Can you create grouped "virtual tracks" in Logic's Arrange page?

[infiniteposse]

Hi all-

I've been tracking a band lately and we're doing lots of takes of multiple mics simultaneously - say 4 mics on a upright bass. The way I normally work in Logic is to create my tracks (for each mic) in the Arrange page and then just manually duplicate them if we need to keep takes and record more to see if we can get a better take and/or get more to comp with later. Doing this process manually is super time consuming though and leaves me clicking around creating tracks and then shifting them into the proper place so that all of the tracks are grouped the same as the other takes...

Is there an easier way to do this that allows each track to have a "nest" with the various overdubs underneath, thus creating less clutter on the arrange page and also a more efficient workflow for quick "ok, let's get this again" moments? Two of the musicians over last night said that they'd done this kind of thing in DP and in Cubase before and that the process was called "virtual tracks" or "takes." Does Logic offer this kind of function somewhere inside it's big beady brain?

How do you guys do this? I looked through the Arrange section of the manual last night and couldn't find anything.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Lee

[DeBasement]

Here's what I do for drum takes (10 mics on 8 mono and 1 stereo track).

1. Create the tracks you need, with proper inputs and outputs assigned.

2. Assign them all to the same 'Group', and under group options make sure the 'record status' or whatever it is is enabled. That way one click will record-enable all your tracks.

3. Use the pen tool to create a dummy region for each of these tracks. You need to do that so you can...

4. select all the dummy regions and "PACK FOLDER". This will create a folder with all your empty tracks in it. Now you can go ahead and delete the dummy regions you made with the pen tool.

5. Go back outside the folder on your arrange page, and copy the folder a few times. Now you have four or five empty folders ready to hold each multi-mic take.

6. At record time, record into one empty folder at a time. If you want to go for another take, mute the first folder ("m") and open up a new empty one. Just try to use 'copy' to keep an empty folder on hand at all times so you can add more takes without having to create more tracks.

If you want, you can even pack all your 'take' folders into one bigger folder, so things don't take up too much space in your arrange page.

I know it sounds like a lot, and like many things in Logic it's needlessly complicated. But I only had to set it up once, took about 10 minutes, and now every song I open has a 'live drum' folder just waiting there to be used.

That's how I do it... Until Logic 8 comes up with a more sensible approach PLEASE!

[Switchcraft]

That is a nice tip man, I like that.

[infiniteposse]

Excellent tip. It figures it takes something like this to do it... I really hope they sort this stuff out in v8.0. When I was only doing Midi tracks it didn't really matter so much, but now that I'm 99% audio, this is a real pain.

Thanks again for taking the time to write all of that out!

Lee