Multitrack Drum Quantize Workflow

I didn't know the best way to do this, I couldn't properly figure out the video thing so I'll write it and put up some pictures.

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/01.start.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/02.a2skick.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/03.a2sresults2.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/04.bmcombi.jpg

 

Click Beats from region and you'll be faced with this dialogue.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/05.bmsettings.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/06.bmresults.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/07.multdivision.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/08.locksmpte.jpg

 

Step 4 - Region Quantizing.

 

First select an Alternative Tempo, in the Tempo track. Set the tempo to that the drums were recorded too.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/09.tempoalt.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/10.quant.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/11.editsmooth.jpg

 

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.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/12.finalresult.jpg

 

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.

i have been trying to find reasons to stay in logic...this will help. As did the quick swipe comping.

 

thanks!

Cool, great write-up!

This doesn't seem to work accurately enough for me. When I do audio to score no matter how much I fiddle with the settings the all midi notes are not exactly in time with audio track. Since this happens, the 1/4 note cuts aren't on the transients. What am I doing wrong here?

Hmmmmm not sure, I've been able to get really accurate results more recently with Audio to Score.

 

Are ALL the notes early or late by a certain amount or are they simply loose? If they're out by a ceertain amount try using the Time Correction Setting to bring them back in line.

 

You may get better results using the Transient Detection with the Marquee Tool. I've put a walkthrough on the Tip and Tricks section here:

 

 

Tab to Transient Like Operation in Logic

also, do you have any time sig changes in the song? If so you have to treat each time change as it's own entity with the audio to score. i think a programming oversight and not a bug.

My original hope of using this for guitar has not panned out. Like JPZ, I can't find any settings that work in a straight forward way. But I will give this a shot with percussion just to see how it works with something with more spaces between hits.

Yeah.... My only intention with this process was to find a way to quantize multimic'd live drums to a grid or groove template. With guitars surely you can use the above linked tab to transient workflow or just simple strip silence and then quantize. I should think that'd be by far the easiest way, unless you have multiple mics on your guitar???

Thanks a bunch not only for taking the time to write this up but for also pursuing this topic to the extent that you did. I think that this will serve as a very good template for fixing drum timing issues. I really hate going to PT for anything and this definitely looks like it will help. Your hard hard work is much appreciated.

 

Have a good one.

Thanks for that, I'm glad my work is being appreciated and this is helping people.

Hey there,

 

I really like this technique! I was surprised to learn that regions in the arrange window an now be quantized to a grid. You have a great kind of mind for this program.

 

That being said, I think you may like a little something I dreamed up.

 

When in the arrange window, click on one of your drum regions.

 

Hit control-x

 

This will slice your region up into smaller regions via transients. Once you get the hang of this, it goes VERY fast. I'll show you in a video later.

 

Select all of the new regions that were just created.

 

Open the event list.

 

Select all of the drum regions and quantize them first, then you can pick an choose the ones that are flams or triplets or whatnot, and edit them individually.

 

After this is done, Use the key command under the region menu for 'tie by length change'

 

Then create your crossfades via the inspector like you said previously.

 

I think you'll find this to be much faster, and give you a bit more flexibility.

 

I'll on a video on this Sunday, if I can. It might have to wait until New York tho.....

 

*bows*

This is NOT to say that the method by which you are getting the original tempo is wrong. That's spot on. I tend to use hats or kicks for that kind o thing. I'll usually get a basic tempo from the BPM counter plug-in, then Beat map every 2 to four bars. You can create the midi region using beat detective as well, or perform an audio to score, I suppose you need to measure out which method is more efficient and saves more time.

 

Could I get my grubby hands on the original session so I can play this out in a could different ways?

 

Thanks a bunch,

 

*bows*

{quote} I'm familiar with that technique, unfortunately it doesn't work with multitrack drums as the regions fall out of sync and lose phase sync. That's the reason I came up with this technique. Cheers for the recommendation though, but I've been down that road already.

Dave {quote}

 

aw damn. I should have thought of this. Sorry sorry sorry!

 

-D

No worries Dave, thanks for your feedback, it seems like everyone says that when they first look over the workflow, but if you actually do go through the steps, using a multitrack drum recording you'll quickly realise what makes this different.

is there a way to do this with L7?

I think this exact workflow should work in Logic 7. I never tried it, but from memory I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't unless beat mapping didn't work the same. Give it a try and let us know.

The new kid on the YouTube block just posted a tutorial on this topic:

 

 

Should check it out.

Hi,

 

Sorry I just got Logic and I'm not too familiar with it yet... switched from Sonar and PC.

 

My friend made a track using reason, I have the audio files and I want to add vocals and do a remix...

 

I was thinking of adding additional kick drum so I can use side chain off the first few measures against the vocals.

 

my questions is... do i use the above technique to generate midi to beat match the song?

If all you want to do is program something to follow the tempo changes of the playing in your song, then no.

You can Logic to map tempo changes to the playing so you can add new elements on a grid and they will be in time. Just look up beat mapping in the manual.

 

If you want to Quantize the live playing to a grid then this is what you want to do.

Can you use beat mapping to create tempo maps? E.g say i play an orchestral part (or any part for instance) in free hand and not to a click, could I then play back the section while tapping in the tempo via midi and use this region to 'Beats from Region' creating relevant tempo changes?

 

I have come from cubase and obviously using the warp tempo grid in the arrange window is super fast and i am trying to find a good method for logic.

 

thanks for the useful walk though

I really like this technique! I was surprised to learn that regions in the arrange window an now be quantized to a grid.

 

This has been possible for like, ever.

Yes you're right.

 

The whole problem was how you separate Multitracked Drums into the smaller regions containing the beats. Quantization was never ever a problem.

unfortunately, im not getting past the 'analyze beats from region'. i have a perfect audio to score from my kick and snare, but i hit analyze on either or both and all my regions go haywire, nothing lines up, and a complete mess is made. what am i doing wrong?

unfortunately, im not getting past the 'analyze beats from region'. i have a perfect audio to score from my kick and snare, but i hit analyze on either or both and all my regions go haywire, nothing lines up, and a complete mess is made. what am i doing wrong?

 

Merge the kick and snare to one region.

Then press "Beats from region" instead of analyze.

This is friggin amazing.

Thank you for posting this.

I still get excited when I see this process.

 

It is very cool.

I'm so glad you guys like this process, it took a long while of HARD thinking, and lots of messing around to get it to work in this few steps.

It would be great to see apple implement an automated version of this process, superior to Beat Detective of course... but until they do.....

Hey guys. Just wondering what I'm doing wrong here because I keep getting an error message saying that the tempo is too high or low when i press 'beats from region'. Any ideas?

 

Thanks.

If some beats that you have made score/midi from are too close together they will trigger this result, as they will if they're too far apart. I always go through the midi and check there aren't any flams or best that are too close.

 

Also try not doing the WHOLE song in one go, do it verse by verse, it's just easier to narrow down where the problems are that way.

cool. thanks for your help.