Logic Pro Keyboard Shortcuts Tips

When you start working on different platforms - Pro Tools and Logic Pro for example - you will need quick way to remind yourself of what keys you had to press. Even know if you were once an expert if you don't use them your memory can't keep up with you sometimes...

Or you know other software pretty well and you want to quickly get to know other software.. You can read books. .yes but that takes lots of time and energy..

so What do you do? For logic pro it's pretty easy.. Go to keyboard shortcuts, that lists almost all the things you can do. Basic editing skills remains the same but HOW and HOW FAST is often the question right? and key is Shortcut.
Shortcuts to auditioning, navigating, making edits, etc etc. those are the thing you need to know and I thought I'd compile a list of keywords you can search with.

Navigating:
zoom
marker
locator
go to

Editing:
split
nudge
play



(I'll keep adding to the list, bookmark if you liked it, or send me request to add something to the list)

Pro Tools: Shortcut keys: another way for changing modes & tools

That you can change modes and tools on Pro Tools with function keys is a common thing by now but there was on more that's not usually covered..

if you didn't know:
f1 - f4: select modes
f5 - f10: tools - pressing the same one twice will trigger next one down the list for those tools with options.
f6+f7 pressed together: Smart tool

that's good but there is one more to it.
You can press ESC and ~ to change them also... basically it selects next tool including smart tool.

Tilda or ~ or ` (key that's one below ESC) key will switch between Edit Modes.

and ESC will select next tool.

Unlike web browser it won't select one before even if you pressed shift key (shift + tab to go back to previous text field/tab stop in most browsers) but this is pretty useful when you are still thinking which one to press.

You won't have to look at the keyboard and that can make you more productive.
Try it out.

iTunes Music Store - Global listening

Well a little time ago iTunes have added a feature to select country at the bottom of your iTunes Music Store home page.

I find this really interesting because although lot of music are internationally distributed you still don't really know in what country what song is popular.. Question like is American music really popular in Europe? what's the Europe's trend?

one way to find out is through magazines but i think iTunes can function in this way also.

If you navigate to the iTunes MS for UK then you'll see something you can only see in UK version. France or french version will something that's only available in france. likewise you can just navigate through all stores and you can actually listen to music from all over the world.

you can search in their languages (if you know or if you just knew the title), i'm not sure about the downloading but at least you can listen to them.. and buy CD (well the quality of digital download is still lower compared to regular CD so actually it's cheaper if you buy CD in my opinion)

but it's amazing how easily you can listen to all kinds of music and cultural differences. at least for musicians or composers.

Synthesizer Tutorial Video

I've just found a few amazing synthesizer tutorial. Not really for beginners.. you'd have to understand at least what oscillator, filters are and their functions..

They were talking about FM synthesis, how to make drums beats with LFO, things like that.. good point to cover. and he explains it really well.

http://www.sonicstate.com/

MIDI Programming for beginners: What is MIDI?

I'm going to write about the first step in MIDI programming and what those fancy term means.

What is MIDI? Often times my answer is "It is like a sheet music with performance information"

Any good sheet music will include marking like f (forte) p (piano), crescendo, ritardando but none of them actually gives you an idea of what it really sound like.. what composer meant. what arranger meant when they put those marks on the score.

On the other hand, MIDI records (or at least tries to capture) all that little nuances that composers were dying to put to their scores.

You can listen to free MIDI files somewhere and you should be able to tell differences. Some of them will have unnatural flow or no emotion and make you think "MIDI is horrible," but often times it is not MIDI that's is bad. Programmer.

MIDI will let you compose or play your own music even if you didn't know anything about music but on the other hand making it sound realistic or as if somebody is playing is very hard to do, especially when you are trying to get that "orchestra" sound; you have to know how all the instruments are played, sounds and talk with each other.