In Logic 9 many things have changed. Especially the newly introduced “Flex Time” Modes let us assume Logic Pro 9 is “teh awesome edition”.
Are they worth 200$ the upgrade costs? I’m still not sure. It seems not “much” is new in Logic Pro 8 (article is written in german!), but there are a few neat new things in Logic Pro 9 worth mentioning.

Flex Time

I’m always surprised by how Apple/Emagic introduces those features into Logic. It always takes twice the time other manufacturers need, but once implemented the ease of use is just awesome.
The same goes for “Transients”. A transient is basically a peak in a signal. Ableton Live 8 already has such feature. Ableton re-wrote their whole Beat Detection Algorithm to make it work in that regard.

First activate Flex Mode by clicking in the tracks’ settings the dropdown menu named “Flex Mode”. From there all the different Flex modes can chosen:

• Slicing: No stretching’s happening. The gaps between each transient are filled with a loop.
• Rhythmic, Monophonic, Polyphonic: Stretching is activated. Choose right algorithm for your material.
• Speed: Uses speed to “stretch” to the new tempo (like a turntable does…)
• Tempophone: “Emulates the effect of an historic tape-based time-stretching device known as tempophone” (Taken from the “manual”, read more about that one below)

After an appropriate Flex Mode has been set Flex View can be turned on by clicking the “Flex” button in the menubar. The tracks’ header will get a new dropbox where the Flex View Mode can be activated for that track.

Working with Flex Mode is really awesome and intuitive. New transient marker can be created very easily, they can be dragged around. When a portion of a region is being selected with “marquee” and the mouse cursor is in the upper half of the region a hand symbol shows, telling that the length of the selection will be preserved while being dragged and everything to the left and right will be compressed or expanded accordingly.
A new tool, the Flex Tool, allows us to create Flex Markers. The picture below (click for closeup) shows how easy it is to work with Transients and Flex Markers.
But before you take a look at the picture I think I should describe what the difference between a transient and a Flex Marker is:

• Transient: A peak signal in a region. Logic Pro 9 analyzes the signal, recognizes transients and displays all of them as grey lines from the top to the bottom of each region.
• Flex Marker: Everything in front or after a Flex Marker will be compressed or expanded according to the Flex Markers’ position.
  
  • Green: Time compression is shown in increasing shades of green, the more the audio region section is compressed.
  • Orange: Time expansion is shown in increasing shades of orange, the more the audio region section is expanded.
  • Red: High speed sections, where time compression equals or exceeds factor 8—time-stretching factor 0.125—turn from green to red and come with a warning.

A few special functions of Flex Mode:

• Flex Markers can snap to Transients sitting in another track: That gives us the possibility to “repair” untight drummers for example (don’t tell them you’ve done anything to their performance ;) )
• Transient Markers can be used to “slice” a region. (Awesome! For more information keep on reading below. Section named “Convert Regions to New Sampler Track”)
• Varispeed allows us to vary playback tempo from -50% to +100%.
• Flex Marker can be moved without time stretching

How does it sound?

The new Flex engine sounds good in my ears. Can’t decide if I like Ableton’s new algorithms more than Logic’s both sound equally good. Logic’s implementation has one downside compared to Live. A region can’t have it’s own tempo. Ableton users know that they can set a Clips’ tempo to halve it’s value, Logic doesn’t offer such option. Therefore we can’t create songs that use “Slicing Flex Mode Artefacts” as an effect.
When using Polyphonic mode don’t forget to activate “Complex”. If you can afford the CPU consumption it’s really worth the sound!

Slices

Convert Regions to New Sampler Track

Logic Pro 9 introduces “Slice Mode” — a feature well known from programs like Ableton Live.
The software tries to automatically figure out where a transient is and displays a grey line wherever a transient is. Transients allow us to do several things. And I was astonished by the way Apple implemented them into Logic Pro.

While any Flex view is activated we can click the region with the right mouse and choose “Slice at Transient Markers” to slice the region at each Transient Marker.

Having many small regions might not be what most of us would like to work with. Therefore we have a new function “Convert Regions to New Sampler Track”. It can be found in the “Audio” menu. (Or right mouse button a region and choose “Convert Regions to New Sampler Track” from the Convert submenu.)
A dialog pops up at the upper corner of Logics’ window and asks what should be used as basis for Zones. (Regions or Transient Markers). A name and a trigger note range can be set. After clicking OK:

• A new track will be created holding one instance of sampler
• The new track has one MIDI region on it, containing all the Slices’ trigger notes
• The “old” region will be muted

Can it be any easier?

Drum Replacement

A while ago I published a tutorial describing how Logic Pro can be used to slice a region to replace the transients with a sample. Thanks to the new slicing/transient feature we don’t need that awkward way anymore.
Click “Drum Replacement/Doubling” from the “Track” menu.

• Which sample should be used can be set from the Library tab on the right.
• Modes:
  • Replacement: After clicking OK, the old track will be muted
  • Doubling: The new track will not mute the old one

Drum replacement is a common used technique in nowadays productions. Almost no Pop/Rock song out there can live without a replaced drums. (Yes, I am aware that Cubase had such functionality long before Logic, but Cubase sucks — with all it’s unusable glory!)

Detect Tempo

It’s great to intelligently detect a loops’ tempo, but having a look up in the manual doesn’t bring up any useful information. (That manual is my special new friend…read more in the section “Annoying things”)
To me it seems like this function doesn’t do anything. Please tell me if I’m wrong!

Q

Regions now have “Advanced Quantization” settings. (Taken from the Logic Pro manual. Do a search for “Fine-Tuning the Quantize Grid Options” or just “Flam”.)

• Q-Swing: Alters the position of every second point in the current quantization grid.
• Q-Strength: Determines how far a note or transient marker is shifted toward the nearest grid position.
• Q-Range: A very musical quantization strategy that requires a certain amount of technical musical prowess.
• Q-Flam: Spreads out notes with the same time position—chords.
• Q-Velocity: Determines the amount that the velocity values of quantized notes are affected by the velocity values of a template MIDI region.
• Q-Length: Determines how the lengths of quantized notes are affected by the equivalent note lengths—notes at the same position—of a template MIDI region.

Interface changes

Automation menu

 The Automation menu have been moved from the Options menu in the upper menubar to the contextual menu.

Border around active editor

A white border around the active editor/list/tab/whatever tells us clearly in which context we are currently working in.
This seems not like a big change, and indeed it isn’t, but it will help new users a lot finding their way through Logic’s interface. (I know that it will help them, because I’m lecturing Logic and know that my students always suffer not knowing where they are. ;) )

Colors on Channel Strips

The rounded rectangle around channel strips in the lower left corner of the Arrangement have been overhauled. Looks much clearer now.

Annoying things

No PDF manual anymore

Apple decided to abandon our (my) beloved PDF manual from the package. Instead we now have the pleasure of using that (sucky) Help Viewer, which basically displays an HTML site.
Although the Help Viewer is much more usable in Snow Leopard it’s still ugly. Do you know that, always in the way, floating window? I hate it…(honestly!)
While writing this article I had to look up several things in the manual and I realized how much Help Viewer hurts.

I’m trained to use book-like manuals with a beginning and an end, they have pages — and therefore page numbers. Page numbers or pages can be referred to when someone asks about help.
With Logic 9 we have lost that option. Now we are forced to say a newbie “Look it up in the manual. Use that search field in the upper right corner! I still know the page number once that topic was on, but it’s not there anymore because we don’t have a manual anymore.” Don’t get me wrong, I really like the fact we don’t get a printed manual anymore. That bulky environmental hazardous thing was not useful ever since I’m using Logic, but having no PDF manual is an absolute no-no for me.
If you’re like me and don’t want to use the Help Viewer do the following:

• Select Logic Pro.app in Finder
• Click right mouse button → Show Package Contents
• Navigate to /Contents/Resources/English.lproj/logicpro_help
• Open index.html in Safari/Firefox/Whatever

Inside English.lproj you’ll find the other manuals as well. (Go into YourLanguage.lproj to find the manual in your mother tongue.)
If you’d like to be able search the contents of the “manual” with Spotlight you might like to copy that folder to a folder somewhere on your harddrive.

The PDF Manual is back!

News tell us that our beloved PDF manual is back where it should be! Yeehaw!
Go to Apple’s web site and grab it under this link:

http://documentation.apple.com/en/logicpro/usermanual/

Thanks to Peter Kirn who reported this in the comments!

Unfortunately it seems like we still don’t have a PDF manual for offline use. It’s needed to download the manual and save it to some folder on the hard drive. Having an online version is still not the best solution, but better than Help Viewer anyway.

What’s new?

In Logic Pro 9′s menu is in the help menu an item called “What’s New”. Older versions revealed their manual pointing to the “What’s New” section.
As being said already, the manual has gone, so that menu item needed to be reworked. That menu entry is a little misleading, once clicked you’ll be taken to Apple’s web site where you can look up all the new features. WTF? Am I just a user interested in buying Logic Pro or have I bought it already?
Setting up a web site displaying is not what I’m complaining about. But instead of getting a page where the new features are listed I see the same page I was looking at before I decided to buy the upgrade. The same advertisement, without any information about how the new features are implemented, if there are shortcuts, how to use the new tools, etc.

What about crashes?

While writing this article Logic Pro 9 crashed a few times. After 9.0 release Logic seems a little unstable compared to it’s predecessor.
I don’t know how to trigger a crash, if I knew it I would tell you here — and Apple.

Conclusion

Was Logic Pro 9 worth the upgrade? Yes, it was, because I need it for my job. Was it worth the money? No, I don’t think so.
The new features introduced in Logic Pro 9 are good, very good. This flex thing is really helpful and is more usable than in other DAW’s, but in comparison to the upgrade from Logic Pro 7 to Logic Pro 8 it seems more like a bugfix release. Having upgraded to Logic Pro 9 feels like having had OS X 10.5 before and now having 10.6 — if you know what I mean. I’m still not through with all the menus. There may be more things that have changed. Feel free to share your knowledge here!

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