Dear List

Having eventually got GA and VG working with the FXpansion wrapper (despite FXpansion still not sending the update 1.34 which someone kindly gave me) I now struggle to understand how to record audio from it. I realise the limitation that it won't let me record midi data and need to record audio but can't work out the routing - this is more of my inexperience in Logic coming to the fore. Can anybody that has been through this learning curve help me out at all?

VG seems to work fine - that I can record it seems as midi.

Matthew
Cambridge UK

I think you have to install LM to get GA to work properly, and VG goes best with PL - but I'm not sure about this.

What RU talking about ?

Very helpful I'm sure if I knew what LM and PL were.

Matt

mattlogic wrote:

Very helpful I'm sure if I knew what LM and PL were.

As much as everyone knows what GA and VG are!

My guess would be "Virtual Guitarist" for VG, but I'm totaly lost about GA...

dr.wackler wrote:

My guess would be "Virtual Guitarist" for VG, but I'm totaly lost about GA...

...SO I'M I !

Sorry for any confusion. Yes it is Groove Agent and Virtual Guitarist I was refering to. Now can you help or did you just want to wind me up? I am not concerned about Virtual Guitarist as this records midi fine. Groove Agent however needs to be recorded as audio I think and I can't work out how to link this up in the Environment window of Logic. I think I might just go out and hire a drummer and a guitarist. I am sick of all this fooling around.

Matt

mattlogic wrote:

Sorry for any confusion. Yes it is Groove Agent and Virtual Guitarist I was refering to. Now can you help or did you just want to wind me up?

I did just want to wind you up of course!
No...

mattlogic wrote:

I am not concerned about Virtual Guitarist as this records midi fine. Groove Agent however needs to be recorded as audio I think and I can't work out how to link this up in the Environment window of Logic. I think I might just go out and hire a drummer and a guitarist. I am sick of all this fooling around.

I have experience with neither Groove Agent nor Virtual Guitarist but I know quite some about Logic. As both GA and VG are VST instruments, you should be able to play them by MIDI without problem. Just insert them in a Audio Instrument channel as you would with any other instrument. Hence I don't quite understand why you think you have to record them to audio.
You can, however, do that by bouncing them and reimporting the resultant audio file:
Solo the Audio Instrument channel that you plugged GA or VG in, then in the Mixer go to the master channel and press the "bounce" button. Define the part to bounce (start bar and end bar), give the file a name, and click "bounce and add". The new file will be added to the Audio window and you can drag it to a new audio track in the Arrangement.

Groove Agent is a drum machine and features a run button. It received the tempo from the sequencer and plays ithe styles you ask it do. There are a whole bunch of features like fills, accents and complexity changes you can perform on the fly. Whilst on Cubase and Nuendo you can record the midi output of Groove Agent, my understanding is that you can't with Logic. This leaves a dilemma. Bouncing would be the ideal solution but when bouncing, the bounce dialogue prevents access to any of the other controls so it is not possible to hit things like fills and accents and so even though it may be possible to get Groove Agent to play along, it cannot do anything except a constant pattern. The keyboard notes do seem to correspond to some of these functions but when I go into record, although it records the signals as I enter these notes and they do the corresponding fills etc, when I play back, they are ignored. For now time is short so I think I will have to just benefit from the drum sounds and programme my own patterns - this does work - it is just when Groove Agent is in run to play along, no recorded data in the arrange window has any impact on Groove Agent. Basically, it looks like I may as well have just bought a sample CD as that is all I can use it for right now.

Do you understand or have a I totally confused you?

mattlogic wrote:

Groove Agent is a drum machine and features a run button. It received the tempo from the sequencer and plays ithe styles you ask it do. There are a whole bunch of features like fills, accents and complexity changes you can perform on the fly. Whilst on Cubase and Nuendo you can record the midi output of Groove Agent, my understanding is that you can't with Logic. This leaves a dilemma. Bouncing would be the ideal solution but when bouncing, the bounce dialogue prevents access to any of the other controls so it is not possible to hit things like fills and accents and so even though it may be possible to get Groove Agent to play along, it cannot do anything except a constant pattern. The keyboard notes do seem to correspond to some of these functions but when I go into record, although it records the signals as I enter these notes and they do the corresponding fills etc, when I play back, they are ignored. For now time is short so I think I will have to just benefit from the drum sounds and programme my own patterns - this does work - it is just when Groove Agent is in run to play along, no recorded data in the arrange window has any impact on Groove Agent. Basically, it looks like I may as well have just bought a sample CD as that is all I can use it for right now. Do you understand or have a I totally confused you?

Not confused. I do indeed know how Groove Agent works in principle, as I have tried a demo once.
First check in Logic's song settings under "old songs", that you have not selected 'version 4.x behavior'. If that doesn't help, you should at least be able to automate GA from within the GUI. You don't have to go into record mode for that - just select 'touch', 'latch' or 'write' for the automation of GA's channel, hit play, and select whatever mode (fill, pattern,...) whenever needed in the song, and it all should get recorded as Automation data.

If nothing of that helps at all, there's still the possibility to re-route Audio through your soundcard: GA's channel to an output of the card, the output back into an input, and recording that input.

If that doesn't help either 'cause you don't have any spare ins/outs, get a copy of Ableton Live4 with its flexible internal routing options.