespunEffects]

I had to change the settings under editing to get it to work. Thanks.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I had to change the settings under editing to get it to work. Thanks.

You must've changed them accidentally before because what I described is the default behaviour.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Not exactly related, but fwiw, here's another little thing you can do with the loop function many people don't realize at first. Logic will loop the treated region no matter the length of the source. So in case you shorted the loop from, say, a full bar to 7/8, it'll loop that. Do that on top of a straight 4/4 beat and you'll get instant polyrythms. Will also instantly "king-crimson-ize" some guitar parts.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Just for the fun of it, I quickly recorded a stupid little example of what I described in my last post.
In this first clip, you'll hear a single note guitar playing a rather lame 16th note pattern repeating every 4 notes (played twice, so it's 8 16th notes, but that's just 2 x 4 identical notes). Gets incredibly boring after just two bars or so:


Now I shortened it to 7 16th notes. In the beginning, you'll hear the original pattern for 2 bars (for better reference), in bar 3 the 7/16 fun starts:


The real challenge now would be to learn playing that 7/16 pattern, which is quite difficult as the up/down stroke pattern reverses on each pass (if you go for strict alternate picking) and as there's a constant polyrhythmic shift going on.

Sorry, this is not exactly related to the topic at hand, but I think it's a very wicked function related to Logic's part handling.

 

[DrewJD82]

It’s worth checking out MusicTechHelpGuy on YouTube and just letting his Logic videos play through. Whenever I remember something I want to know about when I’m not in the studio I’ll try to find it via the video titles and generally can, but the dude drops nuggets of worthwhile info the entire duration of the videos, mainly the little things to speed up work flow that aren’t ‘deserving’ of their own video or title.

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

It’s worth checking out MusicTechHelpGuy on YouTube and just letting his Logic videos play through. Whenever I remember something I want to know about when I’m not in the studio I’ll try to find it via the video titles and generally can, but the dude drops nuggets of worthwhile info the entire duration of the videos, mainly the little things to speed up work flow that aren’t ‘deserving’ of their own video or title.

I second this, felt like I finally started understanding Logic for real after watching a few of his videos.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Yeah, he's defenitely one of the best Logic ressources on the web.

 

[JasonE]

It’s worth checking out MusicTechHelpGuy on YouTube and just letting his Logic videos play through. Whenever I remember something I want to know about when I’m not in the studio I’ll try to find it via the video titles and generally can, but the dude drops nuggets of worthwhile info the entire duration of the videos, mainly the little things to speed up work flow that aren’t ‘deserving’ of their own video or title.

Thanks for posting that. I just subscribed to his channel. I like watching things like that just to pick those types of things up. I like to do it with music theory and playing stuff too.