Zooming and Navigation

So let’s start with a big picture… or a little picture… or actually a big picture but just of that small little area where I have that one track that’s hard to see when I’m zoomed out.

Zooming (not the app that replaced all human interaction) is easily the most common navigation you have to do when in LogicPro, and probably in most every DAW actually. As you add tracks to a session and start making small edits to an audio file or a midi sequence, it can get out of control real quick. Firstly, I would recommend keeping simplicity in mind. Most of the time, what you’re trying to do by adding yet another track, instrument or layer can have a similar or more impactful result by *removing something* rather than adding. But, that’s for another blog :).

When I’m producing and co-writing a song with an artist or collaborator, I feel like momentum is one of the most important ingredients in the cook up. Ever find yourself searching madly for a region you just recorded… zoom in too much and then not enough, and then too much again? Looking for an instrument or a snippet of a vocal chop for 5 minutes is not fun and it can kill the vibe more than that one person sitting in the corner who keeps sighing audibly to themselves while scrolling instagram (you know who I’m talking about!).

In LogicProX you have a lot of choices for zooming. Here are the ones I use ranked in order of my personal preference:

• Alt + Mouse Scroll (Vertical)

• Alt + Shift + Scroll (Horizontal)

  • This is by far the one I use the most. What you do is hold down the “alt” keyboard button, and then while holding it down, you scroll with the mouse scroll or the trackpad. If you just hold down the “alt” button then it’s going to zoom up and down vertically. If you add the “shift” key “alt” at the same time and scroll, then it zooms left/right horizontally.

  • ProTip on using this: The focal point of the zoom (the thing that stays in the center of your zoom focus) is going to be the track/region you have highlighted for vertical zooming, and the playhead for horizontal scrolling. So, let’s say you just tracked a vocal take, just know that you’ll be zooming in and out towards or away from where the playhead is and where the region that you have highlighted is.

• Alt + ClickDrag

  • This one is super simple and great for quickly doing a deep zoom into a specific region that might be on the other side of the session you’re working in. Just hold “alt” then you should see the mouse turn from an arrow to a magnifying glass. Keep holding “alt” down and click in an *empty* area on in the session then you can draw a box around whatever area you’re trying to zoom into. When you let go, presto! That area you drew a box around now fills the entire session screen. Zoom! I use this a lot if I’m doing a mix review and we’re listening to the song/track/beat and notice something off our out of place. Since I’m zoomed all the way out I'll hold “alt” drag over the area in question to quickly zoom into that area. No lost time, or bored artists waiting for me to find the spot in question :).

• Z

  • This shortcut is great to use while editing vocal takes or quickly going from super zoomed into a specific audio region and then zooming back out to see the whole arrangement of a song.

  • Just click highlight one or more regions in a session, and hit “z” and bam, you’re zoomed in to that region to fill the current window size! Hit “z” again to go back to where you were before. Hit z as many times as you please, there’s no better way to trigger your latent epilepsy!

• Command + Arrow Keys

  • This is the one I used to use all the time before I learned about the “alt + scroll” trick. But, even though it’s not the best or fastest way, I still find it useful from time to time. What you do is just hold down the command key and then press any of the arrow keys. Left/right go horizontal zoom, and up/down goes vertical. Pretty straightforward right? I like this one because it makes producing music feel like winning a video game.

• Vertical and Horizontal Zoom Buttons

  • This one goes out to all click lovers out there! I don’t understand you, but I feel you, you know? Well, honestly, sometimes when I’m deep recording guitar or comping and tuning a vocal, I just want to see the full picture without using the keyboard.

  • In the top right of the session navigation bar you’ll see a few icons. From right to left: Horizontal scroll bar, vertical scroll bar, horizontal auto scroll (click this to zoom out and see the entire session horizontal), and the vertical auto scroll button (click this to zoom out and see the entire session vertical).

Okay, so that’s a lot of ways to zoom. The most important thing is to try them out, and only use the one that makes the most intuitive sense to you and helps you keep up the momentum so you can think about whether or not to add a chord extension in the pre chorus or nudge that snare hit a millisecond to the right…. Or left… or, well, it’s kind of hard to see, maybe zoom in and take a closer look!

Happy zooming and music making!

Levi