A few questions after first half of book

[JimN]

New to Logic, working my way through the book.  I have a few additional questions after working through the first 5 lessons.

 

Is there any way to see the number of bars for the entire scene in the live loops grid?  I understand this is essentially simply the longest loop in a scene but short of inspecting each loop individually, thinking there must be a quick(er) way to see this.

When dragging a loop into the live loops grid, the tempo does not change as described in the book.  Equally, when changing genres and drummers the book refers to the tempo changing, which doesn’t happen for me.  It can be manually changed but never changes automatically as described.  Has this changed with 10.7.5 or is there a setting to effect this behavior?

The red R in the record enable button is essentially the same as armed, or that's how I understand it. I really don't understand this third state for what I consider a binary state button.  Why does Logic have this additional state and not just armed/not armed or enabled/disabled if you wish?

 

[David Nahmani]

14 hours ago, JimN said:

Is there any way to see the number of bars for the entire scene in the live loops grid?  I understand this is essentially simply the longest loop in a scene but short of inspecting each loop individually, thinking there must be a quick(er) way to see this.

Hmmm not that I can think of! 🤔

14 hours ago, JimN said:

When dragging a loop into the live loops grid, the tempo does not change as described in the book.  Equally, when changing genres and drummers the book refers to the tempo changing, which doesn’t happen for me.  It can be manually changed but never changes automatically as described.  Has this changed with 10.7.5 or is there a setting to effect this behavior?

Can you tell me the exact page number / exercice step number you can't reproduce? I'll have a look. 

14 hours ago, JimN said:

The red R in the record enable button is essentially the same as armed, or that's how I understand it. I really don't understand this third state for what I consider a binary state button.  Why does Logic have this additional state and not just armed/not armed or enabled/disabled if you wish?

This is explained in the book on page 214 "About Live Mode". As for the reason why an instrument is not always automatically put in live mode when you select the track, that's because that would create a surge in CPU resources needed and create glitches during playback. 

[JimN]

David, thanks for the very prompt reply!

I'm still confused about the red R.  I re-read the section covering it on pg 214 but that doesn't really address what I am getting at since it deals with software instrument tracks and live mode.  I'm trying to understand this for audio tracks, not instrument tracks.  What does the red R signify in an audio track and how does it differ from the flashing red when armed/enabled?

The cases where the book describes an automatic change to tempo, which did not happen for me, are in lesson 1 on pg. 35 - Step 1.  Then in lesson 2 on pg. 82 - step 1 and again on pg. 87 - step 7.

I went back and did these exercises again.  This time I got a pop up window, two actually, one for file format (mono vs. stereo) then one for the tempo change in the lesson one example.  That allowed me to accept the tempo change and the tempo did update to 135bpm as described.  However, that only happens when there is no other track in the project.  If I start with a drummer track for example, then drag a loop onto track 2 to create a new track, there is no pop up regarding tempo, or file format.

For the examples in chapter two, I get the same behavior, no tempo changes.  In fact, I played around with the drummer quite a bit and nothing I do changes the tempo.

[David Nahmani]

1 minute ago, JimN said:

I'm trying to understand this for audio tracks, not instrument tracks.  What does the red R signify in an audio track and how does it differ from the flashing red when armed/enabled?

• A flashing red R button indicates that the track is R-enabled (armed for recording).
• A solid red R button indicates that the track is currently recording.
• A grey R button with a red R indicates that the track is selected. When no other track is R-enabled, the recording occurs on the selected track. 

4 minutes ago, JimN said:

I went back and did these exercises again.  This time I got a pop up window, two actually, one for file format (mono vs. stereo) then one for the tempo change in the lesson one example.  That allowed me to accept the tempo change and the tempo did update to 135bpm as described.  However, that only happens when there is no other track in the project.  If I start with a drummer track for example, then drag a loop onto track 2 to create a new track, there is no pop up regarding tempo, or file format.

The behavior you're experiencing is normal. When you've already started producing a project, Logic assumes you've already determined the desired tempo so it does not adapt to the tempo of the file you import. 

5 minutes ago, JimN said:

For the examples in chapter two, I get the same behavior, no tempo changes.  In fact, I played around with the drummer quite a bit and nothing I do changes the tempo.

Are you following the exercices exactly step by step as they are in the book? If you deviate one single little step, you may experience a different result, as we saw with your previous question. If, however, you can reproduce this issue when following the exercices exactly step by step then let me know, and I'll have to see if I can reproduce the issue here. 

[JimN]

I did follow them step-by step, yes.  I did so again but this time I re-started Logic Pro and the tempo changes happened as described in the book.  It's odd because I followed the steps before but the tempo was not changing and it happened both the first time I did the exercise and the first time today before restarting and trying again. 🤷‍♂️

Thanks again David!

[David Nahmani]

Ok good to hear! So all good now? 🙂 

[JimN]

ALl good for now! 👍

[David Nahmani]

Great, I'll mark this as solved. Don't hesitate to start a new topic if you have more questions. 🙂