One of Logic’s greatest advantages lies in it’s ability to be customized; but, out of the box, Logic is“dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator. Not to worry. I’m going to pimp your Logic install. Follow the guidelines below and you’ll be off and running. You’ve been driving an automatic, economy car. It’s about to become a Formula-One monster. When we are done, all that will be left is for you to learn how to drive it.
If you just want to skip ahead, there is a way to do this all at once. See this section under“Preferences and File Management”.
If you do that, here are a couple things to understand about what we are changing.
Preferences
These settings are saved when exiting Logic and applied to all sessions(globally). Opening any one of them will bring up a tabbed window in which any/all of them can be changed. Settings that I recommend as important or differing from the default values are noted below.
IMPORTANT: If Show Advanced Tools in the ADVANCED tab is not selected(and all of the advanced tools activated), the settings below will not all be available. This is the first thing you should do!
General
Editing
Right Mouse Button: assignable as TOOL
this is possibly the single biggest time-saver ever.
Select Regions on track selection: ON
Select Tracks on region selection: OFF
Fade Tool click zones: ON
Limit Dragging to one direction: BOTH(piano roll/score, tracks)
Cycle
Pre-process: 1/96
Smooth Cycle: ON
Catch
When starting: OFF
By position if catch and link are enabled: ON
Audio
General
Sample Accurate Automation: volume, pan, sends, plug-in parameters(i.e. ALL)
Software Monitoring: ON
Input monitoring only for focused track… : OFF !!!!!
Independent monitoring level for record enabled channel strips: ON
Editing
Scrubbing with audio: ON(normal speed for both)
I/O
LRC-Lfe-Ls Rs
MP3
Use VBR: ON
Recording
These are important settings! Note that in Logic 10.2 they were in the“Song Settings” folder.
Overlapping recordings
Cycle off
MIDI:“Merge” — Audio:“Create Take Folder”
Cycle On
MIDI:“Create take Folder” — Audio:“Create take Folder”
Preferences
General
Audio
Recording
Midi
Display