Apple Pro Training Series: Logic 6 [Paperback]

The book feels very much like a glorified instruction manual, which is not a bad thing in itself because the book is very good at what it does. However, be aware that it is no more than a guide to get you working with the software. There are a few tips, but overall nothing here is groundbreaking. Order this book with this in mind - it will help you learn to use Logic if you don't know anything about it, but beyond that the book cannot help.

Strangely, the authors chose to skip all aspects of Logic in which one interacts via music notation. In a book so exhaustive on, say, user-interface options, it was surprising and disappointing to encounter, "The Score editor depends upon an understanding of traditional music notation... [this book] does not cover the Score editor."

I wonder if they felt that including information on the Score editor would have kept people from buying the book. The other editors (Hyper, Matrix, Event List) have about 10 pages each. Would another 10 pages in a 538-page tome have broken the bank? Dare I say, they could easily have trimmed ten elsewhere (3 pages on "how to name a track" to start).

I laugh that its subtitle is "Professional Music Creation and Audio Production," and consider that it might have more correctly concluded "Without Covering Aspects a Professional Might Use."

As most users will attest, Logic is no picnic to learn, and Express users be warned: there are in fact enough differences in many menu commands to render later exercises in the book undoable. The space bar doesn't start and stop files playing (which is weird, that works in most other apps), and the user is instructed to do this regularly throughout the book. These are just examples to consider if you're thinking of using this volume and its accompanying CD rom to learn Logic Express

To the book's credit, I did get enough of a sense of using the program to try to figure some functions out on my own, with occasional success. It is better written than some of the other Pro Training Series titles, and truly strives to make a very complex program comprehendible, if not easier to learn. I got through it quickly enough .... but that is unfortunately because I ended up skipping some exercises I couldn't complete, or in some cases, even start.

Once again, this review comes from the experience of one who purchased the Express version of Logic 6, with advise to others: you will probably find this book 70% useful in getting a grasp on the application, and be forced to fill in the blanks with your own gray matter. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Hopefully Apple Pro Training will soon come up with a Logic tutorial "for the rest of us".