The Big Think

Broadway continues the process of removing live performers from their live shows in favor of recorded instruments.

In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come with practice. Perhaps what practice does is train your unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require conscious thought. In some cases you literally train your body. An expert pianist can play notes faster than the brain can send signals to his hand. Likewise an artist, after a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat.

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Every so often you come across a tool that completely changes how you work. Even more, how you think about your work. It’s the equivalent of a hand saw user suddenly being given a bandsaw, or a guy with a shovel sitting down in a backhoe. It’s not just that you can do what you used to do faster, it’s that what you used to do suddenly seems very limited as whole new areas of ability open up to you.

That’s the way I’m feeling right now about Logic Studio. I got Logic as part of my major studio upgrade a few weeks ago. The upgrade has been in the works for several years and I’ve been postponing it for a few different reasons. I knew it was going to be expensive (deep into the four figures), and I knew that it would come with some growing pains. How would I continue with the workflow that I’m so accustomed to? What if the new hardware and software won’t allow me to do something I want -or need- to do? How much will it slow me down? What if it’s all a very large, very expensive mistake? I’ve been boring friends and family alike for years with my nervous ramblings.

Now that I’m on this side of it I wish I could go back in time and club my former self over the head with an outdated MIDI interface. Of course I’m going to have to change work habits. Whenever you go from this:

to this:

there are going to be some growing pains. And brother have there ever been. I spent four whole days trying to get something simple to work with eventual hard-fought success. Yes, Logic is a professional level MIDI sequencer, but that’s only a tiny, tiny percentage of what it does. I won’t go into it here, but you know that guy with a shovel? Yeah, I’m him, but my shovel was buried and I’ve been given a whole team of dudes with heavy construction equipment and a serious set of blueprints.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time working through the concepts of Logic. It’s been immensely helpful for me to subscribe for a month to Lynda.com and work through their online video courses. I feel like I’m back in school getting my audio engineering degree again! I can’t say enough about this great site. They have hundreds of online courses covering just about any software topic you can imagine. The $25/month seems paltry now compared to how much I’ve learned in just a few days.

Anyway, I’m still a total newbie at it, but I’m gradually scooping out a Logic-shaped hole in my brain as I try to get my mind around how it thinks and what it can do. What’s this funny button here? What’s that command mean? Why does everything about the program change when I click this simple toggle? HEY! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?! Stuff like that. It’s not that the way Logic does things is bad, just different. And, Apple software though it is, it was still designed by a bunch of left-brained Germans. I guess it’s appropriately named.

I keep having epiphanies and running downstairs to tell Erin about them (bless her). I’m slowly and painfully uprooting my workflow which has developed over two decades, but I’m finally starting to think that I’ll be better off in the end.

One more thing. When I bought Logic Studio I decided to go ahead and upgrade my current version of Digital Performer- a competing product that is more like Studio Vision Pro than Logic, and much more limited than the Apple software. The upgrade price was small compared to my overall investment ($195), and there are some older files I might need to access. The package just came via UPS and I’m looking at it next to the computer now wondering if I even need to install it. Oh well, at least the big thick manual looks impressive.