I have a client who has done some work on GarageBand and he wants to come into my studio and use it as a base for work in Logic. He'll be coming in to lay some new vocals down, add some more instruments, and refine what he did in GB. I did a little pre-sprucing up of some of the tracks, added some effects, tweaked a few parts, and after working for about an hour, logic kind of freaked out. I seem to remember this happening when I worked on another Garage Band project. First of all, is my memory serving me correctly? Can GB files be buggy in Logic? And secondly, if so, is there anything that can be done to make the transition work a better? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. P.S. I didn't really crash all the way, logic just started behaving very badly. Playhead wouldn't advance with the playback, didn't seem to respond to key commands, etc. I was able to shut it down using the drop down menu (COMMAND-Q would not work), and rebooted and then was able to work fine. Just wondering if there's anything that will make working with BG files smoother.

Hi Morry, Interesting... I guess anything's possible and GB projects may behave badly in Logic - but it's not completely set in stone :) How big was this project. Were you using any 3rd party plugins? WHich version of GB? Have you tried "Selective Importing"? If you after you import and save the project in Logic you close it and then create a blank new project. Now use the 'Selective Track Import' feature in Logic 9 to import certain tracks and settings into your new project. Does that help? Gary's written a Hub Tutorial on using the Selective Track Import Feature here: [url]http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/logic-pro/project-project-import-features-logic-9[/url] Let us know how you get on. R

Rounik, Think this will help a lot. One more thing in Logic I didn't know existed. Would be cool if you could import Pro Tools sessions this way...can you? I must also confess that I never looked at it in Garage Band. To be honest, I have no idea what version of Garage Band this was created with (guess I'll have to ask). I don't think I've ever even opened Garage Band, and I know nothing about it, except that it's a sort of stripped down version of Logic, right? The project itself isn't very complicated at all, though it's got some weird stuff in it. Like all the tracks had 2 sends on them, but there was nothing on the aux channel strips they were pointing to. (bus 1 and bus 2, respectively), and no signal routed through them. In addition, there were 16 aux tracks, labeled bus 1-16, that you could only see if you clicked on the "all" button in the mix area of the arrange page. (or opening up a separate environment window). i.e. they didn't show up if you were just looking at it with the "arrange" button pressed. Which was what made me wonder if the troubles I was having were GB-to-Logic related. Grateful to you and Gary Hiebner for your help. M

Hi Morry, Would be cool indeed! However, it's probably not in Avid's interest to open up and license the Pro Tools file format for Apple's Logic... so I wouldn't expect anything soon. Wouldn't it be great if DAWS began really supporting open formats... again not in their business interests... Odd that there were sends and other stuff going on in the project that weren't there in the original GB project. GB is basically Logic slimed down. It uses the same architecture and audio engine and as you may have noticed some of the same instruments or derived versions of these. See if you can find out which version it was created in. Also, see if you can get hold of another copy of the GB Song file, just in case the one you converted was corrupted. So, did "Selective Track Import" work ok for you? :) R

Finally got the opportunity to try this. Wow. This is majorly cool. I think I got a clean copy to start working with. I asked what version of GB was used, haven't heard back yet. Might be a moot point, though, if this clean copy works out as well as it looks like it did. Thanks again, and and thanks to Gary, for the help. best wishes, M

Hey Morry, Yup. Selective Track Import is one of those seemingly small features added in Logic 9 that has a massive affect on workflow... Love it! Feel free to thank Gary personally. You can add a comment to his Hub post (actually any Hub article!) Best R

Just offered Gary my thanks on his Hub post. Re: the extra aux channels, just opened Garage Band (first time), made a simple project, saved, it, then brought it into Logic. It appears it's something funky about the way Logic imports GB files. (GB version 3.0.5) It's even worse than the project my client sent me. They are not in the arrange, but if you click the "all" button, there are 64 each of audio channel strips and instrument channel strips, and 12 aux channels, and all the tracks have 2 sends, one for bus 1 and one for bus 2. And, the outputs for the 4 tracks that I had actually set up in Garage band are set to output to bus 11. Crazy.

Thanks Morry! I know us authors love get comments on our Hub articles :) OK. So the current version of GB for Mac is 6.0.2. I'm not surprised it's acting funky in Logic 9. So, I'd recommend you first import this Garageband song from your client into GB on your Mac. Then save as... and import that new version into Logic 9. By the way, the update for Logic 9.1.4 was released yesterday. Hopefully that'll make a positive difference. :)

I was unclear. That's MY version of Garage Band, and I just created a cheap quick something on my end in my version of GB to see if I got the same results when I tried opening it in Logic. When I said "first time," I meant that was the first time I've ever opened Garage Band on my machine, ever. And yep, it was pretty messed up. This is literally the first time I've opened Garage Band, so it's possible that my client has a more current version of GB than I do. Do you think it's worth it for Logic users to keep their GB current? He hasn't got back to me about which version of GB he has, but I'm thinking the way to go is, go ahead and open whatever he gives me in Logic, note which tracks I need, save it, close it, then import the relevant tracks into a new project using this very cool feature, then ditch the rest. Do you concur? I'll download the Logic update now! Thanks for the tip. best, M

Ahhh... I see. Well, I've always kept my GB version current as I often teach iLife courses... so I can't really comment on whether older versions of GB definitely cause problems with Logic. Yeah! The Selective Track Import is the way to go! Hope it all works well for you :)