Sunday, November 2, 2008

Going Solo with Logic. Be Weary of Solo Protect Mode, The S with a Shash (/)

I encountered an issue with Logic Pro 8 in that the Audio Track kept on playing even if I wanted to solo another single track to adjust a few effects. I took me quite some time to understand what was going on, but again, the people at MacProVideo Forum came to the rescue right away. (I highly recommend that you sign on to that group and also watch the videos. I am just a paying customer there, but the amount of time saved hence the money is so great. People are so super helpful there. I had a question posted on certain company's official suppor forum, and so far I had not had any responses there.)

As for my problem, here was basically the core of it.

The Logic has a mode called "Solo Protect" and it basically disables a track from being put into "solo." I won't explain why this is important, but for example, if there is an effect send coming out of the channel like the one on the left, you'd often not mute it. Perhaps you may be using it to do some side-chain effect controls or triggers. When this mode is in effect there is a red slash (/) over the solo button on the channel strip.

Logic will automatically figure when to Solo Protect a track, but if you are unaware of this feature then you'd be caught for a big surprise thinking that there could be a bug or installation issues with Logic.

At any rate, if you do insist that you would want to turn this off, then all you need to is to press Control while pressing the S button on the strip. Do that again to turn it back on.




Saturday, November 1, 2008

Be Aware of Contexts in Logic Library Search

I was looking for some software instrument sounds in Logic 8's software instruments. The natural inclination is to use the Library Search feature under the Media panel's Library tab.

I wanted to add some bit of "Pedal Steel" feel for my project and so I was frantically looking for any instruments in the "out of the box" installation of Logic 8 for the word "Pedal."

I did not find any. So I asked on MacProVideo Forum about this and there are couple of things I've learned. This is also important for me to remember so I am documenting it here.
  • When a bare-bone Software Instrument Strip is selected, the Library search looks for Channel Strip Presets and not Instrument Presets. It is deceiving because quite a bit of ESX and ES instruments are preset as the channel strip preset.
  • If you are looking for actual file name, look for the name + .pst extension on your disk using Spotlight.
More detailed answer can be found at This Post at MacProVideo Forum.

P.S.: MacProVideo forum so far has been the most reliable and fast response source of questions. I highly recommend both their products (as I posted before) and forum participation.