Ok I've thought about what works for me in terms of what works for me in producing a track. Can Logic 9 act as a drum machine, triggering different parts of a melody, via midi keys. So that certain tracks in the sequence can be played with an assignable key. For example when I press c3 on my keyboard audio tracks 1 and 2 are played and recorded in real time. Similar to How Ultrabeat triggers the drum pattern via midi keys. Mainly producing deep and progressive house music for this reason. I hear Ableton is better for this?

There's no facility in Logic for triggering audio tracks, per se. But if you're talking about triggering audio (like samples) then yes, you can certainly do that in Logic. I'm not sure what you mean by "played and recorded" in real time tho... If you're going to play something in you might as well go into record mode and record it. Having said that, Logic has a really cool feature called "capture recording", where you don't have to go into record at all. You just play in a part. And if you think you like what you did, you hit a key command and voila, your part appears on a track, just as if you had gone into record in the first place. (I use this 99% of the time to record parts. I play them in and if I think I like it, I hit my capture key command). Still, it seems to me that you should research Ableton as well as Logic and see which one instinctively seems to be the best one for the kind of approach you want to use to make your music. And FWIW, I just looked at the MPV video selection and there's a tutorial on Ableton. Might be worth a look! : - ) You might also want to post your question in the MPV Ableton Live forum and see what people there have to suggest.

Ableton is definitely better suited to this as Ski says - but you may be interested in checking out the Touch Tracks feature in Logic... alternatively, though not as well developed as Ableton Live, Mainstage has the audio "playback" ability which can sync audio tracks at the press of a button (virtual and tangible).

so if I have 4 drum loop tracks, a bass line and a synth track all looped 8 bars, I assign different tracks to different keys so when I play for instance c3 on my midi key board, only one drum loop plays and the bass line plays, and C4 2 drum loops and then bass line. Playing this in real time and remaining in sync with the tempo. So as the song is playing in real time I'm switching different parts of the original riff, similar to UB switching in touch mode. I think having the flexibility to switch to different parts of a riff on the fly in real time enable me the flexibility to produce the style of music which I'm aiming for which is house music

In Logic you don't assign tracks to keys, really. I mean, if you have one track assigned to a sampled loop where the sampler contains only that loop and it's assigned to only one key (not stretched across the keyboard), that's equivalent in function to "a track assigned to a key", but technically it's not the same thing. And as far as sync goes, you will have to play those keys in time with the click to get them to sync. Now, there [i]might[/i] be some features in Ultrabeat where you can play a little off time but it will play back a pattern in sync, but otherwise you have to play stuff right in time (or quantize it afterwards). Curious... by your descriptions it seems like you've developed a workflow on another DAW, not Logic. Is that correct? If so, what DAW have you been using? Cheers, Ski

I'd highly recommend checking out the Touch Tracks feature in Logic... In fact I might well bite the bullet and do a Blog Tutorial or two on this topic in the near future... :)

you have a template for this rounik?

Hi folks, just a couple of ideas: K1, have you seen Olav's tutorials? Logic 406: Olav's Electronica Workflow Tips has some great ideas to speedily and creatively arrange house music. [url]https://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/logic406[/url] Olav teaches you how to pack and unpack folders, which basicly allow you to arrange an entire track within a few minutes. So you could pack a folder with your regions for drums, bass and synths, loop it out for 6 minutes, then unpack the folders and delete the regions you don't need until you have your arrangement. Kind of 'subtractive' arrangement. Its easy and fast. If you were totally keen on creating the arrangement on the fly, you could build an environment that allowed you to mute tracks using your keyboard. For example, C3 mutes track 1, D3 mutes track 2 etc. Then (same as before) loop your regions out for 6 minutes, play the track, and record the output onto new tracks, using the keyboard to control which source tracks are playing. And idea 3: you could probably use the EXS24 sampler - I'm pretty sure it can handle 8 bar loops. Hope some of those ideas help, and if you want to make house music I seriously recommend Olav's tutorials - essential viewing! Cheers Hamish

Hi K1, I don't have a template to hand for this... it's something I'll have to create - and it really depends on the particular project you're working on. Give me some time and I'll make something. :)

If you were totally keen on creating the arrangement on the fly, you could build an environment that allowed you to mute tracks using your keyboard. For example, C3 mutes track 1, D3 mutes track 2 etc. Then (same as before) loop your regions out for 6 minutes, play the track, and record the output onto new tracks, using the keyboard to control which source tracks are playing. *This sounds interesting is there a video guide to achieving this method?