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Copy to Live Loops: Transforming regions into cells in Logic Pro — 9to5Mac

Today we are taking a look at the copy to Live Loops function and transforming your regions into cells. While we previously explored some of the more performance-based applications of Launchpads and Live Loops, arguably the most obvious use for Apple’s grid-based production environment is in arrangement. You can easily and quickly experiment with transitions from one part to any other without having to start dragging and dropping huge, unwieldy chunks of regions around. Sure, that’s nothing some Marquee tool or skip/cycle wizardry can’t handle on the regular timeline, but there’s really no comparing that to the musical immediacy and hands-on immersion of triggering these sections with a single Launchpad button, all-synced to the timeline and without having to commit to anything until you’ve experienced the change.

  Show/Hide Track Stacks

Use this command in the Mixer window(s).

In my simple test project using the command simply hides the track stack indicator at the bottom of the channel strips. It does not hide and of the tracks included. I expected a different behavior.

I am not sure of the utility of this command, unless the vertical real estate in the mixer window is so highly regarded that it needs to be here.

Logic Pro Track Stacks overview — Apple Support

Track Stacks provide a convenient way to organize and control tracks, to manage projects with high track counts, and to create and manage audio subgroups. You can create a Track Stack from a group of existing tracks, and use the controls on the master track to control all the subtracks in the Track Stack.

I haven’t explored BetterTouchTool capabilities for doing keyboard macros. Programming the tool seems daunting. I finally found a task in Logic Pro that I wanted to make very easy.

I want to “select” an area of some tracks and create a marker for that selection. For me the simplest method is to marquee-select the area, turn on cycle, and create a marker for the cycle area. Not all of these things are simple keypresses, and aren’t easy to find in the menus.

Marquee-select is easy since the right-tool is the Marquee Tool. Hold down command and draw the range, or use the lower half of a track with the automatic marquee tool. Great. Locators are set for the area,

Creating the cycle area (and enabling) is a command-U (⌘U).

Creating a marker for the cycle area isn’t assigned to a keypress. I chose to assign it to hyper-single-quote (⌃⌥⇧⌘’).

Now I do my selection, press two keyboard combinations, and there I have it.

I used BetterTouchTool to define an action assigned to a force touch of the bottom left corner of the trackpad (only in Logic Pro). The keyboard commands for cycling and creating a marker are “pressed” when the last finger is removed from the trackpad after the force click bottom left. Basically “key up”.

Nifty.

I need to spend some time thinking about macros like these, and see if they translate well to the laptop.

  Repeat Section Between Locators (Selection)

I prefer using the “Global” version of this command. Marquee-select an area. Repeats all selected regions/events on all tracks.

Add or remove gaps in a Logic Pro arrangement — Apple Support

Select the regions that you want to repeat. If no selection is made (or if you use the Repeat Section button in the toolbar), all regions that fall between the locators are affected.