Sometimes it's the simple things that make all the difference. There is a somewhat hidden feature in Logic that has been around since the beginning, in the early nineties. Many users don't know or care about it. Many others, blissfully unaware of its presence, clamour for it. I am talking about MIDI chase. What is it, and why should you care about it? Read on. 

Depending on the style of music you work with, it is often common to have long-sustained MIDI notes. These could be a synth pad or drone for an ambient piece of music. It could be a legato string line in an orchestral arrangement. Or maybe a mallet roll cymbal swell. The notes to trigger these might be several bars long. When playing back from the beginning of the regions, these notes begin without issue. But what happens if you start playback from the middle of the region(s) containing sustained notes? 

You want to be able to hear them as they are intended, without having to wait for the following note on event for them to start. This scenario is where MIDI chase comes in. Head over to the global File menu. Go down to Project Settings, and open the MIDI page. There, choose the Chase Tab. There are several relevant settings here to make sure to enable. 

Enabling the first checkboxes for "Notes" and "sustained" will solve the immediate problem. However, in the case of something like a sustained cymbal swell, it is not unlikely that you may have enabled the No Transpose feature for your percussion instruments. This function prevents regions on the track from transposition when transposing groups of regions together (often to change octave for doubled parts).

Chasing notes that trigger swells like this will often result in the crescendos being out of time. The inclusion of a separate checkbox for this provides the flexibility to _not_ have these notes chased. Leaving these notes untriggered when playing back from the middle of a long crescendo is often preferable in scenarios like this. 

Another situation that occurs involving chasing sustained notes is when playing back with Cycle mode enabled. The bottom of this Chase tab provides the final related setting. Allowing "Chase On Cycle Jump" ensures MIDI messages, like pitch bend, modulation, CC messages, or expression data, are chased when the cycle repeats. Here again, the inclusion of a separate option for note events is helpful. You may want controllers to chase at the cycle jump but not sustained notes.

It is surprising how many users are unaware of this basic yet essential MIDI functionality. You don't always need a new M1 Mac to make life better. Often the small things are the best quality of life improvements.