If you watched yesterday’s iPad-a-palooza event from Apple, then you probably saw the segment about cool new features coming to the iPad version of Logic Pro, Apple’s professional audio recording software. But what the event did not make clear was that all the same features are coming to the Mac version of Logic Pro—and both the Mac and iPad versions will get newly numbered. After many years, the Mac version of Logic Pro will upgrade from X (ten) to 11, while the much more recent iPad version increments to 2.
Both versions will be released on May 13, and both are free upgrades for existing users. (Sort of—iPad users have to pay a subscription fee to access Logic Pro, but if you already pay, you’ll get the upgrade. This led many people to speculate online that Apple would move the Mac version of Logic to a similar subscription model; thankfully, that is not the case. Yet.)
Both versions will gain an identical set of new features, which were touched on briefly in Apple’s event video. But thanks to a lengthy press release that Apple posted after the event, along with updates to Apple’s main Logic page, we now have a better sense of what these features are, what systems they require, and just how much Apple has gone all-in on AI. Also, we get some pictures.
AI everywhere
One of Logic’s neat features is Drummer, a generative performer that can play in many different styles, can follow along with recorded tracks, and can throw in plenty of fills and other humanizing variations. For a tool that comes free with your digital audio workstation, it’s an amazing product, and it has received various quality-of-life improvements over the last decade, including producer kits that let you break out and control each individual percussion element. But what we haven’t seen in 10 years is new generative session players, especially for bass and keys.
The wait is over, though, because Apple is adding a bass and a keyboard player to Logic. The new Bass Player was “trained in collaboration with today’s best bass players, using advanced AI and sampling technologies,” Apple says. Logic will also come with Studio Bass, a set of six new instruments.
The Keyboard Player works similarly and gets a new Studio Piano plugin that provides features commonly found in paid virtual instruments (multiple mic positions, control over pedal and key noise, sympathetic resonance, and release samples). Apple says that Keyboard Player can handle everything from “simple block cords to chord voicing with extended harmony—with nearly endless variations.”
The new Drummer.
Keyboard Player.
Drummer’s secret to success is in just how easy it makes dialing in a basic drum pattern. Select the drummer who plays your style, pick a kit you like, and then pick a variation; after that, simply place a dot on a big trackpad style display that balances complexity with volume, and you have something usable, complete with fills. Bass and Keyboard Players can’t work that way, of course, but Apple is bringing a feature seen in some other DAWs to Logic in order to power both new session players: Chord Track.
Chord Track appears to be a global header track into which you enter the underlying chord structures into a timeline. This can then be used by any AI-powered tuned instruments (along with tempo, key signature, and selected style information). It looks like a nice way to power both new tools without two separate interfaces.
In addition to the new session players and their more powerful virtual instruments, Logic will get two more AI-powered features. The first is Stem Splitter, a tool already found in other software. Stem Splitter uses machine learning to extract the bass, vocals, drums, and “other instruments” from an already-mixed track. When it works well, it can be a great tool for remixers and mashup artists, and it can allow artists to make sonic tweaks to existing tracks. We’ll have to see how well this works, of course; I’ve only messed about casually with the feature in other programs, and I’ve yet to be super impressed. But I’m looking forward to trying it out.
Studio Bass on the iPad.
Studio Keyboard.
Saturate me!
Finally, there’s a new plugin called ChromaGlow. Apple refers to this as letting you “add warmth” to tracks, and what they appear to mean by this is adding analog-modeled saturation to your recordings. Saturation has become a big deal in the mixing and mastering worlds over the last decade, especially as the quality of digital emulations of vintage analog gear has dramatically improved.
Saturation occurs when a signal is driven harder than an analog input can handle; the tubes or transistors or tape machines receiving the signal then lop off some of it, which creates various distortion effects such as adding a warmer tone, “fattening” up the track by adding extra harmonic information, and gently compressing the signal. Used at stronger levels, it produces noticeable warm crunch and grit (think: overdriven guitar amps). Saturation is often used to thicken vocals and to make digital tracks sound, well, “less digital.”
Logic has some of the best stock plugins on the market, and while you can saturate signals by driving some of its vintage EQs or using the PhatFX plugin, ChromaGlow looks to be at another level altogether. Many of these saturation plugins already exist—common ones include FabFilter’s Saturn2, just about any analog-modeled console channel strip, hundreds of tape machine plugins, and even tube-based specialty plugins like Black Box. But to my knowledge, they are all basic simulations of a circuit that don’t rely on AI; Apple, however, says that its tool is powered by AI to such an extent that an M-series Apple Silicon chip is recommended on iPad and required on Mac.
Apple says that ChromaGlow offers five saturation options, and video clips of it in action suggest that these include analog preamps, tape saturation, and tube saturation. But the plugin does not appear to model individual pieces of analog gear; instead, Apple says that ChromaGlow “models the sounds produced by a blend of the world’s most revered studio hardware by leveraging AI.”
Logic has already been a quite capable production/songwriting suite, and the new session players should make producing solid demos simple. ChromaGlow fills a hole in Logic’s toolkit, and Stem Splitter could be useful to those who need it. (Apple also added an AI-powered Mastering Assistant to Logic late last year, which brings your tracks up to industry-standard loudness and provides EQ balancing, compression, and stereo width control.)
All these features are powered by AI, and this is exactly the kind of assistive AI that I love. It doesn’t write songs for you, but it makes it simple to take your ideas from a few chords to a finished demo with some vintage saturation. Your ideas will probably be needed to make a truly unique song, but these aids can make the composition and demo process much faster and, if used well, can even provide serviceable background elements for finished tracks.
