>Step by step
1. Your first 60 minutes with LUNA (once you have everything up to date, that is)
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Got a UA interface of the Apollo or Arrow variety? Don’t worry if not; this step-by-step is designed to reveal what you are missing with LUNA. Or not. You’ll need both the hardware and an account at UA (the two go hand in hand) and then a decent internet connection. It’s a 3+GB download dependent on whether you need to update your UA software… 4
After selecting Create, you can set up your Session tempo, name, save location and so on. You can also – as I am clearly doing – watch some (pretty good) videos on how to get up and running with LUNA. Once you get the general drift, name your Session and hit the Create button at the bottom. You’re ready to roll. 2
…which you will need to do if you haven’t kept up to speed (the LUNA component installs at around 500MB). After updating everything (including your interface firmware), LUNA is ready to run. Or nearly. When you first boot up it will scan your system and then ask to link to your iLok account and then scan through your plugins. Here it is with Dune CM! 5
The empty Session screen! Here you get two modes: Timeline (shown) and Mixer. You can go back to the previous ‘Create, Manage etc’ screen by hitting the UA logo. On the Timeline screen you get four main areas which I’ll go through one by one. The first is the Focus Browser (circled) which is used for creating tracks and assigning inputs. 3
Time for a MacOS update as LUNA only runs on MacOS Mojave or later. Full update later and this beautiful screen appears. I’m in! It feels like I’ve broken into Fort Knox – in many ways my fault as I should have kept things updated. This is the first screen you’ll see with four tabs: Create, Discover (buy), Manage (your plugins) and Settings. Hit Create. 6
Here I very quickly create four audio tracks and two instrument tracks. Pleasingly I can load all my favourite Audio Units plugins in, as LUNA has scanned my system for those installed. I’ve loaded up one of my favourite GForce plugins (Oddity 2) and is that good old Einklang CM you see there? Yes it is! Things are running pretty smoothly so far.