Pause for Pause
When starting with Logic, the powerful hidden features of the Transport Bar can be overwhelming. Generally, new users learn the key commands for stop, play, and record; and then go on their way to creating music. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But what about that mysterious little button between Record and Play? Today I’ll try and awaken everyone from this collective state of blissful ignorance and delve into the various uses of the Transport Bar’s poor cousin – the Pause Button.
Play and Stop will take you where you need to go for the most part. Somewhere down the road new users will likely stumble on to the functions of double clicking the Stop and Play commands. Hitting Stop once stops playback. Hitting Stop twice stops playback and returns the SPL to the beginning of the song. Pressing Play once commences playback from the current position of the SPL. Pressing Play twice starts playback from the position the last time you started playback (very useful by the way for quick repeated listening to certain sections without setting up cycle and locator points).
So what’s the good of the Pause command? What do you need it for? There’s generally only one of two “states” you need the Transport to be in for whatever you are doing; either stopped or moving. Surely the Pause command has got to be useful for something other than temporarily halting playback - something easily accomplished by hitting the familiar Stop command followed with the Play command. Why bother with this third command? All good questions. Read on......
There are four good reasons to learn about Pause. Four cool things you can do that are made simpler by the presence of this little simple, elegant but underused, key or mouse command. For those mousing there way through Logic, it is the second button from the upper left of the Transport Bar. For those into Key Commands; it is the seventh item down from the very top of the Key Command list.
First cool thing: Consider when you are in Record Mode and want to be able to quickly stop and start recording so as to capture only selected elements of the audio being recorded. Let’s say you are recording some wild (not tied to the timeline) dialogue or voice over takes and you have the talent in front of the mic, and a vocal director giving instructions. You may want to easily stop and start so as to no bother capturing the instructions and having to edit them out or scroll through them later when auditioning the recording. While in Record Mode, Pause will stop recording and then restart it when pressed again, without the count in value you have set. This is a very good thing for these situations where a one or two bar count in - or whatever your default is - is an obstacle to your workflow. Also, a new file will be created each time Pause is invoked to restart recording. This is also a very efficient means of managing the bits to keep and discard without having to manually convert regions into new files.
Second Cool Thing: Many users still work with outboard MIDI sound modules and utilize the various and still very useful patch change, volume, pan and other standard MIDI CC messages this generation of gear still offers. When you are recording MIDI, Pause Mode allows you the opportunity to quickly and easily add these basic messages in to your sequence data, by means of mouse sliding their parameters in the Instrument Parameter Box and checking/unchecking their transmit checkboxes. No fussing with the Event List and creating and placing the MIDI CC events. They’re entered immediately at the exact position you have the SPL paused at.
Third Cool Thing: Scrubbing audio in the Arrange Window. When the Transport is in Pause Mode; click holding and dragging the SPL across selected audio regions will scrub the playback at variable speeds. This can be very useful for zeroing in on problem areas such as mouth noises in vocal tracks. The zoom level interacts with the scrub playback speed. So, set your zoom accordingly, put the Transport in Pause Mode; and scrub away. Many might quite validly argue that this type of workflow is unnecessary on modern DAWs since the visual waveform display can offer equal or greater precision for this sort of isolating of audio artifacts and editing. While this is certainly true - and I agree with this sentiment; there’s still one invaluable feature of this “pause and scrub” method. It impresses the hell out of clients sitting next to you!
Fourth Cool Thing: When you are in Cycle Mode, the behavior of the traditional Play command changes. Playback will always start from the beginning of the Cycle Zone. If it is necessary to momentarily stop and start - for whatever reason (and there are many) - Pause is your friend. The Pause command allows playback to stop and then recommence from the position of the SPL rather than jumping back to the beginning of the Cycle Zone. I personally find this very powerful and use it all the time. It encourages me to use Cycle Mode more often and benefit from the features it offers rather than be inconvenienced by, what for me is it’s single biggest obstacle to my work flow - the loss of standard Play Command functionality.
So, pause for a moment to consider the underused Pause Button that you’ve been happily ignoring. Perhaps it’s time to welcome it into your inner circle of close acquaintances.
So there you have it - entry one of my Logic Tip Of The Week. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to set up a “comments” section on this page yet. But please feel free to send any feedback (positive or negative!) to my direct email address.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
