Initial Composition and Arranging

When it came to initially getting my compositional ideas out of my head and into something tangible, I found the standard Logic MIDI instruments really useful! Not only could I review my basic ideas and edit them easily, I could build on them and define them, such as turning a basic horn melody idea into a full arrangement for a brass section.

It was also super easy to send ideas in this format to my musicians, which was very useful for me as my main collaborators were 100 miles away and 200 miles away respectively. I would send my drummer a basic sketch of the beat I had in mind using crappy MIDI drums and he would be able to craft his full groove around that.

Most of all though, working in this way enabled me to fully plan every bit of recording I needed to do with each track, and I could go through this process of slowly replacing the MIDI tracks with real recordings as time went on, all the while knowing exactly what I was working towards.