Briley, P (2019) states that the main difference between Ableton and Logic is that Ableton has two ways to view and arrange your music whilst Logic sticks to just one lay out. Ableton’s horizontal view allows an artist to arrange blocks of pre-recorded audio or MIDI and assign them to specific buttons on a MIDI or software controller so they can be set off quickly at any time, allowing for efficiently planned live performance of digital music making Ableton the favoured choice for artists like DJs. Ableton then also shares Logics same horizontal view, with all audio laid to make recording easier to visualise and master.

Logic personally has a much clearer layout as the audio editor and mixers are easy to find and manipulate, whilst Ableton’s is more complicated yet less sensitive when editing, making more refined mastering and instrument recording easier on Logic.

School Of Synthesis (2018) shows that Ableton has an automatic loop feature as opposed to Logic which makes you manually set loops, meaning that making beats for styles like drum and bass is much easier as all the loops and sounds you need can be automatically set off once quickly pre-prepared. In Logic making beats is still not super challenging however, as its ‘drummers’ function will automatically make you a detailed beat to whatever sound you want, although this requires a lot more editing and attention to lay a melody and other sounds over.

Logic pro costs about £200 whilst Ableton has different versions each with added features and purposes ranged from prices around £70-540, which I personally believe is not necessarily worth the money when you can get most of the extra features on the more expensive version on Ableton as cheap or free plugins for Logic.

According to Slant (2020) Logic is laid out very similarly to other popular DAW’s like Cubase and Protools which makes it easier to use if you have good experience with those softwares, whilst Ableton is a very differently laid out software which is fun and intuitive for beginners and still teaches you the ‘need to know’ aspects of most DAW’s. It can however can be very confusing for those already familiar with other softwares and is much more limited to live performance and the production of specific digital genres, as audio recording is a lot more complicated and difficult compared to Logic.

Overall for my project I think I’ll be using Logic as I already have it on my mac and don’t want to spend £70 to get the ‘full’ version of Ableton when it supposedly wont help during the post production phase when it comes to mastering, although it may speed up production when making digital sounds and compositions. If I get the time I may set up a live preparation on Abletons’ free version so I can do a live performance of my pre-recorded work, importing all the sounds from Logic into Ableton which is considered very easy according to Studio Slave (2020).

Bibliography –

Briley, P. (2019). Ableton VS Logic Pro X: What Is The Best DAW Review. Available: https://www.musicgateway.com/blog/how-to/ableton-vs-logic-pro-x-what-is-the-best-daw-review. Last accessed 18th Mar 2020.

School Of Synthesis. (2018). Ableton Live vs Logic Pro X. Available: https://www.schoolofsynthesis.com/blog/blog-post/ableton-live-vs-logic-pro-x. Last accessed 18th Mar 2020.

Slant. (2020). Ableton Live Vs Logic Pro. Available: https://www.slant.co/versus/6424/6430/~ableton-live_vs_logic-pro-x. Last accessed 18th Mar 2020.

Studio Slave. (2020). Logic Pro X vs Ableton Live 10 | Which DAW is better?. Available: https://studioslave.com/logic-pro-x-vs-ableton-live-10-which-daw-is-better/. Last accessed 18th Mar 2020.

Skill & knowledge Rating	Unsatisfactory	Satisfactory	Good	Very Good	Excellent
Listening				x
Time keeping		x
Attendance		x
Planning			x
Problem Solving				x
File management				x
Team Work					x
Reflection on your work and acting on it				x
Using feedback to develop your skills				x
Audio recording in the studios			x
Composing				x
Editing Sound to Picture			x
Foley			x
Mixing			x
Performance					x
Sound manipulation			x
Filming		x
Recording sound on set			x
Music Business knowledge and understanding			x
Presentation of work including spelling					x
Primary research			x
Secondary research					x
In text Harvard Referencing including quoting			x
Documenting the creative process				x

Topics to Research –

Ableton vs Logic for games music production – What are the differences?

How is classic games music written? What are some famous practitioners methods?

What equipment will I need? Research into my MIDI controller and Audio Interface

What plug-ins or softwares could I use to develop the idea of my project?

Mixing and Mastering – how it is done and how I can improve.