# DAWs of the Industry



## musicbender (Aug 12, 2014)

First, this is not a "which DAW is best" post...we all know we have enough of those probably.  I've been using Cubase for years and love it. However, I've been really trying to get a composer assistant/intern job here in LA. 

When trying to apply, there is always two requirements that get in my way: *must know Logic and Pro Tools*. Every single job that's popped up since I move to LA (about 10 months ago) has required both Logic and Pro Tools experience. Not a one that uses Cubase. Are those the DAWs the industry uses across the board now?

So here is where I'd love some advice. I bought a Macbook Air with Logic Pro X just so I could learn it. I couldn't afford a second "super-computer" like my PC that can handle huge sample library templates. I've learned the audio editing of Logic (inside and out), but is it possible to learn professional MIDI orchestration on a dinky Macbook Air? Any ideas would be awesome.

Also, is there a cheap way for me to buy and learn Pro Tools? I'm a quick learn, just trying to use my money wisely.


----------



## djshcomposer (Aug 12, 2014)

Hey,

The only things I could suggest are,

Depending on the specs of the mac ..ram cpu and so on try using the less cpu and ram heavy libraries.

Also I would buy an adapter so you can output your laptop onto a bigger screen or tv. The fact that logic x appears to be abit more 'squashed' for space than logic 9 it would help to have a nice big screen to view everything on. 

there are also ways to send midi data from your mac to your pc that can be used as a 'farm' to hold all your samples so all logic is doing is triggering midi.

Im not sure if they still do things like pro tools le or pro tools express but if I was wanting to save money I would buy one of those and then any features that were missing I would go and research on google and youtube.

not sure if any of that helped haha :D


DJSH


----------



## proxima (Aug 12, 2014)

musicbender @ Tue Aug 12 said:


> So here is where I'd love some advice. I bought a Macbook Air with Logic Pro X just so I could learn it. I couldn't afford a second "super-computer" like my PC that can handle huge sample library templates. I've learned the audio editing of Logic (inside and out), but is it possible to learn professional MIDI orchestration on a dinky Macbook Air? Any ideas would be awesome.


There's always VEPro, using your desktop to host the big sample libraries. I still hope you opted for 8 GB of RAM though.

Without VEPro but with 8 GB of RAM, your MBA should still handle older libraries fine (especially in small quantities). With your limited (but fast) onboard storage, you can keep the RAM usage down by reducing the RAM buffer. Especially if you opted for the 11" screen, you'll want to use an external monitor.


----------



## olajideparis (Aug 12, 2014)

Logic is a pretty deep program but the answer is yes you can learn it on your macbook air, i highly suggest going through all the courses on macprovideo.com though none of them deal with orchestration in logic per se, if you learn everything related to logic and understand how to work with kontakt and multi timbral instruments in logic (yuck) you'll probably be covered. As far as the cheapest way to go about learning pro tools and YES you absolutely should learn it, pick up a $50 ilok 2 and download the 30 day trial from the avid site, do nothing but learn pro tools for that 30 days and also go through the pro tools courses on mpv.com. I'd also suggest doing the same with DP, while there are virtually no new users of DP) apart from Berklee grads), a lot of veterans still use it so if you are wanting to work as an assistant it would be very useful for you to learn. You can also get a 30 trial from MOTU but as I understand DP has a bit of a steeper learning curve than most other DAWs so you might want to look into buying it via their crossgrade promotion as an owner of Cubase and again go through all the tutorials on MPV.com, they've also got DP ones too. But yeah I'd say if you know the Big Four of DAWs you would be pretty well covered if you are looking to assist a composer.

Good luck!


----------



## musicbender (Aug 12, 2014)

Wow, some great ideas thanks guys.

I've never heard of using your main computer to "host" the sampler libraries for the laptop. I'll definitely look into that. Unfortunately, the Macbook is 4GB. My PC, however, is 64GB -- wish my Macbook could use that as well!

olajideparis, great ideas! I have my own custom sample libraries that would work with Kontakt just fine and even create some music that would actually be worth something . That's a brilliant idea with using the Pro Tools trial. I'll definitely be doing that until I decide to buy it. Great info!

Pat


----------



## olajideparis (Aug 12, 2014)

Yep and btw yeah if you get VEP (Vienna Ensemble Pro) You can in fact use your macbook air for sequencing only and access your sample libraries on your PC via ethernet, so you could essentially use the same virtual instruments no matter what DAW you are using and better yet you wouldn't even have to reload! Definitely look into it if you don't have it already as it would give you a better working understanding of all of the programs you are trying to learn. This would definitely help out with Logic and DP, in the case of pro tools, most composers are using pro tools as a secondary tool for editing and mix and or mix prep so you don't necessarily need to try VEP in that configuration.

Anyway here is the link for VEP and do keep in mind you need an elicenser for each computer you want to run it on. (comes with 3 licenses) http://www.vsl.co.at/en/65/71/1988/1677.vsl


----------



## Carbs (Aug 14, 2014)

musicbender @ Tue Aug 12 said:


> Wow, some great ideas thanks guys.
> 
> *I've never heard of using your main computer to "host" the sampler libraries for the laptop. I'll definitely look into that. Unfortunately, the Macbook is 4GB. My PC, however, is 64GB -- wish my Macbook could use that as well!*
> 
> ...



As suggested, please look into VEP...you have a beast of a slave machine and don't even know it!


----------



## Jdiggity1 (Aug 14, 2014)

If you haven't seen already...

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35147

Yes, Logic is popular. But I'm not calling it the Industry Standard just yet.


----------



## musicbender (Aug 14, 2014)

Thanks guys! I'll definitely look into VEP; although, I'm worried about my the RAM on the Mac. Not sure if that would bottleneck things when I load a template with 50+GB of RAM.

Jdiggity1, that's great to see. I guess I've just had weird luck. I've yet to meet one other composer that uses Cubase here .


----------

