Trying out new arrangement ideas
Apple’s Logic Pro X has evolved into a true production powerhouse since the company acquired it from Emagic, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. One of the many developments that have been added to the app over the years is the addition of a dedicated Arrangement track, intended to make it easier to come up with new arrangement ideas with the minimum of fuss and bother, by literally picking up chunks of your song up and moving them around on the timeline into whatever order you like.
The Arrangement track works by treating song sections as single entities to be relocated at will – picking up a section collects all of the regions on all of the tracks contained vertically within it. Not only is this great for playing around with arrangements of your own tracks, it’s also a brilliantly simple way of creating extended versions of songs you like – drag the MP3 into Logic, sync it to the grid using the Adapt Project Tempo to Region Tempo command, then get rid of that annoying trumpet solo and extend that catchy outro chorus to your heart’s content!
To see the Arrangement track, you first have to make sure it’s set to be visible in the Global Tracks area that appears above the regular track headers in Logic’s main window. To do this, simply hit the Alt-G key command to reveal the Global Tracks Configuration popup, and tick the Arrangement checkbox. Once the track is visible, you can reposition it vertically in the global track list (so you can situate it directly above the main window if you like), and make it taller by dragging the divider above the track headers downwards.