I often receive questions from Logic users about various aspects of the program or specific problems. Last week I received two Logic related questions that had straightforward, easily explainable answers that are not immediately apparent unless you know Logic reasonably well. I want to share them here and their solutions, in case they will be of help to others searching for the same information. 

Mixer Question

The first is a question relating to Logic’s mixer. This is the description of the problem and screenshot the user sent:

“On the left part of the screen, details/plug-ins from the mastering track have disappeared, and I cannot find them.”

After decoding his question and hunting around in Logic, I figured out that he had called up Logic’s “Final Rock Master” mastering channel strip setting. Finding this specific channel strip setting wasn’t immediately apparent, as it is located in the Legacy channel strip settings folder accessed on an Output channel strip. 

The name of the channel strip setting was in his screenshot, so that helped. But the more critical clue in his screenshot was the single circle mono configuration on the signal flow track showing in the Inspector. 

It is relatively unlikely that a user would deliberately switch the format of the output channel strip from stereo to mono unless they knew what they were doing and did it specifically for a reason (like checking mono compatibility.) And if that were the case, they would know how to switch it back. Also, if using the format button to toggle between stereo and mono, it makes no sense to have stereo plug-ins on the stereo version of the output track, as they will disappear when toggling to dual mono channel strips.

Putting the pieces together, it was clear that the user had called up the channel strip setting on the stereo output track and then somehow unknowingly switched it to mono. Clicking the Format button and switching to mono replaces the stereo output track with two mono channel strips. The format change is the explanation for the absence of the associated stereo plug-ins. 

The solution was simple. Click the Format button to toggle it back to stereo. The stereo version of the plug-ins will magically reappear after restoring the output channel strip to stereo. At the very worst, he can call up the same factory preset again if necessary. Problem solved! 

One aspect of this mystery was a little strange, however. The absence of empty plug-in fields on his screenshot was unusual. I noticed this same graphic anomaly when I duplicated the sequence of actions on my system. A quick screen redraw solved it quickly enough, and I couldn’t repeat it. Still, it was unusual. 

Custom Click

The second question came from a colleague who emailed me directly. He is scoring to picture, working on a cue in 4/4 time, and wanted to know if it was possible to customize the click. He wanted only to hear Logic’s metronome on beats 1 and 3; instead of on all four beats. 

Now, of course, there are easy enough workarounds. Call up a Sampler instrument, program up a clave sound as you want it, and loop the region. Or just set the tempo to half of the original intended speed. The first will work fine; the latter, however, will present problems with score and MIDI related editing.

Logic does possess the ability to customize click groupings when working with compound time signatures. After a couple of tries, it was simple to get a 4/4 click to play only on beats one and three. The solution starts by clicking on the time signature in the LCD at the top of Logic’s Workspace and choosing the Custom to open up the customization window.  

In the Custom window, enter 2+2 in the beat grouping field. Then, on the Metronome page of the project settings window, make sure to check Group and uncheck Beat. Now your custom click will sound every two beats. In other words, on beats one and three.