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Easy way to do tapestop/start effects


Phazma

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Hi,

having recently switched from Fl Studio to Logic I was used to doing tapestop/start FX in the pianoroll using so-called "slide-notes". I could just press a "slide-note"-button and when it´s active the MIDI notes I placed into the pianoroll were slide notes which, placed under or over a normal note, made the pitch slide down or up to the note that I drew. The duration of the slide was determined by the length of the slidenote (started from original pitch at the start of the note and arrived at the destination pitch at the end of the note).

I found out that in Logic in the pianoroll under View > MIDI draw > Pitch Bend I could bring up a window where I could draw curves that will make the MIDI note slide up or down but it is very clumsy: I could´t see the exact notes where my pitch would arrive, instead at the left side I had a scale from -60 to +60. I thought it would stand for semitones and as it is subdivided in steps of 5 I had to guess the destination pitch I wanted and place a dot there. Tough when playing back I noticed that the bottom/top of the scale were far less than 60 semitones and I couldn´t slide as high or low as I wanted. What also was annoying was going back to zero after each pitchup/down. I first drew a dot on 0 at the start and end of the slide and the third dot determining where the slide was going I placed somewhere before the end dot and dragged it to the end dot. But instead of stopping when I reached the end dot on the horizontal axis it replaced the end dot, so I had to place it a tiny bit before I actually wanted to end the slide effect.

 

So is there a quick and less clumsy way to do what I want? I need that feature very often for creating robotic sounds/movements by applying such slides to a short audiofile looped inside a sampler. I also saw that there is the possibility to do something like that with the pitch shifter but it needs to process the incoming audio so it creates either delay or artefacts and it still requires drawing an automation line. Also I noticed that I can set the SemiTone control only to +-12.

 

I hope someone can help me, thanks in advance for all input!

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Thanks for the suggestion! I tried it out now and it is a cool effect for the end or start of an audio region but I need something that can be applied to single MIDI notes and lets me determine the note on which the effect ends.

There's no such effect in Logic. You could try automating the pitch bend of the synth the MIDI region is triggering.

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Thanks for the suggestion! I tried it out now and it is a cool effect for the end or start of an audio region but I need something that can be applied to single MIDI notes and lets me determine the note on which the effect ends.

There's no such effect in Logic. You could try automating the pitch bend of the synth the MIDI region is triggering.

 

Well the problem with that method is that pitch bend is not subdivided in semitones. When automating it inside the piano roll it is subdivided in 127 values (+ 63 up and -64 down) so I either have a plugin that allows me to select as high of a pitch bend range and a different range for up and down or I won´t be able to predict the note that I am arriving to (even when guessing it will be off by some cents because 127 can not be divided through 12). When automating the pitch inside the tracks window I only get a range from 0 to 1 with 0.5 being the root pitch so that way it is even harder creating glides to specific notes.

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Have you tried portamento? That's the easy way to do slides to an played note. For instance you can set the sample root key to C8, start the sound by playing C8, then hit C0 (or even C-2) and it slides down to that exact note.

 

Pitchbend I find clumsy as well, and too many synths don't feature more than 24 semitones.

 

Portamento benefits: Up to 10 octaves of pitch range.

Portamento disdvantage: Most envelopes or only in ms resp. s and not time divisions. And common envelopes only feature linear curves.

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Yes I have tried setting my sampler to monophonic mode and put the notes to which I wanted to slide below or above the starting note and it works better than the standard pitchbend automation because you know the note at which you arrive but whit this method I had to automate the portamento amount/value/speed and try around to make it slide in the time I want which for some notes can be very fast and for some take longer. Also the portamento forces a note to start at the pitch the before played note ends. So if for example I wanted to end on a C3 and the next note to start from C0 and move to C3 it wasn't possible, I had to do a very fast glide down to C0 so that the next note could start from there.

 

However I have found a workaround for the TAL Sampler, which is the only plugin for which I really need this feature (usually resample my synths and put them into a sampler when doing those effects). The TAL Sampler doesn`t have a pitchwheel with a settable bending range per se but in its modulation matrix I was able to assign the tune knob to be controlled by the pitchwheel with an amount of up to 24 semitones. I filled three slots in the mod matrix by assigning them all to the tune knob, two with an amount of 24 semitones and one with 16 semitones. So when moving the pitch whee to the extremes it summed those modulations and gave me a range of +-64 semitones. Now the scale in the piano rolls MIDI draw equals to semitones and by automation I can make it slide by precisely as many semitones as I want in the time that I want. I still have to calculate or count keys to find out for how many semitones I need to glide if I want to move to a far away note but that is only a very minor slowdown of my workflow. This particular thing was more intuitive and less tedious to do in FL Studio but then there are also many things that are a lot faster and less weird in Logic.

 

Btw, to not create a new thread for every little question, is there a way to work with automation so that I can drag a dot to the next dot without it going further and overwriting it. This would be useful for abrupt changes like for example the volume starting at 0dB on beat 1, going to -inf over the duration of 4 beats and on beat 5 it is at 0dB again. Right now I have to turn snapping automation off and zoom into the gridline at beat 5 and place the dot a tiny little bit before the next dot. It would be much handier if I could create 2 dots at 0dB on beat 1 and 5 and create a dot somewhere inbetween and drag it to -inf on beat 5 where it doesn´t go any further and leaves the dot on -0dB as it is.

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Thanx a lot for sharing your solution!

 

There is a key command to create juxtaposed automation points at regions border or event. I am not at the studio at the moment, so I could not tell which one exactly. But I'm sure you could find it easily in the Key Command window, which could be open with the kc Option-K (if I remember well...)

 

Just found it:

"Create 2 Automation Points at Region Borders": Control-Shift-Command-2

Edited by Atlas007
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Thanx a lot for sharing your solution!

 

There is a key command to create juxtaposed automation points at regions border or event. I am not at the studio at the moment, so I could not tell which one exactly. But I'm sure you could find it easily in the Key Command window, which could be open with the kc Option-K (if I remember well...)

 

Just found it:

"Create 2 Automation Points at Region Borders": Control-Shift-Command-2

 

No problem, I am happy when I can give something back to the community after recieving great help from others.

 

And thank you for pointing out the key command! Through some resarch on it I found an even more useful one: Shift+Control+Option+mouseclick lets you create a pair of dots wherever you want and then you can drag the lines inbetween up and down and if you need a ramp afterwards you can just delete one of the lower points. Another handy option I found is to select a part of a region where you want to apply such automation to with the marquee tool, switch back to the pointer and do the same as previously described.

To work quickly with automation I set up the key commands q=pointer w=marquee e=automation-curve. In the main window I create the automation I want by switching between those three tools and in MIDI-Draw where the marquee tool is not available I will work with the Shift+Control+Option+Mouse method.

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Thanx a lot for sharing your solution!

 

There is a key command to create juxtaposed automation points at regions border or event. I am not at the studio at the moment, so I could not tell which one exactly. But I'm sure you could find it easily in the Key Command window, which could be open with the kc Option-K (if I remember well...)

 

Just found it:

"Create 2 Automation Points at Region Borders": Control-Shift-Command-2

 

No problem, I am happy when I can give something back to the community after recieving great help from others.

 

And thank you for pointing out the key command! Through some resarch on it I found an even more useful one: Shift+Control+Option+mouseclick lets you create a pair of dots wherever you want and then you can drag the lines inbetween up and down and if you need a ramp afterwards you can just delete one of the lower points. Another handy option I found is to select a part of a region where you want to apply such automation to with the marquee tool, switch back to the pointer and do the same as previously described.

To work quickly with automation I set up the key commands q=pointer w=marquee e=automation-curve. In the main window I create the automation I want by switching between those three tools and in MIDI-Draw where the marquee tool is not available I will work with the Shift+Control+Option+Mouse method.

 

Or just Marquee select an automation lane, then just drag up or down with the mouse ;)

Very handy since the Marquee also snaps to the grid the way you want.

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Or just Marquee select an automation lane, then just drag up or down with the mouse ;)

Very handy since the Marquee also snaps to the grid the way you want.

Or, with the Marquee tool, Option-click the region (if you're in Automation view, Option-click the region's name area) to Marquee-select the region.

 

With the default tool assignment Marquee=Command-click tool, you have to Option-Command-click the region's name area:

 

Marquee-select-region.gif.cf22c952517ddc8d2011760a959ca8b3.gif

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I already have the pencil as command click tool for quick region-creation but with my shortcut q=marquee I can quickly access it and perform all those things. The marquee tool really speeds the workflow up a lot, especially when it comes to automation.

 

EDIT: Yet another question that came to my mind now. In the tracks window when resizing a region that touches another region when my mouse is in the upper half of the track it resizes both regions. Is there a way to turn this off? Because usually I only want to resize one region and it makes me do a lot of command-z because of accidentally ckicking and dragging the region in the upper part of the track.

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...Yet another question that came to my mind now. In the tracks window when resizing a region that touches another region when my mouse is in the upper half of the track it resizes both regions. Is there a way to turn this off? Because usually I only want to resize one region and it makes me do a lot of command-z because of accidentally ckicking and dragging the region in the upper part of the track.

Position your mouse pointer lower in the intersection, and sliding it slightly toward your target region.

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...Yet another question that came to my mind now. In the tracks window when resizing a region that touches another region when my mouse is in the upper half of the track it resizes both regions. Is there a way to turn this off? Because usually I only want to resize one region and it makes me do a lot of command-z because of accidentally ckicking and dragging the region in the upper part of the track.

Position your mouse pointer lower in the intersection, and sliding it slightly toward your target region.

 

Yes I knew that I have to keep the pointer lower and towards the region I want to draw, just hoped that there is a way to customize Logic to turn off the changing to the "resize both regions-cursor" (don`t know the real name) in the upper half in order to be able to pull it also on the upper half of the track without resizing the adjacent region because when working quickly it often happens that I not always grab it in the right position and have to undo the resizing and retry more slowly, but I´ll get used to it.. though thanks for the answer.

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is this what you're looking for?

 

 

Not really, perhaps I shouldn`t have named the thread tapestop/start effects because what I am referring to seems rather to be pitchbending. FL Studio had a great way to do it in the piano roll (for it`s own plugins, I always used it with it`s sampler) but I found a workaround for Logic in combination with the Tal Sampler (see somewhere in the previous posts), with the only drawback being that for bending few semitones it doesn`t sound very smooth because of the resolution in steps of 1 semitone. Tough what is shown in the video again is a very handy advantage of Logic which I will use for sure. If I wanted to bend an audio region without a third party plugin in FL Studio I had to resample it, put a note into the samplers piano roll and do the slide notes/pitch bend thing, in Logic it seems to be possible quickly and directly in the arrange window.

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is this what you're looking for?

 

 

Not really, perhaps I shouldn`t have named the thread tapestop/start effects because what I am referring to seems rather to be pitchbending. FL Studio had a great way to do it in the piano roll (for it`s own plugins, I always used it with it`s sampler) but I found a workaround for Logic in combination with the Tal Sampler (see somewhere in the previous posts), with the only drawback being that for bending few semitones it doesn`t sound very smooth because of the resolution in steps of 1 semitone. Tough what is shown in the video again is a very handy advantage of Logic which I will use for sure. If I wanted to bend an audio region without a third party plugin in FL Studio I had to resample it, put a note into the samplers piano roll and do the slide notes/pitch bend thing, in Logic it seems to be possible quickly and directly in the arrange window.

 

 

I come from Fl Studio many years ago I know what you mean, it is not possible to do it with a slide note in Logic X. As far as I know you can't do it either in Cubase Or Ableton with a Slide note. But how you can do it is the Portamento what a synthesizer have that is actually the same as the slide note in Fl studio.

 

And if you want a really Tape stop effect Logic X have it in the inspector but not a Slide note like Fl studio.

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Yes for tapestop fx it really seems no problem, actually it is easier in Logic than in FL Studio. Tough the problem with standard portamento is that you have a specific time it takes to arrive at a pitch (which you usually set by turning the portamento knob). So if you want to make some notes to glide faster and some slower you need to automate this knob. And as portamento is only triggered once you hit the next note to have a note go up or down before the next note arrives you need to draw a note over or under the previous note. This of course is like in Fl Studio but works only for monophonic synths as in polyphonic mode while sliding up/down to the new note the other one keeps playing.

 

IMO the most straightforward way to do it in Logic is still having the pitch bend range set to 64 and use the numbers in the MIDI draw as reference for semitone steps, so you calculate from for example F3 to A2 it is -8 semitones and draw the curve from when to when you want to glide down to that pitch. Of course, as I said, the drawback is when you need to go only like from F3 to E3 it doesn`t sound smooth but if I don`t need to glide for more than 16 semitones I disable the two 24 semitone pitch modulations in the sampler and keep only the 16 semitone one so 1 semitone in the MIDI draw corresponds to 4 steps and it becomes smoother. If I need glides of few semitones as well as of many semitones the only way to do it is clone the track and keep one samplers pitchbend range at 64 and the other at 16 and write the notes with large glides into the piano roll of the 64-sampler and the small glides into the piano roll of the 16-sampler.

 

So as I said precise pitchbending is easier in FL Studio, tough with various workarounds (and the right plugins) I found out it is possible also in Logic, being a tad ore tedious but not scaring off of doing it.

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