Bringing Logic to the Mac

Charlotte Henry looks at how Logic became crucial to both Apple and the music industry

LOGIC PRO SITS at the heart of both professional and home studios the world over. It’s an advanced digital audio workstation and sequencer that allows users to record, loop, and edit MIDI and other audio. Having started its life in the 1980s as a MIDI sequencer for the Atari ST platform called Creator, it became Notator when music notation capabilities were added. The real genesis of the software we used today came when, in 1993, programmers who had worked at C–Lab, the firm responsible for this older software, founded Emagic and launched a product called Notator Logic. This incorporated sequencing capabilities and “Notator” was ultimately removed from the software’s title.

Apple bought Emagic in July 2002. Back then, Apple said Logic was actively used by 200,000 musicians worldwide. Sound On Sound magazine declared that the “music technology world changed overnight” with the acquisition.

Logic 5.5.1 was the last version compatible with Windows devices, with Logic 6 the first Mac–only version, a move that made Apple’s desire to integrate its hardware and software into creative communities clear. Indeed, in a bid to make the software available for more people, it released Logic Express — a lower cost, ostensibly lower–power version of the main thing, now long since superseded by GarageBand. In August 2005 a columnist for the aforementioned

Sound on Sound noted that this version “outperforms the original ‘full fat’ Logic 6 and includes many of the cutting–edge features of Logic Pro 7.1.”

Although still technically at version 10, the latest iteration is simply called Logic Pro, dropping the “X” that was previously in the title to be in line with the shift to Mac OS Big Sur. There are companion apps for iPad and iPhone, and it introduced a host of powerful features that the originators could scarcely have dreamed of.