TIP: Using Logic Pro as a MIDI Instrument

This may be old hat to serious MIDI types, but I thought I would outline the steps for using Logic Pro (and all its sample libraries) as a MIDI Instrument with Dorico. (MacOS only.)

  1. In MacOS’s Audio Midi Setup.app, show the MIDI Studio window. You should see a device called “IAC Driver”. This is Apple’s built-in device for piping MIDI from one app to another.

  2. Double-click on the the IAC Driver. You’ll get a window with a checkbox “Device is online”. Tick the box.
    You’ll need to restart Dorico now.

  3. In Logic, create a Software instrument. You now need to set the MIDI input for this. You can find loads of webpages describing “how to specify midi input in Logic”, but the steps are:

  4. Open Logic’s MIDI Environment window. Command 0. You may need to turn on MIDI in Preferences > Advanced.

  5. In the Enviroment window, click on New > Physical Input. You’ll see a graphic image of the IAC device, with little arrows for output points. Drag the top output point to the MIDI instrument strip.

  6. In Dorico’s Play mode, Create a new MIDI Instrument. Select “IAC Driver Bus 1”, as you would select a VST. Then select your MIDI Instrument in your Player, as you would a VST.

Bingo! Well, it’s working with one instrument on channel 1; further investigation for how to do multiple instruments may be needed. Let me know how you get on: I’ll supply screenshots if this isn’t clear.

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Thank you for this. The problem is that the tones from the Logic instrument hang when I play from Dorico

Go to the Play page of Preferences in Dorico and make sure that the IAC Driver device is not also enabled as an input device there. (If it is, you will create a MIDI feedback loop that will cause everything to get clogged up.)

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