Wow, that’s a long title.  It sounded cooler in my head because I was imagining Steven Segal yelling it as he ran from exploding buildings.  Sorry, but this post won’t be the most glamourous info – BUT IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT!

I’ve go a couple of friends who recently made the jump from Garageband to Logic Express.  For someone with minimal experience with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) this can be quite a harrowing experience.

Let me start with this: All your Garageband habits HAVE to change. Now.

I love Garageband because of how well it introduces the concepts of mixing, plugins, and loop-based music.  I still remembering moving from a 4-track cassette deck (which I still use for effects) to my first G4 Powerbook.  I opened Garageband and almost cried.  Seriously, I was going NUTS.  But after making the jump from Garageband to Logic 7 – I had to learn the hard way that there are som aspects of multi-track recording that Garageband doesn’t prepare you for – in fact it held me back from working at a “pro” level for quie a while.

This is first of several articles on making that adjustment as painless as possible.

Garageband Fallacy #1 – Everything fits in one little file.

Garageband tricks you into thinking that all your loops, audio, and midi can be moved around by dragging and dropping one little file around.  This works in Garageband world by copying your CoolSong.band file around.  In almost every “pro” Daw, moving just your session file would create DISASTROUS Results.

Here’s the first window you get after you open a Garageband File in Logic.

I know that’s huge, but it’s important.  First of all – at the bottom it will say “Include Assets” and “Show Advanced Options.” Make sure you click that little triangle to show those advanced options because you want to know what you’re saving.

What this window does is dump you in the deep end.  Seriously.  Basically Logic Pro doesn’t combine all your assets (audio, midi, video, etc) in one file.  It creates a Project Folder that contains Asset Files and the Session File (sometimes multiple).

Let me Elaborate:

Project Folder: This is the new folder that “saving as a project” will create.  It will have the same name as the session file (the name you type in at the top of the window). This folder will contain the actual session file and some more folders.  These extra folders appear based on what is in your session.  You might see “Audio Files,” “Bounces,” “Fade Files,” “Instrument Files,”etc etc etc.  These folders allow you to access your “assets” directly.

The main thing to remember is – if you want to copy your session – move it to a back up hard drive, work on the session to another computer, whatever – you need to move/copy this ENTIRE FOLDER.  Taking just the session file (CoolSong.logic file) will leave you crying – because you’ll open it up and find no audio, midi, video, etc.  The session file just REFERS to the assets – it does not CONTAIN the assets.  That’s the biggest difference in file-management between Garageband and some more sophisticated DAWs.

Session File: This is the *.logic file that you “open” and “close”  to access your project.  The important thing to note, which I will repeat, is that it CONTAINS NO AUDIO OR MIDI.  It simply points at these audio and midi files that lie somewhere on your harddrive (hopefully in your “Audio Files” folder for that particular project).

The second thing to note is that you can multiple session files referring to the same set of assets.  Basically if within your project folder you find multiple .logic files – then you can open any one of them and you will open up a session that uses the audio and midi in those associated assets folders (Audio Files, Midi Files, etc).

The main reason you want to do this is, so that you can save your project in stages – BUT you don’t have to make full copies of ALL the audio and video and midi to do it.  It basically saves you space. As an example, here’s how I always name my sessions.

Song_Title_MM_DD_YY-1.logic

I do this for a number of reasons.  First, I want the Song Title so I can reference quickly.  Second, I want the Date that I started working on this version so that I can reference my production notes to the session (you do write down notes as your record, right?).  Third, the version number, in this case 1, tells me what stage of the Project I’m on.

1 = Recording

2 = Mixing

3 = Mastering

If I have multiple Recording stages – recording over multiple dates – I’ll update the version number like this:

Song_Title_MM_DD_YY-1_1.logic

Song_Title_MM_DD_YY-1_2.logic

etc.

Using these conventions – I can know a ton of information about a session just by looking at the file names.  It also allows me to access the song at it’s various stages.  Say you spend 5 hours on a mix and hate it.  Well, chances are you can’t Undo enough to get back to where you started.  That’s when I’ll go back to the last recording session file, save it as a new session and start mixing all over again.  No hassle.

Asset Folders: These are the various other folders you’ll find within the Project Folder.  Each one contains a different type of asset – audio, fade data, samples for your instruments, etc.  Basically you’ll choose to save more or less of this stuff “locally” in that first “Save Project” window.  Under the Advanced options you get to choose which things you make copies of and save with in the Project folder.  If you never, ever work with anyone else, at any other location, on any other computer – then you don’t really need to check these boxes (except for audio files – ALWAYS check audio files).

But most people create backups, and might collaborate with other people, etc.  If those other people don’t happen to have all the same samples as you, or the same versions of sofware as you – then you’d want to check all these boxes to make sure that when you get your Project on their machine – you can still operate.

The other cool thing about these Asset Folders – which Garageband never let you access – is that you can get to your recordings – “pre-processing” and do copy them to use for other things.  Once in a while you’ll want to grab a drum track your recorded in one song and just grab a snippet for some other project.  Well it’s a lot easier to just open up the Audio files folder and grab the file (if you’ve name the recordings in a useful way) and just copy to a new session.

Well that’s Tip #1 – managing your Project’s files and folders.  Just try to remembe to keep everything that’s in your “Project Folder” inside that folder, and you should be fine.