Baby steps with Logic Express

Have finally bitten the bullet and started playing around with LE. At first glance I find it daunting -- so many buttons, menu items and features in general. More like the cockpit of a 747 (or perhaps, closer to home, the multiple screens filled with spreadsheets that options traders stare at all day) than any program I'm used to. The fact that everything is GUI-oriented (no config files or scripting language) is a little disorienting for a dilettante unix user such as myself. I can already see, though, that when one is familiar with all the short cuts it is a different story.

The first milestone was getting the M-Audio 410 audio interface working. It seems a little unreliable, although I gave up trying to figure out whether the failures were reproducible or not. Bottom line, it seems like it is best to plug the AI in before opening LE. Apart from that, it is fairly straightforward to get it up and running. I first got things working in Garageband (and celebrated by recording an awful version of the slow interlude from Master of Puppets on the acoustic).

Back in Logic, and following through the Apple Pro Training book, I hit a snag when trying to use the guitar tuner. Google turned up a useful thread on the logic-users-group forum:

http://www.logic-users-group.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2381

Setting up an auxiliary track (not sure what that is meant for, in general) worked for me, and it makes sense that it doesn't work in normal tracks (since effects and plug-ins are added "post recording"). Fine and dandy, but it means the book is wrong -- I hope this isn't a pattern to be repeated through the book..

Anyway, for now I've hung up the axe content with these small successes.

Next step: record something with a couple of guitars in LE (Master of Puppets encore?) and play around with the effects. Also, look into what auxiliary tracks are all about...