Cameo: Taking a Leap of Logic—J.F. Brissette

WHILE THE PERFORMERS of Cirque du Soleil’s O are swimming, diving, and leaping under the spotlight, a balancing act of another kind takes place in a dimmer corner of their 1800-seat theater at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Ten times a week, conductor J.F. Brissette simultaneously plays bass, calls cues, and dances on sequence-triggering foot pedals to make sure that every thrilling moment of the aquatic spectacular is supported by an evocative musical score. And while Brissette’s juggling act isn’t death-defying, it is undeniably agile.

Fortunately, he uses Logic Pro 8 as a safety net.

“Logic is just a joy to use,” said Brissette. “I like the ease of use, the whole ‘thinking’ of the interface, and the way it presents the music to you. With all its software instruments and plug-ins, you don’t need a lot of extra gear.”

The Montreal-born bassist, arranger, and producer brought Logic to the center ring when he joined O.

“In O, they were solely using keyboards and their internal sequencers. It was very time-consuming to edit anything. One of the first things I did was to export the MIDI sequences to Logic to work with them. While we still run the show with our main keyboard’s internal sequencer, my workflow now includes a complete round-trip between the keyboard sequencer and Logic.”

Among the editing tasks that Brissette performs in Logic is the creation of backup recordings of the O musicians that can fill in a part in case of emergency. “Unlike a Broadway show, for example, we can’t easily find musicians to sit in if one of our musicians gets sick,” explained Brissette. “I can transfer live multitrack recordings of the show to my Mac and start cutting them up by song, including the click track, and edit the audio to correspond to each sequence of the show.”

Those edited sequences are turned into multiple audio clips, each containing a single instrumental part. During a performance, Brissette can trigger those parts with a foot pedal, while still playing his bass, to provide an instant cyber-sideman substituting for a missing musician. “Nothing can replace the performance of a live musician, but it’s nice to have this flexibility when it’s called for.”

“The third aspect of my Logic use is during stagings and rehearsals,” Brissette added. “I can make a new arrangement of a song on the spot. While playing a video of the act with its song playing on my PowerBook, I can work directly with the performers. When someone says, ‘Oh cool, could that be a little shorter?’’’ I can use skip cycle to cut four bars. It all happens in real time with everybody watching.”

During a show, Brissette will sometimes record the live performance directly to his PowerBook for reference use. “I use a Logic template with six audio tracks. From my music booth, I can record the band in two tracks, the click track in another, and the ambient mic from the front-of-house console on a fourth track. The fifth track can carry any musician’s performance, in case I need to work on something specific or make a ‘minus one’ recording for them. I usually put my voice on the last track in case I need a version of a song with my [cue] calls. The live recording doesn’t skip a beat on the PowerBook.”

Brissette ordered Logic Pro 8 “the day after it was announced,” but was a little reluctant to reveal his favorite Logic feature. “This sounds a little geeky, but if there were no key commands, I wouldn’t be anywhere. I don’t like to mouse around. I’m not a mouse guy. If I have to move my mouse more than a few centimeters, that’s too much,” he joked.

Not surprisingly, when asked to contribute a Logic tip, Brissette mentioned a key command. After bouncing a mix or region in preparation for burning a CD, Brissette adds the bounced file to the Audio Bin, selects it, and presses Shift-Command-R. (You could also choose Audio File > Show Files in Finder from the local menu bar.) The file appears in the Finder where he can drag it to WaveBurner to make a CD.

“I most like the general feeling of being able to do things really quickly in Logic,” Brissette concluded. “I like the revamped interface and how they’ve combined so many things into one window, but longtime users still have the modular environment.”