Category Archives: logic

practice

Posted by on October 28, 2009 No comments

After completing my first full project with Logic Studio 9 I was going to write up a review. After some thought, it occurred to me that what Logic did best was stay out of my way. Its highest virtue is what it is not rather than what it is. Logic is not needy and it does not crave my constant attention. For the way that I work, that’s a blessing.

I should also say that the presets to their guitar sounds and any of the mastering settings are well thought out and require minor “to taste” tweaking. Having played in some really great spaces, I have low expectations of what can be simulated. Logic takes it from acceptable to pretty darned good. I’d still prefer to have a good amp mic’d up in a great hall, but in lieu of that I’ll take some factory plug-ins. The work I’m doing now is all acoustic and a little more demanding on that front. I wonder what my opinion will be when that’s over.

The coolest new features in Logic are supposed to be the way you can beat up audio tracks and adjust them to perfection in minute detail. I have two problems with this. One, perfection is really, really boring and completely flat. Two, if you practice you don’t need to tweak things anyway.

I have a really bad cold right now. Probably the flu. It’s hard to say. With that in mind, I beg the reader’s pardon for any half-baked invective that may follow.

I’m sick to death of pitch correction. More so of tweaking rhythms and the quantization of audio. Here’s the deal: if you can’t play in tune or in time you should practice until you can. This goes for people who have been playing for a year or fifty years. The idea of saving something in the mix or removing an imperfection is ridiculous.

Before I go too far, I will wholly embrace the idea of a sound recording as more than a document. If the subject of the recording isn’t a live performance (which should never be altered save to iron out defects in the method of collection) then any kind of alteration could be fair game. There is a lot of art that is made by tending to the nuances. With that out of the way, I’m speaking more to the person who puts a mic in front of an instrument or plugs it in with the aim of recording a part.

I don’t splice my takes. I give them three tries and that’s it for the night. Given that I stick to my one hour per night ritual, it can be painful to screw something up and have to move on to something else. But if I can’t do it right with three tries at this stage in my life I’m either not practicing regularly or don’t know the part well enough to merit recording. It comes down to the following decision: would I rather do it right in one take within the confines of the time imposed by the song (real time) or potentially spend hours making a quilt out of bits and pieces from multiple takes?

In my studio I play many roles. I’m a composer, performer, engineer, and designer. Sometimes I’m a luthier or an acoustician. I’m pretty good at most of those but what I enjoy is playing an instrument. It frees my mind and gives me a sense of peace. When it works, it’s one of the most beautiful sensations. And when it doesn’t, well, it still beats sitting in front of a monitor, splicing up waveforms, and hoping that the judicious application of various effects will hide the scars. So I tend to practice. It’s easier.

Read that again: it’s easier to do it right the first time. This applies to almost every endeavor.

So I may never use some of the more highly touted features of most DAWs and in fact my needs could likely be met by a simple multitrack recorder if I had infinite synthesizers and effects processors. And if all of this equipment were small enough to fit in my bag, that’d be great too. I’ll stick with Logic. And practicing.

sunset with heavy reverb

Posted by on September 2, 2009 No comments

The past two nights have been all about the tools. A new version of Logic would mean plenty of exploration even if this weren’t such a guitar heavy release. What’s killing me is that all of the features that were added are aimed straight at me. I can sit for hours and tweak this parameter or that and get totally lost in the sounds of my guitar. It’s a sensation that is loaded down with heavy memories.

When I was in high school, I managed to save up enough money to purchase a new Fender Stratocaster (American, thankyouverymuch!). It’s black with a white pickguard and a rosewood fretboard. Note the verb tense of that last sentence. It’s still in my studio and will be until the unthinkable comes to pass. In fact, changing out the pickups and electronics is on my winter to do list. That guitar was a turning point for me. It opened up a world of sounds. At the time, I had access to an early 70s vintage Fender Twin amp with the old spring reverb unit. My mom worked, so in the winter when the sun was setting early, I would sit in the basement after school with the last light of the day streaming through the window and play until my fingers hurt or I heard the garage door go up.

green treasure?

Technically, things were much simpler then. I had so few stomp boxes (maybe two?) and the amp itself had little more than EQ, poor grounding, and that reverb unit. But the sounds I could make were astonishing to me even then. There was such subtlety in the range of every pot on the amp. The differences between levels on different pickup settings. The art of blending them together. Searching for my sound was deep research; a mission.

That’s where I ended up last night. There’s the cute ability in Logic now to lay out a pedal board with all sorts of festively designed interfaces. It’s intuitive, quick, and as addictive as having all of those boxes on the floor at my feet. I sat and twisted this knob and that, always listening for the shifts in balance and tone. For that breaking point where the sound comes together and becomes the physical manifestation of my imagination. But rather than hit record and do something that would move the current track forward, I sat and played for a good hour. Not a bit was recorded. This is why I’ll likely stay the hell away from Mainstage. I could get lost in there!

It was beautiful. The guitar was sounding good as the sun went down. I forgot to turn on the lights and when I looked up, time was gone, it was dark, and everything felt right. It reminded me that those are the moments that encouraged me to become a musician. It was never the time spent on stage or performing in any capacity. It was the time alone in the studio. The meditative nature of practicing. Living in the sound and allowing the moment to be whatever it turned out to be. It’s not the kind of thing that can be shared, I don’t think. That’s sad on the one hand, but on the other, we have to admit that some of the great moments of life are spent discovering things in some kind of isolation. That flow should be embraced and celebrated.

software and doors

Posted by on August 31, 2009 No comments

Friday night we went on the traditional Buy The New Apple OS run complete with dinner. My son loves the Apple store and my dad loves being a nerd. Me? I’m innocently stuck in the middle. We hit the store and my dad immediately went to grab the Snow Leopard and I went to “look” at Logic 9 to see if it was worthy of an upgrade (as if the package could tell me things that the demos couldn’t). My wife looked at me sideways and said “you know they keep it behind the counter.” She makes things like this sound so dirty. The Orange Shirted Nerd (OSN) knew what was going on merely by the look on her face and he swooped in to save me. After hearing those wonderful words “oh just buy it and get it over with!” (she’s too good to me) he dispatched a Blue Shirted Nerd (BSN) to fetch the appropriate upgrade box and I was set. Very pleased was I.

After putting our son to bed, we retired to the couch for some serious upgrade lovin’. Snow Leopard installed on my MacBook Pro in no time. It took a little longer on her MacBook but in the end it was all good. No issues with the install and everything worked just as well as, if not better than, it did when we started. It seems a little faster as it moves around, but the true test will come in the studio tonight.

Then there was the Logic 9 upgrade. If I could do one thing it would be to make the install faster. It was an overnight deal and when I awoke to the sound of my son in the living room asking aloud “computer doin’?” I realized the biggest flaw in the installer is the fact that the only button on the screen reads “CANCEL.” Of course a complete overhaul of the installer wouldn’t have saved me from the evil “are you sure you want to restart” prompt on the screen when I arrived in the living room. Ah the power button. So shiny! So attractive to little fingers! Thank goodness it takes more than one missle key to make that happen. The point of all of this is that the install takes forever so take a book. Also, I shouldn’t leave my laptop on the coffee table.

huh. sidewalk.

More on Logic this week as I revel in the orgy of new guitar setups and effects. In the few minutes I gave it this weekend there was just too much tasty goodness. I am optimistic that the new stuff will inspire some sort of creative weirdness.

I read Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod this weekend. He’s the guy that does all of those really cool business card cartoons. I followed his blog for a while years ago, but sort of lost it in the shuffle of my move to Texas. He has a lot of ineresting stuff to say in this book that comes out of his blog. It’s another book that says a lot of things that you already know but his experience lends it a lot of credibility. There’s this confirmatory feel to the book that gave me the sense that I might be less nuts than I think. I need to burn through it again, but it’s a good read and is worth picking up.

That will likely be the last book on the subject of creativity that I read for a while. I’ve read two really good ones and I think I’ll stop there before I hit a bad one (again).

We picked up a closet door for my studio last night so that I can finally cover up all of the stuff I keep in there. It might also keep little hands out of trouble. There is something about a dedicated creative space that is very special and when everything about it is just right, it’s hard to justify not spending more time in it. I think about this a lot, so there will be more about it later. Maybe after I get the closet door hung.

logic studio ate my jazz post

Posted by on March 3, 2009 No comments

i should be posting about the second set of lessons in the awesome jazz guitar book i mentioned below but i’m not. tonight i was distracted by logic studio and the coolness that it brings to the table. i upgraded (after teaching the dudes at the apple store about how the pricing works…sigh) and have been having a little too much fun messing around with it. the deal is, quite simply put, that the difference between logic express and studio is vast.

if all i got out of it was the space designer plugin interface, i would be quite content. in fact, that’s why the upgrade was planned. the presets and less than adequate access to specific parameters left me feeling like there was too much missing when defining the sound of acoustic instruments. my studio is a very dead, very small spare bedroom that lacks anything that resembles character. the living room/dining room of the house has hard floors and sounds great but there’s that whole “little boy and dog running all over the place” hurdle to clear. so i need to have a little something extra. space designer brings the love.

also of note, the sculpture synth. it does some funky modeling and produces some really lush pads. i’m a huge fan of camel audio’s cameleon 5000 soft synth and sculpture gives it a real run for its money. most of my studio time tonight was burned just moving sliders and messing around with weird pads. it’s really exciting to have access to this.

i still haven’t touched main stage or wave burner or soundtrack pro. wave burner will likely be that app that i can’t live without, but we’ll see.

also of note is the presence of all of apple’s jam packs in the logic studio suite. there are some that i could live without and a pile that really do provide that certain something. a point of departure or an enhancement. a lot of the loops to my mind are the equivalent of dumping some onion soup mix into a meatloaf because although you know you could measure out each and every spice you really have other, more important things you could be doing. yeah, the apple loops are like that.

i’m very pleased with the upgrade. this week’s sketch will probably be some more silly electronica with wild, overdone pads and drum loops processed through whatever i can dig up. this is seriously fun stuff.

and next week it’s back to the jazz studies! seriously! come back thursday for tunes.