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Top 10 Apple Logic Pro X Workflow Tips
How to work faster and get more done with less effort in Logic Pro X
The newest version of Apple’s Logic Pro X delivers plenty of useful updates and workflow enhancements. Whether you’re a seasoned user or just starting out, you’ll always find something new to learn about recording and editing in Logic. I want to share with you some of my recommendations for speeding up and customizing your workflow. I hope you find these suggestions helpful.
[1] Key Commands
My motto is, “Never drag a mouse around when you can press a key or key combo.”
Almost any task in Logic Pro X is either already assigned to a key command, or you can assign it to a key command. Version 10.5.1 even gives us some new key commands. Here are a few of my favorites:
Open Key Commands
This key command is the gateway to viewing assigned key commands as well as assigning your own. Its default is Option-K.
Go To Position
This is my favorite way to navigate around in a project. By default, it is assigned to the forward slash next to the right Shift key.
Move Region/Event to Playhead Position
This does exactly what you’d think it does. It moves any regions you select in the Workspace to the Playhead position. In an editor (like the Piano Roll), it will also move any selected events (notes, MIDI continuous controller steps, etc.) to the Playhead position. The default assignment is the semicolon.
Set Rounded Locators/Loop by Regions/Events/Marquee and Enable Cycle/Loop
This sets a Cycle rounded to regions, events, and marquee selections. It defaults to the letter U. Once set, you can simply toggle Cycle on and off by pressing C.
Bypass All Effects Plug-ins
This one is brand new in 10.5.1 and incredibly helpful. It is unassigned, however. You’ll need to assign it by selecting it in the key commands, selecting Learn by Key Label, and pressing any available key combination. I use this so often I have assigned it to the F1 key. Ideally it would toggle the plug-ins on and off, but it doesn’t. If you’ve enabled plug-in changes to be part of the Undo history, though, Command-Z brings them back.
You can find many more very helpful key commands. I suggest you look first in the Used tab at those that are already assigned and then in the Unused tab. Using key commands can save you hours over the course of a year, and they won’t contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome.
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[2] Customize Your Track Header and Store Defaults
Choosing what you really need to see in your Track Headers can save you a lot of time and grief.
Press Option-T to open the Track Header Configuration window. Here you see the factory defaults.
If you have multiple tracks flowing through the same channel strip, then the Solo and Mute buttons are going to solo or mute them all, because it is soloing or muting the channel strip, not the track. The On/Off power button gives you the option to turn tracks on or off discretely within the channel strip.
Why is important to make choices for defaults? Preferences affect all projects, past, present and future, while Project Settings are project specific. But you can make your choices and save them as defaults by pressing down on the Gear icon and choosing Store as User Defaults. Then, they will be part of present and future projects, while pressing Apply Defaults in an older project will apply them.
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[3] Customize your Mixer Channel Strip Components and Store Defaults
This is similar to what I suggested for the Track Header. Here are the defaults.
Again, you may make different choices, but not having to reinvent the wheel each time will save you a bunch of time.
The procedure for storing and applying defaults is identical to the procedure for the Track Header.
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[4] Create Locked Screensets
Logic Pro X gives you several useful MIDI editors. If you use them in the Main window, all the editors you want to see may not be available at the same time. Fortunately, you can open all of them as standalone windows you can resize on your monitor(s).
Let’s look at some examples:
- If I press the number 2 on my computer keyboard to open screenset 2, I see a small Main window. Then I decide I want to have a Piano Roll and an Event List in this screenset.
- I press Command-4 to open a standalone Piano Roll and Command-7 to open a standalone Event List.
- I resize them and arrange them on the monitor to my liking.
- At the top of the page where I see the number 2, I choose Lock Screenset (or better yet, assign a key command to it, as discussed earlier in this article) and a little period is visible to the left of the number.
Now I can zoom in and out, open plug-ins, go to another screenset, and know that I can always get back to this view by simply pressing 2 on my computer. Unless you lock the screenset, you won’t be able to recall any changes you make.
Let’s try another example. The Mixer has three views—Single, Tracks, and All—and each one has tabs to filter information in or out of view. I find all of them useful, and I have two monitors. So, I can have different views or just one view with different kinds of channel strips filtered in and out on different locked screensets. I can switch between them with a single keystroke—no mousing around.
The good news is that you can import your screensets from a saved project into any other project by going to File > Project Settings > Import Project Settings, navigating to the desired project, and selecting it. Along with other projects setting choices, you can import your screensets from project to project. However, I recommend that you save them in your templates, as that can be a little time consuming.
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[5] Giant Beats and Giant Bar Display
No matter what size or how many displays you have, you may want to see your bars and beats shown really large.
In the center of the Control Bar, a disclosure arrow on the LCD’s right side lets you change the LCD’s contents. There you’ll see the option to open a Giant Beats Display and a Giant Time Display.
You have to change them one at a time, which takes only seconds. You can then position them on your screenset. If it’s locked, unlock it, then relock it, and as our British friends say, “Bob’s your uncle.”
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[6] Change Record to Record/Record Toggle
A guy on a forum once insisted to me that you couldn’t do old-fashioned tape recorder-style punching in and out to replace sections of an audio recording. He simply didn’t know that in Logic, this is called Record Toggle. No button in the transport defaults to it, and Logic Pro X uses two different key commands for it. However, you can change the default behavior by clicking and holding on the transport’s Record button and switching to Record/Record Toggle.
This is actually a Preference, so when you open other projects, this will now be the expected behavior. I see no downside to this, but it is easy to change back by clicking and holding on the Record button again.
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[7] Create VCA Channel Groups
VCA stands for voltage-controlled amplifier, which is a feature of hardware recording consoles that control level by voltage. Although there are no voltage changes with a VCA, Logic’s VCAs have similar virtues.
Let’s say you’ve set the levels for all the different sections of your virtual orchestra or band, and lots of them are bussing to effects on auxes. Now, you want to mix the sections without having to worry about how it affects all that routing; you just want a transparent way to adjust or automate the section’s level. Here’s what you do:
- Select all the faders you want to control with a VCA. Under the Mixer’s Options menu, choose Create New VCA for Selected Channel Strips. In the example below, I’ve created four: vocals, rhythm, guitars, and drums.
- With the VCAs renamed and selected in the Mixer, assign them to the Read Automation Mode, and they’ll now appear in the Track List.
- Press H to open the Hide tracks option, and press the H on all the Track Headers except on the VCA tracks Then press H again, and then all you’ll see are the VCAs, ready to mix and/or automate.
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[8] Create Markers in Your Template
Markers are a great way to get around a Logic project. You can resize their length and move them around easily. You can create them in either the Global Tracks or the Marker List editor. Let’s create a typical song format.
- Press Option-G to bring up the Global Tracks configuration window, and hide all selections except Marker.
- Click the + sign in the upper right to create Marker 1.
- Go to bar 9 and create another, and another at 17.
- Double-click or use the Text tool to rename Marker 1 to Intro.
- Rename the second marker to Verse and the third to Chorus.
- Press Option-C to open the color palette, and give them each a different color so they pop.
- Shift-select the verse and chorus markers, and Option-drag to copy them to bar 25.
- Continue on to create a Bridge marker, copy the Chorus marker twice, and end with an outro.
Congratulations, you just created markers for practically every pop ballad in the ‘70s.
So, what’s so great about this? If you assign key commands for both Go To Previous Marker and Go To Next Marker, you can now navigate the project “wicked fast,” as we say in Boston, while it is playing.
You can also create a Cycle by dragging a marker into the Bar Ruler. If you press G to close the Global Tracks, then you see the markers, and Shift-clicking a marker creates a Cycle. Editing the position and names in the Global Tracks is fine, but if you press Command-D to open the List Editors and go to the Marker List, that’s where you can easily change their positions and names.
You can import markers from one project into another, but I recommend you save them in a template.
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[9] Use Audio Plug-In Presets as a Jumping Off Point
If you ask a recording engineer about which presets he uses for EQ, compressors, etc., you will probably get a response like, “I don’t use them; every mix is different.”
Baloney! Of course they do. The presets are in their heads, but everyone has places they begin.
Let’s say you have an acoustic guitar recording that isn’t quite cutting through in the mix, and maybe the levels are not as consistent as you’d like. If you add an EQ and choose a preset named something like Acoustic Guitar – Presence and a compressor preset named Acoustic Guitar, it may not give you exactly the sound you want to make it fit into your mix, so you may adjust them. It almost certainly will put you in the ballpark much more quickly than if you start from scratch, though, unless you have a lot of experience using plug-ins in a mix.
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[10] Turn Off this F@#%&*$ Project Setting
Logic Pro X 10.5 introduced a new project setting that is on by default.
I will probably get some blowback for this one. This new project setting has been widely praised by people running very demanding orchestral libraries. That’s because it allows you to have a massive template load and turn on the tracks by selecting them only as you need them.
If you have a reasonably powerful Mac and you’re not running a huge template, however, it actually takes time away from you. If you’ve used Logic for a long time before that setting existed, you may simply forget that it’s on. Of course, you can uncheck it and save it in your templates. If you don’t always work from a template, though, you may wish you had the option to choose whether it is checked or unchecked by default.
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