Logic Pro shares some DNA with Apple's consumer-level music app GarageBand, and knowing how to use one can at least help getting started in the other. You can, however, use the iPad screen to quickly and easily input note information, strum a virtual guitar neck, or even set up basic chords you can strum or arpeggiate with minimal fuss. With only an octave or two represented on the screen at once (depending on how you set it up), you can really only play with one hand at a time. Obviously, with no tactile feedback, it's very difficult to play accurately or expressively on an iPad screen. Keyboard-based instruments give you an actual physical keyboard you can play, plus the various knobs and other controls as the real-life version of these virtual keyboards would offer. Many of the built-in plugins and virtual instruments that come included with Logic Pro also have custom control screens on the iPad. On a laptop or desktop, you'd have to link several tracks together or else record fader automation one track at a time. Manipulating the mixing board faders via iPad instead of mouse and keyboard has one big advantage: thanks to multitouch on the iPad, you can grab several faders at once and manipulate them in real time. This mode literally puts a bank of faders in front of you (up to eight at a time) and you can jump between different banks at will. The most obviously useful way to control Logic Pro X from the iPad is to use the tablet's surface as a mixing board. ![]() Moving multiple faders at once on the iPad. Over the years, I've tried a few third-party apps for controlling Pro Tools in a similar fashion, but none of them has been as seamless and wide-ranging as this, and those apps are prone to lag, bugs, incompatibility issues and other problems (there may be a perfect Pro Tools/iOS control surface app - I just haven't found it yet). ![]() The big advantage here is that Apple makes both the OS X software and the iOS app, so they're built from the ground up to work well together. ![]() Once both an OS X computer running Logic Pro X and your iPad running the Logic control app are on the same Wi-Fi network, they can be linked together. One of the best features of Logic Pro, first added with last year's 10.0 build and continued here, is the seamless support for the iPad as a control surface. These can cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, and as many third-party companies make these devices, the functionality and reliability can vary widely. One common solution has been physical control surfaces, which could be anything from a USB-connected keyboard (the musical kind, not the QWERTY kind) to a full-on mixing desk with physical faders, knobs, and inputs. There's so much going on that it can be nearly impossible to effectively control everything via a mouse and keyboard, unless you're sticking to very simple track-by-track recording. That's because most music-recording apps mimic the look and feel of a traditional physical mixing board, while also offering an edit view with music note data and audio file waveforms, as well as multiple pop-up windows for controlling everything from effects to signal routing. It's the Logic Remote feature, a separate iOS app for your iPad, that really makes Logic compelling. It also lets you remotely add or reorder plug-ins - an option that was limited to the desktop in the previous version. You can use multi-touch gestures to shape the tone of individual tracks using the Visual EQ, rather than simply changing values or presets from a list. In version 10.1, the company has expanded it's Logic Remote toolset to include a new plug-in view so you can have access to Logic or Audio Unit plug-in parameters. You can even tie the timing and complexity in with an audio track, such as a bass guitar, and it will tweak itself on the fly to follow along. More importantly, any loop can be adjusted on the fly to be louder, softer, more or less complex, using different symbol or kick/snare variations, and with more or fewer fills. One of the big upgrades for Logic Pro X last year was the addition of drummer profiles you could use to perform as a sort of AI drummer in your songs.Įach drummer is essentially a bank of drum loop families, and you can reassign any drummer's patterns to any other drum kit. The connection offers tremendous flexibility, making Logic an easy-to-use tool for capturing music ideas on the fly once you're fluent in the basic workings of this deep, complex software package. Having tried many hardware and software external control surfaces for Pro Tools and other music programs over the years, the iPad-to-Logic connection is amazingly simple to set up and it operates in real time. But the secret weapon in Logic is no doubt the ability to use your iPad as a realtime control surface, for riding faders, playing instruments, or adjusting plug-ins.
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