My Logic Pro Wish List
I use Logic Pro more or less every day. It really is a great piece of software, with a lot of cool features that PT users are missing out on. Like, it works right out of the box and the built in effects and instruments are at worst usable, and at best class-leading. Like, it can work with any hardware and not just a handful of boxes. Like, I can arrange a piece of music, print out the dots, and record the results, all in one programme. That’s just great.
But there are some things I’d change. So very quickly, here is my top 10 changes to Logic
• Sample accurate editing in the arrange window. It’s becoming an embarrassment when Pro Tools users come in to the studio!
• Audio Units availability in the sample editor, like what Soundtrack offers. It’s a bit weird that I can do stuff in a $300 package from Apple that I can’t do with it’s flagship audio product. Like how I felt when Garageband first came out and we were stuck in Logic 6 land without Apple Loops etc. And as a general point, the noise reduction in Soundtrack is pretty good – why isn’t it in Logic?
• Fix the OMF implementation please! XML is better, but not everyone can supply XMLs
They’re the basic ones, now for the more far reaching ones…
• I would love if Logic operated more like Final Cut does, at the “Project” level. For me, a Project isn’t a song, but a whole album, which may have songs within it which should be able to share environment layers, reverb settings, synth patches, vocal channel strips etc. Imagine opening a project file which was, rather than a song, a whole album! Each song is a click away, multiple songs can be tabbed between each other, and settings can easily be copied and pasted between songs. I know you can open more than one song now, but there’s no overview of your album within Logic itself. It seems a more logical way to operate to me. A more “Apple” way too, fitting in with the Final Cut approach. Oh, and autosave!
• As a general look down the line, I’d love one streamlined audio product from Apple which does it all. Why not add PQ coding and proper Red Book writing to Logic and basically dump Waveburner? Why not implement all the features of Soundtrack in the sample editor of Logic? And why not make files not just compatible with Garageband in one direction, but in both? And while we’re on the subject of compatibility, Apple are very sneaky about backwards compatibility with previous versions. At least with PT7, you can downgrade easily enough. Not so with Logic 7.2.
Wait, I’m not finished…
• I would love if someone created a NI Kore style frontend for Logic, so I could better use it live (and in the studio!). No chance of Apple doing it though. Is there?
• Free Logic Express for all Logic Pro users? I hate having to bring my dongle with me everywhere just to do a simple edit or record! OK, it’s a long shot!
• Easier moveability of the Apple Loops folder to another drive. Jeez, I needed to get a PhD in Unix to figure out how to make that work! That goes generally for all Apple obese-ware.
• Some better and cleverer score editing features
i – better implementation of the chord from global track option, including proper jazz chord symbols, like in the Real Books. Maybe it’s possible, but I can’t figure it out.
ii – grace notes – I’ve no idea how to get them to work. Maybe that’s just me.
iii – a “mute track hides notes in global matrix/score editor” option, so you can view just the MIDI you want to see; ie – if you are editing the string parts across 4 tracks, you can mute the other tracks (drums/piano etc) and not see them in the matrix editor, even when overviewing all MIDI in the one matrix editor. Am I the only person who sees the value of this?
• Some notable omissions from the standard Garageband suite (General MIDI style). There’s no accordeon (that I could find, anyway). I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was a bit stuck without one the other day! And why is the harp in with the pianos?
• Easier addition of audio tracks/instruments in the environment window. How hard would it be to implement a system where when you add a new audio object it guesses the type of object you want (based on the closest object, perhaps) and automatically fills the next slot? If I want to add 8 new tracks of audio, I need to make 8 new objects, and select available voices for them. It should just guess them.
• I would love an option in my DAW to “solo dim” instead of just regular solo sometimes – when you hit solo, instead of just muting everything else, it dims everything else by, say, 12dB instead, so you can hear your soloed track louder than everything else. Does this sound like a ridiculous idea? I think it’s cool idea, and I’ve never seen it. So you have a choice which is somewhere between soloing and not soloing. I’d love it!
I think that was 11. I got a bit carried away. Sorry about that.