Logic Project, I lost everything! How to repurpose something old into something new.

We’ve all run into that time when we went to open an older Logic project idea and it was basically outdated. When this happens tons of sounds / samples can be missing, plugins not functioning correctly, or maybe you had a subscription plan for a bunch of plugins / synths like the Plugin Alliance Mega Bundle and you’re simply not using it anymore. One way or another that project isn’t going to open correctly. Some or most of your sounds will be missing and basically means you might have lost the entire idea you may have had so many years (months, weeks, whatever) ago. That being said this actually can propose an opportunity!

When your sounds are gone, you’re not completely lost, you still have your chords and your basic structure or loops that you were previously working on. What I do from here Is simply start by replacing the sounds I had with new stuff. Maybe you have a new synth you love or maybe a new set of sounds for your Kontakt Player, either way this journey can be quite fun to see what can happen!

Open your Logic project and ignore all of the error messages you get at the start.
Start going though each track and looking at what synth / plugin you had on there before.
See if you can replace that sound with something similar or even just more interesting than the one that you find while loading up som presets.
Repeat theses steps for each instrument as you go though the Logic project.
Start replacing samples like drum loops etc if you need to.
Listen to your new and fresh idea!

Check out the video below for a closer look at what I did when I came across this issue.

Lost Logic Project: Additional Lesson.

We all tend to think that just because we have one idea at one point in our careers, it’s the best idea. Wether or not that idea was good doesn’t really matter at this point. IMO if you didn’t finish it and release it, it wasn’t the best idea. Over the year’s I’ve helped many friends and colleges with music production lessons and one thing I always teach them is to learn to let go. Broken computers, hard drive crashes and outdated plugins are just a few of the reasons you can loose things and the less attached you are to your initial ideas, the better.

One lesson I would go though is having them create an idea and send it to me then delete the idea all together off of their computer. The reason I do this with people is to help them later on when it comes to cleaning up their drives due to lack of space. We all run out of space eventually, and external hard drives, cloud storage, all of that gets expensive and maybe we simply don’t have the money to keep expanding. Well all you have left now is to start deleting old Logic projects (or ableton, protools whatever DAW you use), “Letting Go”. I have a simple method to this:

Find your Logic Project (or whatever DAW you use) folder.
Start opening your Logic projects 1 by 1.
Give the idea 15 seconds (or maybe just skip though the song)
If the idea doesn’t inspire you right away, DELTE IT.

Now I know a TON of people out there will disagree with me and thats ok but these are my methods and they’ve helped me relate countless singles and albums over the years while always keeping my songs fresh to my current abilities vs. relying on the few things I knew years before that.

At the end of the day don’t be afraid of staring fresh. with every song you create you will learn something new and you’ll be able to keep applying those new things to old songs if needed thus allowing you to take something and repurpose it into something fresh or delete an old uninspired idea and free up some more space on your system. Either way it’s a win, win.

Don’t forget if you want to check out any of my music you can do so here just click on the “UoN Records” link.

Cheers and thanks for reading.
– Jim