Why Logic Remote on iPad is the Best Controller You Can Buy For Logic

hey friend chris van der veiver here from wyologicprorules.com the website that helps you get the most you can out of apple's logic pro 10. today i want to walk you through what led me to kind of give up on midi controllers and just get an ipad at the end of the day to use with logic pro 10. now i don't think it's any secret to anybody that logic has a complementary application for ipad and iphone called logic remote and it's supposed to work right with logic you know you're able to play instruments and use the mixer etc and to be honest i was pretty apprehensive about this not because i thought it was a bad app or anything just i don't know the idea of using an ipad as a controller never was something that i found alluring i grew up with laptops and desktop computers and i don't know i just kind of had this apprehension i didn't want to get involved so i was going through all sorts of midi controllers trying to find that one midi controller that just tightly integrates with logic pro 10. and to be honest i never quite found that solution which led me to eventually get an ipad and ultimately very happy with so i want to walk you through how awesome logic remote actually is for the ipad and iphone but let's just quickly take a look at my small journey of testing out different controllers now to start with you know i had very simple controllers like the one right here the nectar impact this guy is great you know it's a you know relatively big midi controller and it that's all it is it's a glorified nintendo controller for playing sounds in logic and it does the job you know you have some transport functionality here you can hit play you can hit record you can go up and down the octaves does exactly what it's supposed to but i always was desiring something that just tightly synced up with logic where i wanted to be able to adjust the levels and faders in addition to looking for a keyboard that tightly integrates with logic i've started looking at different control surfaces as something that maybe i wanted to use you know i've only ever used a mouse and the mac keyboard so maybe i would like to have some faders be able to mute and solo multiple tracks at a time so i gave that a try and i got the presonus fader port and at first it was pretty cool it was the eight slider one and i was like yeah this is cool makes me feel like a million bucks having this control surface sitting on my desk over time though i learned two things number one i never quite reached for it i just never got myself acclimated to that workflow just found it so much easier to use a mouse you know and then i also found over time and this is just my experience maybe it's not your experience if you own the fader poor 8 but i found over time that as logic updated and the firmware updated on the unit itself there was some sort of breakdown between the fader port and logic pro 10 because after a year of owning it the thing never worked correctly with logic it went from like pretty good to abysmal like no matter what i slider i adjusted no matter what button i pressed none of it worked as it should and i contacted presonus numerous times customer support fantastic but ultimately it was just like all right wait for a firmware update we're going to try to fix it and each firmware update just got worse and worse so i sold it so not disparaging presonus i think they're a great company doing cool things just didn't work out for me so i'm in this journey of trying to find a keyboard that tightly integrates with logic and a control surface and i'm exploring my options like right here i also got into the presonus atom which i think is a cool controller it's a drum pad has various functions and as a drum pad as a basic controller pretty awesome but you know you don't get that tight integration like you would with studio one you don't get different multi-colored blocks they're all about the same and all the extra functions don't work well with the logic itself that was a bit of a bummer i was kind of anticipating some sort of evolution of the atom controller i saw that it evolved for ableton but not with logic sort of a bummer after that i started getting into the native instruments controllers and i have two actually i have an s series controller which is huge it's right over here and it has a light guide for what keys you can play and it has two screens for what you're controlling it's pretty awesome and using it with complete control and native instruments software it's amazing you can flip through different presets and sample them and choose them and it's awesome but again with logic pro 10 it doesn't really integrate you know like it works really well it has transport you can program different midi knobs to do different functions but i'm just looking for something that just like you plug it in you go and i think that native instruments is really missing an opportunity here that's what i see with a lot of different manufacturers is that they have an opportunity and they just don't take it and i think in the case of native instruments they're just really hell-bent on you know getting us into complete control in native instruments trying to get us into their world instead of adapting to our world but you know i love that controller it's cool it's just a little too big for what i can do you know i play one finger at a time that's about it so the different knobs work really well there is a mixer mode where you can adjust the knobs to adjust levels and panning you can mute and solo it's pretty cool and then i got the complete control m series keyboard and i'll just bring it up real quick this thing is sick i mean it's 32 keys which is actually pretty awesome because usually a controller of this size is about 24 keys which i always find that you're you need just like a little more 24 keys is never enough it's always like a little outside of the range of what you need so 32 is pretty slick it has transport controls and different options again it integrates with complete control really well and it has these different knobs for adjusting controls in logic as well so adjusting the faders the panning and you have this little oled screen that you can't quite see but it lights up and you know it's pretty slick i have to say additionally with the s series controller but the thing that i find with all these different controllers especially the fader port etc is that i never know quite what i'm affecting on screen i always have to kind of like look at the screen and look back down to the controller and you know you press the knob and it tells you in the oled what you're touching it's always kind of like this dance of trying to figure out what are you controlling exactly i just never got completely comfortable with these devices which forced me to eventually say you know what i'll just buy an ipad let's just check it out seventh generation nothing special not the pro it's just your basic ipad the cheapest one i could get and i got to see logic remote we're gonna actually dive into this in a screen capture but i want to start out just by demonstrating all these different tools that i've bought i haven't bought all the things i've just bought a number of things and tested them out to find where that sweet spot is for logic users and again i was very very apprehensive about buying an ipad i don't know it's like i have an iphone i have a lot of different apple devices but something about the ipad i was very apprehensive about like don't take away my keyboard and mouse but it's pretty freaking slick i gotta say i think hands down logic remote for the ipad or iphone is the best hands down best control surface for logic users so let's dig into this right now cool so let's dig into logic remote for the ipad i have a short little riff that i put together and if we look at the ipad screen we can see that i have the mixer called up but there are several different views for you to choose from using logic remote to start with let's go to the disclosure triangle in the upper left hand corner if i click on it we can see that i have smart controls and keyboard chord strips live loops mixer key commands and smart help if i cycle through the different track types some of these options will change so check it out we have smart controls and drum pads and drum pads itself and it's pretty amazing what you can accomplish using your ipad as a controller to start with let's just take a quick listen to this riff that i have here and i'm just going to hit play on the ipad itself [Music] and i can even adjust the different faders on the ipad and not just one at a time i can actually adjust multiple at a time so let's check it out [Music] and we even have different views of the mixer itself so check it out we have pan and volume but if i just want volume amazing all of a sudden we have a huge throw on the faders and by throw i mean if i drag the feeder way down or way up check it out so there's so much resolution on the ipad and i'm just you know bringing it up and down with my finger double double-click to set it back to its original state on top of that we have different sends that we can apply different audio effects we can adjust the i o right within the app itself and even introduce midi effects and so there's so much versatility just within the mixer itself it's pretty fantastic if i open the audio effects i can open an eq for example so let's click on it and open the plugin and bam we now have a fully adjustable eq right on screen that is amazing that blows my mind now i will say that most of the plug-ins do not have this sort of resolution to work with if i open up pedalboard and we open the plug-in this is what you're going to see you're going to see a whole lot of sliders and not much graphical functionality i do hope this changes in the near future but you know i'm just happy to adjust faders and panning and be able to move around the mixer in a very natural and intuitive way check it out let's just hit play and i'll just you know kind of slide around [Music] we can even control automation so we can set the automation mode to various modes and then adjust the fader it's pretty fantastic and then the io let me just create a new track so create a new audio track and i'll set it to input two just so we don't have any craziness now we can see here i have the apogee ensemble and i can make adjustments to the i o right from within here so i could actually go in and select a different input so input four let's say and i can even adjust it to be one of these different options so i have an instrument input or i can switch it to something more line level set it to mic we can even introduce a high pass filter these are all the audio device controls that i've covered in some of my apogee element videos we also have some control room type of functionality it's everything within the mixer on screen in logic on your mac but you know you can hit mute on the stereo output you can dim the stereo output you can even adjust the fader though i never touch it personally you can recall solo or clear solo we can also mute and then reset mute but let's start digging into some of the instruments so right now in the mixer we essentially have a control surface for adjusting faders for soloing for muting for adjusting panning it's wonderful to use and it's nice to be able to look at the ipad and know exactly what you're adjusting and not a tiny little oled screen that doesn't really sync up all the time with logic so let's move on i'm going to go into some of these other views and i'm going to set up smart controls so we don't have any plugins on this channel but if i move up to the chat piano boo yeah we have smart controls so let's open smart controls on my mac essentially the exact same thing but we have a keyboard that we can adjust the resolution of so we can set the keys very fast for me this works really well but you can also set it as narrow as you need it to be which i did quite a bit and then we can also adjust the smart controls on screen [Music] so just the drive i already have some of these effects already on the plug-in but it's amazing and on top of that we have different modes to play on the ipad as well so we have glissando here let me switch it to scroll so we can actually scroll up and down the keys if you don't feel like pressing the octave button so i'm scrolling but i can also hop up and down the octaves using this octave section right in the left-hand side or we can play pitch so i don't have an instrument that adjusts in pitch necessarily but you can see there's a little blue dot that goes up and down let's check out a new software instrument maybe alchemy switch it up and let's just see if some of this works with the pitch so i'm going to switch the mode again to [Music] pitch so it's affecting some sort of modulation i think it's pretty cool we're able to adjust the modulation or the pitch of the note just by sliding up and down on the note additionally you can adjust the scale of the performance as well so if you want to set like a major blues or a natural minor you can do that take a look and now we have that scale just some white keys here and if you go up to the gear here we can actually adjust the signature as well and the tempo and the key signature so let's set it to d you can see that c3 just changed to d3 everything in that scale is now laid out and adjusts for that scale we don't have every single hole in half step going up the keyboard we have just the keys of this scale it's pretty sick and then we also have an arpeggiator as well [Music] that is sick so if we switch it up here go back to off we also have a sustain section here as well [Music] then we can turn on and off let's move into some of the other territories here we have chord strips so we can play chords based on the scale that we've set and we also have bass notes that are the darker notes below and you can play each key independent from one another so it's like playing a keyboard just in a different way of interacting with it and again if you go up to the gear here you can make adjustments to the chords so you can actually adjust the custom chord so instead of c sharp here we can switch it to c or if we select some of the other chord strips we can adjust for the key that we want to work with so d cool and we're all done and you can even let's head back to the mixer here and if we drag down from the top here you can actually slide along the timeline you just pull from like the led here up and down and slide along set it up here turn off the cycle mode very slick let's move into the key command section here and just like any key command within logic instead of remembering the key you can actually scroll through different pages of options of key commands and we also have transport at the bottom here [Music] so we can play we can hit stop we can move forward or backwards cycle mode on and off we can create a marker there's so much versatility here and you know exactly what you're working with there's a lot to be said for the tactile experience of an actual controller but for me i want to reduce any sort of friction for creating in logic pro 10 i don't want to have friction i don't want to be second guessing myself and second guessing what i'm doing i want to know exactly what i'm working with so i can get to work now let's scroll down here to my drum tracks and we'll see that we now have smart controls and drum pads and check this out we have 12 different drum pads that we can play here and we have the smart controls from drum machine designer [Music] you know you can adjust the compressor but if you're looking for the entirety of the drum machine designer that you're working with click up here again and just select drum pads so instead of having smart controls taking up half of the screen all of our drum pads across the whole kit and if you move up and down the octaves you can see more of the pads i will say that i wish some of the icons that are included in drum machine designer i wish that they were applied to the pads in logic remote just because it's easier to identify than reading a bunch of text you know if we open up draw machine designer here we can see all the different icons plus the name that's really helpful so i hope that a future update will introduce that but on top of this we can also introduce no repeat right within logic remote so we can do 16th notes and we can also do spot arrays so if you messed up you can erase some notes just by holding the pad and letting the track play through but this isn't just for drum machines if we take a look and let's just select one of the drum kits from within logic here select blue ridge like that on screen we have an actual drum kit that we can play [Music] which is incredible because this might be something that a lot of us are more used to you're using your fingers still but but i love how the instruments adapt to the type of instrument you're working with in fact let's just kind of backtrack here and let me introduce a bass track so empty channel strip create go to base here finger style bass and look at that we have a base neck if we switch right over here smart controls in fretboard it's just incredible i love it and again we can adjust the scale right over here now the last piece that i want to show you is the live loop section which is pretty incredible for being able to play ideas that you have in a non-linear fashion so let me just switch the view here so we're in the live loop section let's play a scene which is so cool i can play one loop at a time just by pressing different loops [Music] so a lot of opportunity for live performance or testing out ideas right from the ipad screen and we can even introduce the effects as well so those remix effects that came with logic 10.5 you can apply this on the fly on a nice screen there is no controller i know of that can do all of this stuff check it out let's just play this one scene there's literally no controller i know that can do all this stuff that has this type of integration and again i was very apprehensive about using an ipad something about it just i don't know it's not the tactile experience of playing a guitar playing a keyboard playing a drum pad but i find that it is so intuitive so much easier and but really logic remote being a chameleon that can adapt to the context of what you're working on in logic i think it's well worth the cost of entry and i love how this thing works without being connected to the computer directly i could be not anywhere near my mac and still be able to interact with mac and get set up and start recording it's fantastic i hope you can agree that logic remote is pretty awesome it just is that perfect hybrid of being able to affect things within logic but more in a control surface sort of way being able to play the keys on the ipad itself for drum pads be able to adjust different loops etc and though it's a little different than using an actual keyboard or an actual drum pad because sometimes you want that tactile experience i think it's the best compromise for being able to know exactly what you're affecting and being able to dig into logic from the controller or ipad and not having this weird song and dance with third party products that you get an oled screen or you get some sort of indication of what you're affecting on screen but it just never syncs up quite enough there's always a song and dance it's just like enough is enough i just want logic as a control surface let's go so i hope you found this helpful if you did as always i highly suggest subscribing to the youtube channel why logic for rules or subscribing on the website itself ylogicprorules.com every week i'm posting new videos new emails and posts to help you get the most you can out of apple's logic pro 10. thanks so much

Channel: Why Logic Pro Rules

Views: 89,755

Keywords: logic pro x, logic pro, audio, audio production, apple, mixing, audio mixing, recording, audio recording, logic remote, native instruments, komplete kontrol, presonus atom, presonus faderport, nektar impact, apple ipad, why logic pro rules

Id: X4Lu5ZTOB-k

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020