Logic Pro X 10.1
Pro-level music powerhouse embraces eclecticism
Apple’s professional music package is a familiar site in commercial recording studios and on arena stages. It offers multi-track recording, great MIDI features, effortless loop-based music creation and stacks of virtual instruments. With the Logic Pro X release it gained tools for fixing timing and tuning, a vastly improved interface, better MIDI handling and the excellent Drummer, which allows incredibly realistic ‘live’ drumming.
Previously, the drummers were fine if you wanted to make rock, folk, country or metal – not if you wanted to make dubstep, EDM or hip-hop.
She’s electric
With Logic Pro X 10.1 Apple has made the program more useful to electronic music makers. It has also fixed some bugs and introduced really useful features for musicians and producers, in an update that’s free to existing Logic Pro X users.
The most obvious new feature is the addition of 10 new electronic and hip-hop drummers that make beat-making much easier. You can stick with the presets or fine-tune the drum machines to your exact requirements, via Drum Machine Designer. The new Note Repeat and Spot Erase features make it much easier to edit MIDI drum patterns without having to painstakingly adjust individual beats or notes. Piano Roll has been tweaked to make it more drum-friendly: the new Brush Tool enables you to create a series of notes with mouse or trackpad gestures and the new Time Handle feature allows you to expand or compress MIDI. You can now slow down a pattern without changing how it’s played.
The 10.1 update isn’t just for electronic and hip-hop artists and producers, though. There are more than 200 new synth sounds and a brand new instrument, the Mellotron. There’s a new Smart Quantize feature that can fix your
The latest Logic is incredible value – for money for acoustic, electric and electronic artists alike
timing without removing deliberate flourishes such as piano figures or drum fills. You can automate regions instead of entire tracks and move the automation data when you move the region or regions. There’s a redesigned Compressor plug-in. The Plug-In Manager is now customisable and there’s support for AirDrop in Yosemite for sharing projects with other Macs.
With Logic Pro X 10.1 Apple has pulled off a difficult trick: the program is user-friendly enough that coming to it from GarageBand is no longer terrifying, but while the face is friendly Logic Pro is a very powerful pro-level digital audio workstation with an exceptionally low price. Where previous versions were among the most expensive music packages you could buy version 10.1 delivers incredible value for money for acoustic, electric and electronic artists alike. Gary Marshall
Great new features, superb new sounds and better ways of doing things, at a great price: it’s a must-have upgrade.