Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

Hi everyone, 

I've just joined the list and I'm just saying hi. 

I'm working in Paris on Logic 7.2.2 on a MacBookPro 17" Intel Core Duo, using an M-Audio 
Firewire 1814 for i/o, a 250GB LaCie drive for backup - so far its all working great. Its a 
very portable rig I put together before leaving my home in Sydney Australia.

I've been teaching myself Logic as I go, [I started on Garageband and just open up my GB 
songs in Logic] got some advice from the LUG, which was great.

In the last 3 months I've made a CD's worth of tracks - instrumental industrial metal - with 
real rhythm guitars, sampled guitars, Logic basses, Ultrabeat drums + apple loops + 
handlaid individual snares/cymbals/kicks.

One of my most common MO's is record myself playing acoustic rhythm guitar riffs [using 
a Sennheiser 416 condenser - I work in the film business and its the mic I travel with for 
location recording] for a long jam, then sift thru the recording and find something I like, 
cut it up and loop it. Sometimes I'll edit up a riff out of individual chord strums. Then I 
write a bass line with one of Logic's basses [some sound pretty good to me, after 20 years 
of playing real basses thru amps!], play it on my little Edirol midi controller - only then do 
I start fiddling with drums. Then I lay in strings, choirs, synths, sampled distorted guitars 
etc.

I make very cinematic FX-oriented intro/outro sections in Soundtrack Pro, which has heaps 
of good Foley and general FX, bounce a stereo AIFF and drag 'em into Logic.

To be honest, I still find GB a very user friendly environment for the early stages of a track 
- recording etc. Then I move to Logic for complicated stuff, software instruments, FX, 
mixing, automation, mastering etc.

A few things I'm struggling:
Templates - I've made quite a few and they all have problems, mostly to do with setting up 
numbers of tracks for recording real audio. Anyway, I find workarounds and persevere - I 
just discovered the Environment window - seems useful for assigning i/o. 

Any simple advice of quick/easy template set up will be much appreciated!!!!!

When I open the mixer window, I spend too much time scrolling back and forward - 
there's all these midi tracks I don't want clogging things up!!

Paul