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Hi all - don't think this has been covered already but sorry if it has...

Basically I've just switched laptop as my old one was a piece of shite and took the plunge into the mac world. Obviously with the purchase of a mac Logic has to be bought, so I've made the DAW switch. So far it's great, much prefer it to fruity in many ways except the drums... what a bloody nightmare! FL Studio was so easy to rattle through drum collections and put together things which sounded half decent - so far it's taken me about 20 times as long to put together anything which sounds more like tapping a pen against a piece of paper and it's driving me bonkers.

So logic heads (or especially anyone else that has made the switch from FL to Logic) - what's the easiest and fastest way to put your drums together, in a sense of rapid creation (i.e. layering multiple snares with separate processing/eq's to sit nice). So far I've tried ultrabeat which feels a bit long and a bit of a faff, and also the hyper edit which was just slightly frustrating. I'm thinking of taking the plunge into battery for the layering purposes and just loading up tracks of kicks and tracks of snares and so on - if I don't get on with that it just leaves EXS24 which seems like it would take an absolute age to get anything together!

I've also been tempted to set up parallels to run FL through - but that seems like giving up!

Also bear in mind that I'm still a n00b with Logic - I've only had it since monday!

Any advice on best practices greatly appreciated - I wanna get back to making sick beats instead of head butting my keyboard!

Ta

How exactly did you program your drums in FL?

Yep battery does 80% of my drumwork, but have you tried just draggin samples into logic as audio? A lot of producers opt for this over midi.

battery's a resource hog IME; i generally just sequence audio in the arrange window, and group things in folders-- much tidier.

Yeah I just create individual audio tracks for each sample then bus them together for compression and what not. I like it because I have a lot more control over how each hit can be processed. So set your outputs for your drum tracks to a combined bus. I usually send my snares to a bus then from that bus to a final drum bus. Mostly when layering snares though. Not being very detailed cause i'm on a phone.

You won't get the same drum workflow in Logic.

Battery would be a improvement on the other ways imo, but it's still not the same.

I usually use 2 EXS24's for my kicks and 2-3 EXS24's for my snares
Then just use either audio for hats and percussion or fill up an ultrabeat with samples and programme the hits in.

If you think EXS takes too long just spend a bit off time saving patches of your favourite drums, then you wont have to do it every time you open a new project...

EXS is only a pain to use if you open a new patch every time and build it from scratch. What I do is drag the audio samples into tracks on my main arrange window, highlight them an hit ctrl+E, select 'regions', and voila, an automatically set up EXS24 with your samples in

I think the thing that makes it difficult to get away from FL is that it's damn step sequencer is so sick. I really miss using that. Any equivalent in Logic? I guess Ultrabeat but apparently it fucks with the attack of your samples or something?

I find it difficult to create elaborate patterns by using lots of different channels in Logic. In FL it's all just sat there in front of you. Saying that I still prefer Logic overall.

i just made this exact same switch like 3 weeks ago and was having the same problem before i just gave up on sequencing them in midi altogether. now i just lay all my samples down in audio and trust me, once you get to grips with working with audio in logic too then its a dream, you'll be like "why did i used to love looking at little rectangles so much???" just drag and drop em in from your browser on the side, you can audition them while the loops running just like in fl too..

coogcoo wrote:i just made this exact same switch like 3 weeks ago and was having the same problem before i just gave up on sequencing them in midi altogether. now i just lay all my samples down in audio and trust me, once you get to grips with working with audio in logic too then its a dream, you'll be like "why did i used to love looking at little rectangles so much???" just drag and drop em in from your browser on the side, you can audition them while the loops running just like in fl too..

yeh but its so fiddly that way don't you think? You have to line up every single tiny sample perfectly then copy it over. Just seems like I have to zoom in so much just to arrange them properly.

Am I doin it wrong?

Perej wrote:

coogcoo wrote:i just made this exact same switch like 3 weeks ago and was having the same problem before i just gave up on sequencing them in midi altogether. now i just lay all my samples down in audio and trust me, once you get to grips with working with audio in logic too then its a dream, you'll be like "why did i used to love looking at little rectangles so much???" just drag and drop em in from your browser on the side, you can audition them while the loops running just like in fl too..

yeh but its so fiddly that way don't you think? You have to line up every single tiny sample perfectly then copy it over. Just seems like I have to zoom in so much just to arrange them properly.

Am I doin it wrong?

It should snap into place, if not try changing the 'snap' option in the arrange window to 'division' and selecting 'snap to absolute value'

I dont think anything really beats FL's native options for drums right now, except for the lack of automation options within sampler buts not a big deal really. Its not the greatest advice but you should consider using Geist in logic.

you can use multiple instances of esx24 and set them up as multi outs that way you can send out each mono or stereo signal to its own channel for seperate processing. alternatively you can just have each hit on its own audio channel and solely work in audio.

i actually like the way reason has the regroove mixer so i do my drums in reason in the nnxt and rout each hit to its own channel in logic.

Coming from an Fl background as well, I can say the EXS24 is the way to go. I usually load my kicks into one octave (such as C1 through C2) then my snares into another octave (C2-C3) and my hats in another and my effects in another. Then I just make sure to uncheck the pitching option. I also use a multi-output version to edit and gel each of my hits and voila, you can program your drums in one window. I also use screen sets to increase my workflow, have my sequencer in Window 1, Piano Roll in Window 2, and my Mixer in Window 3. Kinda makes is Fl Studio-ish.