Sorry if the pictures are too big or whatever, I didn't think file sizes were an issue anymore, but the size on screen is a bit big, I did this to try and make things make sense as much as possible.
Soooo.....
I'm using a small section of a song for the demo, just so it looks a bit neater and things are bigger on screen. Also the drums were recorded with a few more mics, but I left them out for the same reasons. It was recorded to a click at 112bpm, but the current song tempo is default 120bpm. I'll be quantizing the drums using the kick and snare as triggers, but what you trigger and what you quantize is up to you.
Step 1 - Audio to Score
Double click your first trigger region to open it in the Sample Editor. Go to the Factory Menu and click 'Audio to Score'. Adjust the settings so you get a trigger from the desired transients, try to avoid very fast transients as they can throw out a later process.
You can see the audio and the resulting midi notes.
If you select a blank arrange track just before doing this, you avoid the MIDI region turning up on top of other regions and looking odd.
Hit 'Process' and you'll be given a MIDI in line with your audio containing notes in time with you audio.
You can repeat the process and add more trigger points, these will be where the audio is cut. Here is the MIDI file I made from my Kick and Snare channels.
You should then merge the MIDI regions.
Step 2 - Beat Mapping
Click the 'Global Tracks' revealer and the Beat Mapping revealer, then select your MIDI region. The notes will be displayed in the Beat Mapping track, it doesn't matter at what pitch the notes are.
Click Beats from region and you'll be faced with this dialogue.
Just use those settings for starters. I've not found using other Divisions to be very successful, although in theory it should be more accepting of high tempo playing. So may be worth a shot if you come up with errors.
If you do get an error now it'll be because two or more notes are too close or too far apart, check through quickly for any flams or double attacked notes in the midi file. If there are large unplayed gaps in the song, it works better to process the played sections separately.
You should be left with something like this.
Step 3 - Dividing the Regions.
This is the bit Logic makes hard by default. Dividing multiple tracks by the transients of one is tricky in Logic.
But now we have a crazy tempo meaning every kick or snare beat is on a 1/4 beat, it's quite easy.
I've noticed Logic gets a bit sluggish when cutting or selecting a lot of regions while the Beat Mapping track is visible so you may as well hide it now.
Using the scissor tool while holding Option and clicking on the first 1/4 beat of the song, or bar 1 beat 2, will cause it to cut every 1/4 beat through the track. I'm not holding all this pic, because I couldn't do so while taking the screenshot, but when you do it will say Multiple Divide.
Next select all the regions you've divided, and go the region menu, and Lock SMPTE position, you don't want them moving when you change tempo.
Step 4 - Region Quantizing.
First select an Alternative Tempo, in the Tempo track. Set the tempo to that the drums were recorded too.
Unlock the regions from SMPTE. n.b. nothing should have moved yet, although the region sizes will look different at the new tempo.
Now you can quantize the beats the beat grid. Use the right quantize division, most things will fall into 1/16's but if you know there are some triplet fills or something, either do them separately using 12,24,48 notes, or do everything to 12,24,48's. s
As we're quantizing actual regions rather than notes inside a region you must us the event list to do this. It'll look like this.
You should notice the regions quickly shift onto the nearest division you selected.
Step 5 - Edit Smoothing.
Most of the time it'll sound pretty bad until you do this. I normally select all the regions and drag the left corner back by around a 32nd note. This should be enough to remove most gaps and double hits. If you still find gaps you can use the 'Tie Regions by Length change' command from the regions menu. It should look something like this.
Then while all the regions are selected, add an equal power fade of around 5-20ms using the inspector. You should end up with something looking similar to this, probably surrounded by other music, and most probably longer.
I hope this walk-through helps those of you who were having problems understanding my previous rant.
There are a few ways it can mess up, as Beat Mapping is a little flakey and doesn't like tempo's of over 900bpm which can sometimes be generated by very fast playing, or flams. Luckily there are ways around most problems, and when you get used to this technique it's pretty quick, I can do a regular length song in about 5-10mins depending on how often Logic hangs.
Now I'm not saying this is better than Beat Detective, or is even comparable. But it is for now a way around a problem, and a means to an end should you wish to do this.
As I've said previously, I'm not even the biggest fan of quantizing live drumming like this as most of the players I work with are good and don't need much of this sort of work in a live band situation. When working alongside electronic/software instruments, or in other times when strict rigid timing is required (aka A&R) this may help you.
I wanted to come up with a Work Around for this as SOOOO many people seem to feel that beat detective is the deciding factor between using Logic over Protools, and I didn't believe with all the tempo/quantize control Logic has that something similar wasn't workable
Please let me know your finding, whether they are positive or negative, and we'll think about work arounds. Please try and keep the Protools Vs Logic debates to a minimum, they're really not very constructive.
