LOGIC NOTES

Scorewriting Functions, Virtual Sample Memory

Published in SOS May 2002
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Technique : Logic Notes

Here the Qua parameter is set too low in the first bar, forcing Logic to display the rhythm incorrectly. Setting Qua to 16 solves the problem. This shows the effects of switching on the Display Parameters Interpretation function. An example of the effect of switching on the Display Parameters Syncopation function.

Demystifying Logic's scorewriting functions, as well asadvice on activating Virtual Sample Memory and implementing Recycle-style loop manipulation. And, of course, more of those handy tips and tricks...

Ever since the days of Notator on the Atari, Emagic (or C-Lab, as they were known back then) have had extensive scoring facilities in their software, capable of producing the same professional results you'd expect from a stand-alone scorewriter. In fact, the Score window is largely the work of one man, Chris Adam, an Emagic founder and currently Vice President of R&D, and has been consistently improved with every new version of Logic, including the latest version 5 release.

So why do people generally take their scoring work elsewhere, even when they do their actual composition work with Logic? Well, because the Score window has to integrate so tightly with the sequencer, it can often appear complicated due to the fact that, by default, you have slightly more control over the score than in most scorewriters. However, you shouldn't let this put you off, because it's really quite straightforward to use, as long as you realise how the Score Styles work.

The Score window is always the default editor when you start using Logic, so it's automatically opened when you double-click a MIDI object in the Arrange window. When you open a sequence in the Score window for the first time, Logic applies the most appropriate Score Style based on the range of notes used. This is why a sequence containing mostly high notes defaults to the treble clef, lower notes to the bass, and notes generally everywhere to the piano-style 'treble and bass' clefs. You can always change a clef manually by double-clicking it and selecting a new one from the window that appears. However, before you try this, read on...

The Display Parameters.

A Score Style defines the appearance of a given sequence when viewed within the Score window. Every sequence, even those on the same track, can be assigned a Score Style, and you can see what Score Style has been applied to a sequence by looking at that sequence's Display Parameters in the Score window. To change the Score Style assigned to a sequence, click and hold on the name of the current Style, and choose a different one from the pop-up menu.

If you like metaphors, the equivalent of Logic's Score Styles would be the paragraph styles in a word processor such as Microsoft Word, and this turns out to be a valuable comparison. When you update any paragraph style in Word, every paragraph with that style assigned to it is updated, and it's just the same in Logic. The list of Score Styles is global, so whenever you change a Score Style, every sequence with that Score Style assigned to it is also updated.

A simple example of why this is useful knowledge is that if you change the clef on a sequence with the Treble Score Style assigned it, all other sequences with that same Score Style will also have this clef changed. As you can imagine, things could get pretty confusing if you don't know this. So, as a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to create a score style for every stave of music in your score, which usually translates to every different instrumental part (or track). For example, if I had a string quartet in the Arrange window, I'd want to create separate Score Styles for the first and second violin, viola, and cello parts. Creating separate Score Styles for the two violin parts is perhaps unnecessary, but it's a useful habit to get into.

Score Styles are created and fully editable in the Score Styles window -- you're shocked, I can tell! Simply choose Score Styles from the Score window's Layout menu. The name of the currently displayed Score Style is highlighted in the box under the Link button. If you want to base a new Style on one that already exists, first choose the Style you want to duplicate by clicking and holding the name of the currently selected Style and choosing from the pop-up menu (just as you did on the Score window). Now select Duplicate Style from the window's New menu and a copy of the Style will be created and displayed. To rename this new Style to something more meaningful, double-click the name of the currently selected Style and type in a new one.

Creating a new Style from scratch in the Score Styles window is just as easy: choose Single Stave Style from the New menu for a basic single stave (this is probably what you'll use most of the time), Dual Stave Style for a piano-style double stave, and Mapped Style if you're going to be scoring a drum part, where different drums are mapped onto different lines and spaces.

Once your Score Styles are created, they should be assigned to the appropriate sequences in the Arrange window -- multiple sequences on a track should usually be glued together into a single sequence for scoring purposes. With a unique Score Style assigned to every instrument, it's now safe to change clefs as described above.

Whether you should create a new Song file for your scoring work is debatable. In some respects, working on an independent copy of the Song purely for scoring defeats the whole purpose of having an integrated Score window in the first place! However, if you actually need to alter the raw MIDI data to get it to be displayed correctly in the Score window, and if this totally destroys the playback of your song, then you'll need to create a separate file.

While Score Styles handle the appearance of a stave, the appearance of the actual notes is handled by the settings in the Display Parameters, which are totally independent of the Score Styles and unique to every sequence in the arrangement. Three settings that are absolutely crucial to understand are Qua (display quantise), Interpretation, and Syncopation.

Display quantise works in the same way as the sequencer's regular quantise, except it only affects the display, not the way the notes are played back. In theory, this allows you to quantise the display without having to quantise the actual recorded sequence, although in practice it's usually better to do both. As a general rule, always set Qua to the smallest note value used in the sequence -- for example, if you can't display 32nd notes (demisemiquavers) in the Score window, it's because Display Quantise needs to be set to a value of at least 32 (or higher).

The interpretation feature in the Score window aims to clear up certain aspects of a MIDI performance, such as note lengths -- however, it's easily fooled. Notice how the four quavers in the screenshot on the previous page are rounded up to crotchets if they're followed immediately by quaver rests. So, if the lengths of your notes look wrong, try disabling Interpretation.

And finally, if MIDI notes falling between the accented beats of the bar are displayed messily as multiple notes tied together in the Score window, setting the Syncopation field to On can sort this out. The screenshot shows how this clears up the display and displays the notes correctly. We'll look in more detail at other aspects of the Score window in forthcoming columns; but for now, I hope this has given a you few "Ah! So that's how it works!" moments...

Current Versions     * PC: Logic Audio Platinum v5.1. * Mac: Logic Audio Platinum v5.1.

Logic Tips     A quick way of creating a new track is simply to double-click in the blank space below the last existing track. Paul White Here's something I spotted in the Transform window recently, which the more adventurous MIDI musicians will find handy on occasion. You can transform one MIDI data byte according to the value of another by clicking on the little lines which link the selection conditions to the operations criteria. Thus, you could transform note velocities to follow note number, for example. Mike Senior When adjusting a single MIDI part in any of the editing windows, double-clicking in a region of empty space will show the contents of all MIDI parts in the same window, which can be great for comparison purposes. Mike Senior

Virtual Sample Memory     A new EXS24 feature implemented in Logic v5 is Virtual Sample Memory (VSM), which is so well hidden, it's almost as if Emagic don't want you to find it! VSM uses a clever system of buffering the most frequently accessed samples into memory, and leaves everything else on your hard drive. This has the rather handy result of allowing you to play back samples of practically any size, although there is, as yet, no way of converting Giga-format libraries to be used with the EXS24, which is surely what many users would like to be able to achieve. To use VSM, you first need to download a small archive from Emagic's web site: visit www.emagic.de/english/support/download/update.html, navigate to the Tools, Drivers And Other Applications section for either Mac or Windows, and download the VSM Manager For EXS24. Unpack the archive and, on the Mac, copy the VSM Manager system extension into the Extensions folder. Windows users should copy the DLL file into the folder containing the Logic application itself. When you next start Logic, choose the new Virtual Memory from the Option pull-down menu in the EXS24 plug-in window. This will open the Virtual Memory dialogue shown in the screenshot. Enabling VSM is a simple matter of ticking the Active box, and you can then configure the performance with two additional settings. Firstly, set the approximate speed of your hard drive: the default is Medium and, unless you have a really slow drive, this should be fine for most applications. If you have a faster (more than 7200rpm) dedicated drive for audio (and preferably a fast dedicated drive for samples too), you should set this to Fast. Basically, the faster your drive, the more sample information will be left on the drive, and a smaller amount of RAM will be used. If you're playing back audio tracks from the same drive as your samples, the two processes will both be sharing the same resources. To compensate for this, you can tell the EXS24 approximately how much activity should be expected from audio tracks playing from the same drive. While I can't help thinking Logic should be able to guess this from the Arrange window, it's not too much of a hassle to tweak the parameter yourself. When you're done, press the Apply button to apply the settings and keep the window open (for monitoring performance), or press OK to apply the settings and close the window. If you start to get glitches, check the VSM window for a number in the Could Not Get Data In Time field, and try adjusting the speed/activity settings just described. If you're still not getting any joy, it may be that your drive is simply too slow to make use of the VSM functionality. Mark Wherry