Thank you BOTH so much and also thank you for checking into my blog. I was really dreading that I screwed up my Logic 8 installation and dreaded that re-install. So thank you for giving me that sanity check. I tend to forget a lot of things so documenting what I know is a must for me and why not share the knowledge while I am at it! Well it looks like I should just produce most of the track on M3 and record that as audio. Will also check into the sample sites you mentioned. In terms of the country tracks, it is definitely more challenging than the "drag and drop loops" dance grooves, and let alone without live musicians. It is definitely on a fun side in a challenging way(and never dreamed that I would help write country demo up to now). I am starting to appreciate also how difficult it is to mix down country. Once I am done, I will put a short demo clip on my web site and will let you hear.

Full agreement with the response. I posted the same question on the Logic Pro forum at Apple. So far, no response there. I will also check into Big Flash Audio. Thanks for the tip. We the "computer savvy" musicians need to "band" together and help!

Thank you so much for checking into the L7. I have a feeling that anything that is a bit difficult to articulate in a keyboard, they must have shied away. Given all the discussions happened in this thread, I am very content now what options are available and choose for a project at hand.

This is related to another post regarding finding some "country" friendly instruments in ESX24 in "out of the box" config of LP8. For example Harmonica. I thought that I was going mental when I could not find one (please note that I did not say Apple Loops, I know there is a plenty of blue-loops there along that line.) But in Sculpture, there really was a "Pedal Steel", but in the Library Search when Software Instruments was selected, it never popped up. Now this makes me worry that I may not be finding what I actually have in all software instruments I got. Obviously most (if not all) of the ESX24 samples can be searched this way. And even other ones like ES2. This is more of a question about how these "presets" from various software instruments get into the library search index. Is there something I can do to have them included, and also how do I know all the presets are searchable?

Rounik: Thank you again for the detailed response. There are two "peace of mind" information that you made me realize. The first one is that when I am "searching" in a blank Software Instrument Track, I was looking for the Channel Strip presets. This is an important distinction, and hope that this is also covered in Logic 8 - 101 Course. I did just what you have indicated and now the search did find it. This also answered the implied question of "Why there is no search within the Sculpture or other SIs." During this research I've seen so many other posts from other forums along the line of "RTFM! Use the Search." But I certainly did not realize this. Second peace of mind is that I too was using Spotlight to find, for example, "Pedal", but you pointed out to look for the ".pst" and that's something I did not know, but thanks, I know now. Thank you so much! BTW: There still is no answer posted on the Logic Forum at Apple!

Just FYI & Fun; Hi, I have just composed, mixed and sharing a 50-sec clip of ostesiblly the "country rock" sound idea. [url]http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/18/wo/m51yoEnNd2Ghh9aP.1/0.2.1.2.26.31.97.1.35.0.1.1.1?user=stokemaster&fpath=DemoClips&templatefn=FileSharing1.html[/url]

The typical tweaks that I'd use for something like this entails. - Echoing, Delay Designer, reverb. This seems to go a long way. - Tube amp simulations. - Do need to work that pitch bending stick and I'd also use Hyperedit to smoothen things up a bit. - Turn up the LFO depth a bit more. - Dyniamics. Volumes. I think having a volume peal here is really helpful. And I'd blend it in as the part of the arrangement and I would never feature it as the solo instrument.

I have noticed this issue recently (I am fairly new to Logic), but some Audio recording tracks keeps playing when I solo other track(s) when I don't expec it to. Other software instruments track wold work as I expect. In order to reproduce and demonstrate this issue, I downloaded Mark's "That's Logic" and see if this happens, and it does. Here, the steps to reproduce this issue. 1) Load "That's Logic" from the MPV "Mastering Logic 8" product site. 2) Solo Track 4 "Pads Audio 1" only. 3) Go to Bar 73-81. In my case, I still hear Alison's voice playing out of Track 8. Does this have something to do with the fact that Alison's track is also bussed to #2? But even after I turn off the Bus 2 send, I still hear her voice. I can mute Track 8. That works. It simply does not mute automatically. I need to determine if this is a bug on the software or if this is a bug on my brain.

Thanks both. I did not realize that there are so many solo and mute modes. But I did not realize that the track header's solo and mute buttons CAN BE different from the one of the mixing channel strip. That's an excellent tip. With that change I was able to "fix" the problem on hand, but there is one more strange observation. The S button on the channel strip has an S with a red "/" on it. The manual says this is the Solo Safe mode. I am trying to figure that out what the really means, but it has to do with the sends. [img]http://lh5.ggpht.com/_sQ8AJonbdHw/SQ4HLI5mbmI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/dZd3jFW4Xsw/ishot-1.jpg[/img]

Rounik: The original question I posted stemmed from another "trance" type project that I am working on, and one of the Apple Loops refused to get out of the solo. But in both cases, the Solo Safe mode was the problem I had all along now I've realized. I do thank you and everyone for pointing out these solo/mute issues, that helped me to understand a whole lot more about this mysterious issues I had with "why some sounds do not play" in the past. I was still approaching the software as if it is the "old skool hardware board" emulation and obviously there is a bit more flexibility at the expense of more complexity!