#191: Every Logic Pro User Should Know These Hidden Tools—Do You? (ft. Justin Hochella)

Are you underusing the tools you already own in Logic Pro? In this episode of Inside the Mix, Marc Matthews is joined by Justin Hochella, producer and co-host of Face Your Ears, to uncover Logic Pro’s native power that most producers overlook. We answer the questions every independent artist should be asking: What are the essential Logic Pro keyboard shortcuts for beginners? What are the best shortcuts for speeding up workflow in Logic Pro? How do I use Logic Pro shortcuts for automation and MIDI editing?

From game-changing tips like the Z and V keys to hidden sound isolation plugins, we dive deep into Logic’s workflow-enhancing features. Justin also shares how built-in tools like Studio Piano and Sculpture rival paid plugins—offering pro-quality sound without extra cost. Wondering how to use built-in Logic Pro plugins effectively or which plugins every beginner should explore? This episode is your guide.

Plus, learn how to unlock Logic’s 39,000+ Apple Loops and sound packs—packed with vintage drum machines and high-end textures hiding in plain sight.

If you’re producing in Logic, this is your shortcut to working faster and smarter—with the tools you already have.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Follow Face Your Ears

Follow RJB Music Production

Follow Man Made Random

Chapters

• 0:00 Breaking Free from Third-Party Plugin Dependency
• 3:35 Essential Logic Pro Hotkeys for Speed
• 9:13 Underrated Logic Plugins Worth Discovering
• 16:41 Built-in Instruments and Sound Packs
• 32:30 The Game-Changing Paste Setting Trick

Transcript

Justin Hochella: 0:34

I think early on I got it drilled in my mind that, like the third party, stuff is so much better and there may have been some truth to that earlier in the music technology timeline. But nowadays that's not really true anymore, and I think Logic is a great example of it.

Mike Marsh: 0:51

Hey, Inside the Mix podcast fans. It's Mike Marsh here from Mike Marsh Mastering. You can follow me and check out my Facebook and Instagram pages on the socials to find out more about what I'm working on in the studio. Right now You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast and here's your host, Mark Matthews Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production.

Marc Matthews: 1:16

Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to Inside the Mix. Today I'm joined by Justin Hoschella, music producer, teacher and co-host of the Face your Ears podcast. Justin, along with his co-host, rich Bosick, helps musicians bring their creative ideas to life through approachable, fun and informative discussions. A very good podcast. So in this episode we're diving into Logic Pro's unsung heroes, those hidden features, hotkeys and tools that can seriously speed up your workflow and improve your production. So if you're a Logic Pro user, you're going to love this one, and if you're not a Logic Pro user, listen anyway, because you might find something in there that piques your interest. You might want to jump over to Logic or see if your DAW does something similar. Justin, welcome to the show. Welcome to Inside the Mix. How are you? Thank you for joining me today.

Justin Hochella: 2:25

Thank you so much, mark. It's great to be here. I am doing really well and I'm very excited to be on your show and talk about something that I love, which is Logic Pro.

Marc Matthews: 2:37

Yes, I'm looking forward to this. As the audience knows, I'm a Logic Pro user myself, so this is right up my street and just before we were recording this episode, we were discussing a particular Apple plugin that I had no idea existed. So, audience listening, you're going to get a lot out of this. So if you're feeling stuck in your DAW or want to get the most out of Logic Pro, this episode will give you the practical takeaways to help you produce faster, better and smarter. So the power of hot keys, speeding up our workflows. So I've done episodes on hot keys before, so I'm not going to go into the ones I use. But, justin, can you talk about your go-to Logic Pro hot keys and how do they improve your workflow?

Justin Hochella: 3:19

Yeah, absolutely. You know I think there's probably a new hotkey I'm discovering, at least like once a week, if not once a day. There's just so many and as Logic evolves and changes over time, they're just adding more and more. But there's some, like you said, that I just use all the time. So one of them is just the z key. So z for zoom, and this is really helpful if you're wanting to zoom in on a region like a region of audio or midi, and you know if you're way zoomed out and on a really busy project, it sometimes can be cumbersome to try and like zoom in with the sliders or your mouse and trying to do that over and over. So the z key just boom, zooms in like full screen pretty much on whatever region you're looking at maybe you're looping it, listening to it, that kind of thing. So I love using that just for, like navigation purposes.

Justin Hochella: 4:13

Um, another one that I really like it actually relates to markers. So in Logic Pro for those that don't know markers are essentially like almost like notes, like sticky notes at the top of the screen that allow you to have different sections of your track marked, and I use those a lot. So I really like to use those with clients, especially just to help differentiate parts of the song, but I love using option shift comma and option shift plus, and so what those do is they actually navigate backwards and forwards through the markers really quickly. So that's a nice little workflow that I've come up with. So option shift comma If you look at your keyboard it's actually like the back arrow, so the comma and the back arrow, and so option shift period for the other one to go forward, so that one is really helpful to navigate and then, in conjunction with that, the G key for global so to find where these markers are and other global features of Logic Pro. Just hitting that G key allows you to open it up, to manipulate those markers or the tempo for the track, all kinds of global things for the project.

Justin Hochella: 5:39

And another one that I love I actually found this one out fairly recently is the V key. So V as in Victor. So if you have a really busy project with like eight different plugin windows that you're shuffling through, if you simply hit the V key, they all disappear, and so I love that. It just cleans it up. So if you just want to look at the arrangement, you're like I don't want to like dig through all these plugin windows and click, click, click and drag and drop and all that. The V key is great. So those are just some. Like there's literally, you know, like you said at the top, like there's so many. There's some that you use, there's some that we're discovering, but yeah, they're fantastic. And I just kind of, if I find myself using something a lot in a menu, I'll be like, okay, what's the keyboard command for that?

Marc Matthews: 6:34

And I'll try and look that up. No, that makes perfect sense. So, just to recap, you've got the zoom, so we're zooming in on a particular region. We've got option shift comma and option shift period, which is going to help us navigate through markers, which I didn't know was a shortcut, so I'm going to use that myself, so I've learned that one. We've got G for global as well, and v to make everything disappear, which I love. So all options, uh, or rather shortcut, short keys, hot keys, if you will, that, um, that I'm going to take forward and use myself. Do you use the third tool in logic pro, because that's one thing that I use a lot? Well, I use all the time.

Justin Hochella: 7:11

To be fair yeah, I I've heard a lot about it and I I've people advocate for it, but I haven't gotten in the habit of using it and I'm curious, like how do you use it in in your day-to-day work?

Marc Matthews: 7:24

Yeah, I mean for me, I've I've got it nine times out of 10, it's gain. I've got it set so I can use clip gain on an audio region and that's that's where I use it mostly Cool Podcast editing and also editing in terms of all just like a music production session as well. So I use it for the gain tool. And then my second I can't remember which ones they are now is it the? The right click is my um.

Justin Hochella: 7:50

I use that for the marquee tool oh yeah, a lot yeah yeah, I use that so much to mark probably like the single most important tool in logic I think, it's so, so useful and and I love it yeah, yeah, definitely.

Marc Matthews: 8:02

And there's one that I use a lot, hotkey in particular, and I wish I should have made a note of it. So slap on the wrist for me and that is the shortcut key command for fades on an audio region. Um, I want to say it's shift and something. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head, but I do know there is a setting, I was told in Logic, where you can go in and change it. So when you hover over the left or right of an audio region, it will automatically snap, like Reaper does, so you can apply a fade. But that's another one I use.

Justin Hochella: 8:31

That's actually how I have my Logic Pro set up. Is that? The fades are just like the click and drag on the regions. Yeah, yeah, super helpful To be fair.

Marc Matthews: 8:39

I should probably do that. It would make my life easier, specifically with podcast editing, rather than having to use shortcuts. I should probably change that, because it's what I use all the time, which would make sense. But no, some really really good options there and, like you say, I mean we could spend a whole episode you could do a whole series really on going through the different sort of hotkeys and shortcuts available in Logic Pro. But I think what we'll move on to next is, or rather our plugins, so plugins in Logic Pro, of which there are many, and there are some amazing plugins as well. I've got to say I'm an avid user of those, as, again, the podcast listeners know this. So could you share a logic pro plugin that you think is underrated but incredibly useful?

Justin Hochella: 9:23

absolutely. You know, I think there's so many, there's a lot, uh, and I think what happens a lot of times and I've been guilty of this too is like kind of ignoring the stock plugins because the, the marketing is so aggressive and, and you know, uh, ubiquitous for third party stuff. And I think early on I got it drilled in my mind that, like the third party stuff is so much better and there may have been some truth to that earlier in in the, you know, music technology timeline, but nowadays that's not really true anymore, and I think logic is a great example of to that earlier in the music technology timeline, but nowadays that's not really true anymore and I think Logic is a great example of it. So for me there are so many plugins built into Logic that are fantastic. So, as you can see, behind me I've got a whole array of synthesizers, hardware synthesizers, old and new, and some with MIDI, some without, all of that.

Justin Hochella: 10:22

But one thing I use a lot because of all of these external hardware synths is the external instrument plugin, and so what I used to do before I knew about this plugin was you know if I wanted to use my DX7, right, I would set up an audio track to capture the audio, a MIDI track to capture the MIDI, and you know, go from there to kind of record things independently. And so what this plugin does is it sort of combines those two into one track. So I can set the MIDI to the DX7, and I can tell it to listen to whatever you know ports on my audio interface. And I can do that all in one plugin. And, even better, I have all of these presets right. So if I want to use a piece of external gear quickly, I just select the preset for, you know, the Mo grandmother that I have, or the Yamaha SY77, or whatever you know. I just pull up that plugin and boom, I can start, you know, recording a part in. And so it's really just efficient to get a hardware synth up and running.

Justin Hochella: 11:27

And I should say that if you are using that and you record a part in, it will show up in Logic as MIDI and you can then bounce it, you know in place, and it will capture the audio. It has to play it in real time. But, uh, you know that way you can uh integrate it in as an audio file. Uh, if you want to, you know print that and go forward with it. So I love that plug-in, use it all the time. Um, another one and you and I were talking about this before we started is called the Sound Isolation plugin and it's made by Apple. So if you go into Logic and you look at the Apple listing of audio units, there's one called Sound Isolation and this one's pretty neat. Like, basically what it does is it removes like room noise and reverb to some extent. So if you have like an instrument or a voice where it's like recorded in a bathroom, or something.

Justin Hochella: 12:20

It isolates the sound. And I've got a quick example I'm just going to kind of turn the plug in on and off and we'll be able to kind of hear the effect that this plug in has. So here we go. I'm currently standing in a bathroom within my house because the ceiling, walls and floor are all hard, flat surfaces, so the audio is going to have a lot of natural reverb to it and using Apple's sound isolation plugin I can actually isolate my voice and cut out some of the reverb that's naturally occurring within this recording due to the nature of this room. So in that example you can definitely hear like the room room tone, I guess, or the reverb kind of getting quite a bit reduced, if not eliminated, when I turn that plug-in on and off.

Justin Hochella: 13:22

So it's, it's like man, this is free and it's built in like that's, that's wild, like it's. It's such a cool plug-in, um, and I've used it. You know, like, for example, if you get a, a sample of some sort, and there's just a lot of like room noise or reverb to it, like it really cleans it up. So it's, it's pretty amazing. Another plugin that I use it's it's not super slick and cool but it's very utilitarian the tuner plugin. So Rich and I are part of a production company called RJB Music Production and we'll do a lot of vocal tuning for clients and it just comes in clutch for doing all of that editing and just making sure we're dialing things in and you know tuning whether it's tuning a guitar or a voice or whatever it's right there. So you know, it's one of those simple little things that like, if you don't know it's there, you might go out and spend, you know, 10 or 20 bucks on a tuner when you don't need to.

Justin Hochella: 14:24

It's like it's right there. And another one I really like is the BPM counter, which works really well with, like drums or percussion, and so it's just a simple metering plugin. I think it's in the metering section of Logic. You just drop it in, put in a drum loop and it'll detect the BPM of whatever that loop is, and I remember when I found that I was like that exists in Logic.

Marc Matthews: 14:51

I had no idea.

Justin Hochella: 14:54

That's amazing. So, you know, those are just some of the plugins like just in terms of like kind of bread and butter, like everyday stuff. But there's one plugin it's an instrument that I feel like is super underrated, and it's Alchemy. So, you know, alchemy to me is is unbelievably cool, like it is super versatile, right, you can use it for drums, pads, bass, literally anything, um, whether it's like retro sounding or like futuristic sounding, it just covers multiple forms of synthesis and I think what I really love about it and respect about it is it's built to be accessible for people who are, like new users, don't know a lot about synthesis, but just kind of want to quickly dial in a sound. You know, it makes it really easy to do that. But for people that are, you know, veterans of the synthesis world, you can open up the hood and get into some pretty sophisticated settings and features and so forth to really go nuts and dial in a really cool sound.

Justin Hochella: 16:06

And you know, I'll talk about this a bit more later. But you know, apple has created just a universe of sounds that I think are woefully underutilized by people, and a lot of these are related to alchemy, and so there's just so much that it has to offer. And it's like, you know, so many people are out there buying things like you know Serum 2 or Reactor or you know other cool synths that are out there and don't get me wrong, they're awesome or Reactor or other cool synths that are out there, and don't get me wrong, they're awesome. But it's like, don't forget, you've got this powerhouse waiting for you within Logic Pro.

Marc Matthews: 16:41

Yeah, those are all really, really interesting ones. Alchemy I'm a massive fan of I've said this on the podcast before and I've done little sort of tutorial episodes where I've used Alchemy to create like a synth bass or something along those lines, and tour episodes where I've used alchemy to create like a synth bass or something along those lines. And you're totally right in that it's accessible if you're first starting out with synthesis, but if you want to dig deeper, then you can certainly do that with alchemy and I've used it on so many tracks in one way, shape or form. Some of the sound designs in there and the effects sounds that they have are so good that have been created and curated in there.

Marc Matthews: 17:12

The BPM counter I did not know existed and there's me tapping on my desk trying to work out what the BPM is. Or I think you can press T. That might be quite an antiquated way of doing it in Logic, but pressing T to try and get the tempo. But I didn't know there was a BPM counter. Yeah, and I'm always, always looking for something like that whenever I pull in a track or something like that to try and work that out, man.

Justin Hochella: 17:36

I did not know that existed. Yeah, I think I really got into it because I was trying to do tap tempo. It's one of my gripes, I guess, with Logic is they don't make it super intuitive or easy to tap tempo. And I was just trying to figure out what is the tempo of this loop or whatever. And I think I came across it in like a youtube video or something and I was like what that exists it's amazing and so I tried it out on like drums and stuff like that and it works really well very cool plugin, the sound isolation plugin.

Marc Matthews: 18:06

So that is an apple plugin. Yeah, is that in the library itself or how do you access that in logic is? That what folder like, or categorization as it. Where is it under?

Justin Hochella: 18:17

um, if you go into the logic under the audio units menu, um, it's not one of the stock like logic plugins.

Justin Hochella: 18:25

You know how logic lists like amps and pedals delay, distortion, all that, it's not there you have to go under audio units, apple, and then if you go into the apple menu they're all listed as au and then the name of the plugin. So this one is au sound isolation. So it's actually the last plugin within the apple list, um, and if you have the latest version of logic, you can just search for sound isolation one word and it'll pop up.

Marc Matthews: 18:52

Right, I get you. That makes sense. That makes sense. Now I'm thinking to myself why I wouldn't have seen that, and it's probably because I don't dive into that particular folder air quotes, as it were. But again, podcast editing that's something that is incredibly useful because you never quite know the interviewee, what environment they're going to be in, what noise you're going to have to possibly attenuate so that existing is very useful to anyone who wants to start a podcast or anything or anything else.

Justin Hochella: 19:23

They need to remove that sound from yeah, super easy to use just a wet dry slider. So as you pull it towards dry you get more of the like room tone or reverb. Pull it to wet, you know, you get more of an isolated sound.

Marc Matthews: 19:38

Sometimes there's artifacts that get presented, so you want to kind of dial it into the right setting for for your application I think it's a classic one of those, because there are I can think of a waves plugin that will do it, and now I know that isotype have one as well, because I do use it myself.

Marc Matthews: 19:52

But but it's a classic example of like, and I should do this is just to dig a bit deeper into the native plugins, as you'll probably find something that will do the job or at least bridge the gap until you can find something else in your native DAW and which kind of goes back to what I said earlier about if you're not a Logic Pro user, this could still, um be relevant to you because it could get you thinking about okay, well, I wonder if that exists within my daw cubase, ableton tools, reaper, uh, whatever, fruit loops the list goes on, whatever it is so really interesting stuff. I think it'd be nice now to move on, because I think you alluded to a bit there about the logic instruments. So we've spoken about alchemy, sound design, synthesis. Could you talk about some go-to logic instruments? Because there are, again, there are many, many instruments in logic pro and packs, sound packs yeah you find yourself using regularly absolutely so.

Justin Hochella: 20:49

You know, for a long time I was sort of defaulting to a contact native instruments contact piano called the grandeur, just a super thick, lush piano. I'm like man, this thing's great, use it all the time. And then I came across the studio piano built into logic, and I had the same reaction and I'm like what? Like this is built in to logic and on top of that it offers up different styles of piano. So like an upright piano. You know that you might find in like an old church basement, kind of that clanky sound, and it's just got a wealth of fantastic sounds, whether it's, you know, some sort of lush, orchestral kind of piano style sound or something more affected and kind of older sounding, that kind of thing. It's amazing. So you know, for all of those listening, if you use Logic Pro, please just give the studio piano a look, because it's so easy to skip over something like that, so something, so something so basic and simple. But you know, they nailed it, I think, with the studio piano and, um, I was definitely one of those people that was like, oh, it's a stock piano, it's probably not that great or whatever, and it's like, you know, put it, put it in a track recently and was like dang, this thing is incredible. They nailed it. So it's also really easy to use, um, and so there's not a ton of uh, you know knobs and so forth on it in the interface, but there doesn't need to be, and the ones that are there are very specific and easy to use, so very intuitive, to get that really nice piano sound. Um, and you mentioned sound packs, and so that's something that like it's frankly overwhelming in the best way possible. I I actually went into my logic pro recently just to kind of get a sense of like what are we dealing with here when it comes to like these loops and sound packs and stuff, and like I think my Apple loops library is now 39,000 plus and that's from Apple, and I mean you think about like how much producers spend on like sound packs and stuff and again, they're great, they're really cool. There's a lot of awesome stuff out there, but, like there is a universe of sound that is available in Logic Pro, and so you know, and I love the way Logic has built the loop browser where you can drill into like genre and like, you know, style and instrument and stuff like that, and there's also the ability to like, select a specific sound pack. And there's also the ability to select a specific sound pack. So if you kind of like the vibe or the feel of a certain sound pack, you can just select that sound pack and start to navigate through that one and explore it. And so just incredible. I mean you could spend weeks going through and just previewing these loops and these samples and stuff. So just unbelievable, unbelievable stuff in there. And Apple's releasing more and more and they work with, you know, current artists, like contemporary artists that are out there. A guitarist that I really love named Tosin Abassi, created a sound pack for Logic. I think it's only available in the iPad version, and so I'm like just waiting for them to drop it for the Mac version, because I love that guy, he's amazing, and I heard some of what they did for iPad. Like man, I want that on the Mac. So, yeah, it's cool to see that they're continually growing and expanding that universe of sound.

Justin Hochella: 24:37

Um, and you know, we talked about like, just like internal instruments, of built-in instruments, and for me, there's one that I love. It's been around a while now. It's called sculpture, and I love sculpture for its organic sounds. So sculpture is great at modeling. It's like like I guess you would call it a modeling synth and it um, it's basically mimicking uh, surfaces is the best way to describe it, I think like glass or metal or wood, and you can kind of craft your sounds around those surfaces so like it's really easy to get like a marimba sound, uh, for example, with like the wood surface, that kind of thing. But I love it for bass, like it just comes up with these gnarly like thick punchy basses. So if you're looking for that kind of a sound, check out sculpture dial in a bass sound on it and you'll have a lot of fun. It's super amazing, very versatile, you know, and it's sound design. So that's one that I really love.

Justin Hochella: 25:42

Another one that I think is easy to overlook is RetroSynth. And you know, because there's so many third party plugins that kind of do that sort of thing like emulating like an old analog Moog synth or like an 80s fm synthesizer or like a wave table kind of synthesizer. But again, I think what they've done is they've made it really accessible, and so if you're somebody that doesn't have a huge budget to go out and buy a bunch of third-party plugins, retro synth is there waiting for you to make some of these retro kind of sounds. And the thing I'd love about um retro synth is that it's very faithful, very pure, like recreation of popular retro sounds, but it's it's. It's that purity that I love because it lends itself really well to effects like delays and reverbs that are there's a whole host of those, as you know, in Logic, but it just it's so nice to have such a clean, almost like perfect sounding synth, especially if it's retro. You know where you can like go to town on effects and really dial it into your taste. So love that.

Justin Hochella: 26:55

And there's a couple sound packs. I wanted to highlight a couple favorites of mine. One is Vintage Drum Machines. So Logic has a sound pack by that name and what I love about it is it has these drum machines that are very sought after. But if you were to try and go out and buy them you would need like a massive loan from the bank, because you know you're talking about like a Lynn drum machine and then the Roland line, the like 606, the 808, the 909, like you're talking like literally like 15, $20,000, right. And drum machines there and those sounds especially the 808, right, like those are super sought after and you know it's so easy to um, go out and buy a plugin or a sound pack, but you don't need to if you're a logic user, like they're. They're there, um, and they're, they're ready to use and they're professionally uh, produced. They sound fantastic, easy to use and I love them. So definitely recommend, uh, vintage drum machines and there's another one called transition effects, a sound pack called transition effects, and it has a lot of alchemy, uh, like presets to it, but it's just, it's a great pack or collection of these sort of transition sounds, like risers and sweeps and like that kind of thing, and they're really good at creating like tension and, um, you know, transitions between sections of the song or like an intro or outro, like that kind of thing, um, and so really great starting point. Some of them you can just, you, you know, insert right into a production. But, um, those are just a couple that I I definitely recommend.

Justin Hochella: 28:43

And if, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, wow, I didn't really realize this about sound packs, how do I get them? Um, if you go into logic, uh, just the logic pro menu, there's a selection called Sound Library and you can go in there and you can open your Sound Library Manager and it will kind of show you what you currently have, what you don't have, and there's an option to even download all available sounds. So if you have a really big hard drive and you want to go to town and get those 39,000 sounds like I was talking about, you can do that. You can just download them on Felsweep. So again Logic Pro Sound Library and then you can download sounds from there. So super cool feature of Logic.

Marc Matthews: 29:28

Pro Amazing. There was a lot that you went through there. So, in particular, the studio piano I think I've dabbled once or twice with that Very, very good sculpture I'm trying to. I was racking my brains thinking have I ever used that and do I recognize it? So that's something I'm going to dig into as well, because it's not something I'm familiar with. What the retro synth I've used it on occasion I need to spend more time with.

Marc Matthews: 29:50

But what I think is really important is that you mentioned the this, the sound library and the sample packs that are available, because I myself I'm a splice user, um, but I just never, it never crosses my mind just to think and in particular, transition effects, because transition effects are something that I'm always digging out, digging into and trying to find more of to suit the piece that I'm working on, and I never think, never consider, actually, well, what is there in Logix hands in the air?

Marc Matthews: 30:19

I don't think I've used anything from the sample packs since Logic Pro 9, so that's how far back it goes since I last used anything from there. And there are so many and they're on my hard drive already and I just don't pay any attention to them. So this has sort of kick started that in me now to think, ok, well, maybe I just need to. Before I reach just over to splice, I'm gonna check and see what is already here for me, and maybe even as a song starter as well, who knows. But yeah, it's very inspiring stuff. But sculpture in particular, I'm gonna dig into because again, not something I've ever, never experienced. Well, used, check out the bass, like I said, check out the bass.

Justin Hochella: 30:58

Like I said, check out the bass presets on Sculpture. I think some of the pads and string sounds on it are really good. It does a great job of modeling string sounds as well. But also, I would just remind everybody listening, if you dial into those vintage drum machines, they work with Logic Pro Drummer so you can, you know, combine them with that to come up with some really cool beats and and fills and stuff like that. So definitely worth checking out amazing stuff.

Marc Matthews: 31:27

I realize the, the, the time we have here, uh, justin. So I think it'd be quite cool if we go to the, the final part here, which is uh, what's one logic pro trick? Every producer, artist, user of logic pro should know. So if you could share just one logic pro trick or tip technique, let's go tip or trick. Every producer, artist, musician should know. If you had to highlight one this is a long way of me saying this or asking this question what would it be?

Justin Hochella: 31:57

yeah, I actually just found this out and I would recommend this to anybody because this was driving me absolutely bonkers for the longest time. So here's the problem, here's the, here's the setup. So in logic pro, I would be working on a song, you know, and I'd have say like, like a MIDI region, and I'd be like, okay, this is cool, I want this to you know. Come in at this other part in the song. So I'd select it and copy it and, just you know, hit, paste without thinking about it, and invariably what was happening almost nine times out of 10 is the region I copied would paste on some other track that I happen to have selected. And this happened all the time. And so I'd be like copying MIDI and trying to paste it to an audio track and then like copying a drum loop and then pasting it to the guitar track and just being like, oh, like you know, having to constantly like redo my work, and it's not a big deal, but you know, over time it adds up right.

Justin Hochella: 32:59

So the I had this happen to me recently and I'm like that's it. There has got to be a feature to solve this problem for me. And, lo and behold, I found it. So let me save you, dear listener, some time by uh, directing you to logic pro settings. So if you go to Logic Pro settings, select general, which is, I think, the default. So from general, go into editing and there is a checkbox there that says select tracks on region slash marquee selection. Boom Solves the problem. So if I go to select a region to copy it, it will then by default select the same track that that region is on. So I don't have to think about like, oh, do I have the right track selected, you know, and have to clean that up and it works beautifully.

Justin Hochella: 33:51

So now you know, I go in like oh, I like this drum loop, I want, I want, I want to. You know, paste this over here. Just select it, copy it, move my playhead to where I want it, paste it in works beautifully perfect.

Marc Matthews: 34:04

I didn't know that existed and it's one I'm going to use, because I did just that either yesterday or the day before and then, yeah, it was an audio region. It jumps to the wrong place. So I I totally share your frustrations with that and I'm so glad that you found it and you're able to share it and now that I can use it. So now, excellent stuff. So, as a recap, folks with Justin's expertise here, we've been through shortcut key commands, hotkeys, plugins that deserve more attention, hidden gems in Logic Pro's sound library, and also that one time-saving tip, so stopping audio. Did it work for MIDI as well? So it's audio regions and MIDI, or is?

Justin Hochella: 34:43

it yeah, any anything yeah for both.

Marc Matthews: 34:46

Yep, amazing. I'm gonna open Logic as soon as we're done and I'm gonna enable that so I don't forget. Uh, justin, it's been amazing to deep dive into Logic Pro's hidden features with you today, so I thought it'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't give you the opportunity maybe just to talk a bit about Face your Ears, the podcast you do with your friend Rich. If you could tell us a bit about that.

Justin Hochella: 35:08

Absolutely so. My dear friend Rich Bozic and I have a podcast called Face your Ears and it's sort of a portmanteau of Face your Ears and it's sort of a portmanteau of face your fears. And you know, the reason we started the podcast is because we were thinking about ourselves. When we first started, you know, we had a lot of base level questions that we wanted help with, and you know, we just created this podcast to help people who are new to music production and DIY audio and so forth, and so that's kind of the angle that we're coming from. But at the same time, we also do cover topics for seasoned veterans, and so we try really to bring both new users and seasoned users together in this podcast and focus on DIY audio and music production.

Justin Hochella: 35:58

So check it out. You can find us on any podcast platform. So wherever you get your podcasts Apple podcasts, spotify, et cetera you'll find us. Just search for face your ears and you can find us online at face your earscom, and we're also on YouTube and Instagram at Face your Ears Podcast. So check us out.

Marc Matthews: 36:23

Fantastic. I will put links to all of that in the episode show notes, folks, so do go check out the podcast this is a great podcast and also give them a follow on Instagram and YouTube as well. Justin, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining me today. I know the audience are going to get loads out of this. I know I have, if it's just me alone as a Logic Pro user. So I cannot thank you enough and I will catch up with you soon.