Prepare for the onslaught of discussion and opinions around Apple’s Logic Pro 11. Let’s cut right to it – the most important change is that Kyle is gone. No more drummer “persona” icons. No, Kyle has now been reduced to a genre name. All of the names are gone.
That’s not the most important change. Also, Kyle isn’t gone – his lame ass drumming patterns still live on, including this tendency to play any song intro on floor toms like Ricky Ricardo at the Cuban Club. Babalooooo! If you’re old enough to remember that, you are indeed old.
Logic Pro was already using “AI” in its Drummer feature, where a computer drummer like Kyle would put down a drum track that follows your bass line. Now, Kyle and Logan have been updated and made faceless, and we have a new AI bass player and AI keyboard player. After spending a little time with them, I have this to say – if you suck at bass or you suck at piano, the new AI players will show you up. With a little bit of tweaking, I was able to come up with decent bass and piano parts using these new players. Go in afterwards and tweak a few notes, and they both do a passable job.
There are some caveats. On my M1 Mac Mini, the keyboard player worked fine, but the bass player overloaded the CPU. Not the whole CPU – it just took one thread and maxed it out to the point of lots of artifacts such as clicks. The mighty M1 processor, which can handle even the most demanding synth plugins, choked by a bass player. Useless?
Well, no – you can still freeze tracks, and when I froze the bass player, he was able to play his predictable bass part with no flaws.
This isn’t new. There have been other AI musicians before now. It’s new to Logic Pro, though. And I have to say that I think the interface is pretty great. There’s lots of ways to tweak the new bass player and piano player, to get a good enough performance that it’d fool most people.
Funny how they didn’t include a guitar player. Yet.
Would I replace myself with either of these tools? I mean, I might. It’s a fast way to generate a song demo. Would I incorporate some of the AI playing into my final recordings? Sure. I’ve been doing it with Drummer for years. But can I play a better bass line or piano part? Yes, I can outperform the AI musicians. They’re playing stereotypical parts. Not much unique. If anything, I think it’s a good reason for me to up my game and try to NOT sound like an AI piano player.
While the new AI band mates will dominate the discussion, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the new pianos. Taking a page from other plugins, they’ve added pedal noise and other artifacts that really do make the piano sound more realistic. It’s not the best piano ever made, but it’s really damn good and it’s super easy to use. I’m a big fan.
Logic also has the new STEM splitter thingie, where you bring in your favorite song and split it out into drums, bass, vocals, and everything else. Again, this isn’t new, but it’s new to Logic Pro. It’s got some practical value to one man band performers, for sure.
All in all, I’m having fun playing with Logic Pro 11. I think it’s a great upgrade, and as usual, you can’t beat the price – if you already purchased Logic Pro X, ever, this upgrade is free.