Tab to Transient Like Operations in Logic 8

[davidpye]

So for those people who prefer it, or those who have trouble getting my first Multitrack Drum Quantize method to work. Here's a walk through of how to use Logics new Transient detection like Tab to Transient in Protools when cutting up multitrack drums.

 

Thanks to Dominic and the other guys on the Apple Logic forum who discussed this with me, and lead to this really working.

 

Step 1 - Making a Selection.

 

The way I prefer to do this is to select from the beginning to the end of the track, using the Marquee tool. Then I move the left side of the selection, it just feels a bit neater and is easier to see where you are on the screen.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/01.selection.png

 

Here I have all of the tracks grouped, but I've found you can get faster and more accurate results by just having say the close mics on the Kick and Snare grouped. That way Logic only senses transients from those sources, but still cuts ALL the audio at the selected points.

 

Then using the new Key Commands for move start of selection, Shift+Left and Right Cursor (by default) you can make the start of the selection jump along the transients automatically.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/02.t2t.png

 

Step 2 - Splitting.

 

Press it a couple of times so it reaches the first snare hit and use the "Split Regions/Events by Locators" command. This will cut everything in your arrangement at that point.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/04.split.png

 

You must make sure when using multiple mics like this that the selection is where you want it, its very easy to get rogue results because the mics are at different distances from the drums.

Here you can see the actual snare hit on the snare mic channel then the more distant overhead mics showing the transient later which the transient detection also picked up on.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/03.t2tclose.png

 

Repeat this process along the other beats you wish to cut. You'll find that even with just a couple of the tracks grouped you often need to press the move selection start right command a couple of times to land on the right transient. It seems like this is a little over sensitive at the moment, I'm it's useful for something though.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/05.nextbeat.png

 

Continue moving the selection and cutting until you have the section of drums looking similar to this.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/06.cuts.png

 

Step 3 - Quantize.

 

Select the regions you've just been busily splitting and open the event list. Pull down the quantize menu and select whichever quantize most closely applies to the played drums. Here I'm using 1/16 divisions.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/07.quantize.png

 

You'll see all the regions jump a little as their positions quantize to the grid. Then you can smooth the edits out.

 

Step 4 - Edit Smoothing

 

I do this exactly the same as I detailed in my previous Multitrack drum quantizing thread, select all the regions and move the left corner back by around a 32beat. Then add an equal power cross fade of around 5 - 10 ms. Do that and you should have something like this.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/dpye/logicprocess/t2t/08.finish.png

 

Hope this works for you, like I said you may find it's rather more manual nature more accurate when cutting certain things.

 

Let me know how you got on, and please don't quantize EVERYTHING, it sounds bad.....

[eggman]

Thanks to Dominic

 

You're welcome! I'll also be posting a video of this on YouTube shortly, when I can find a moment.

 

You've made a great summary there, and I hope this will finally get those ProTools acolytes off Logic's back

[davidpye]

Great, I would have done the Youtube thing but I couldn't find a decent way to do it and to explain the process properly at the same time.

 

Thanks again Dom, nice meeting you here!!!

[dkgross]

thanks!

one last step I wonder about. In PTools, once this gets done and I'm happy with it, I will often 'consolidate' the region to get rid of the zillions of fade files to easy the load on my hard drive. Ya'll do something like that as well??

[eggman]

Sure, just rubberband select all the regions you've cut and click 'merge regions by tracks' (region/merge/merge regions by tracks), or use a custom KC. This is a neat trick, as it will leave your tracks in tact and save you having to select each group of regions and merging individually. Sorted?

 

To David, thank you! And incidentally, like I said on the Apple forums, I wanted to check if this feature also worked in Logic 8.0.0 on my other Mac, but it turns out that I'd already wiped it. Sorry.

 

So if anyone here knows the TRUTH, then pls post below

[davidpye]

Yeah using the glue tool is the way to go, or using Merge by Track, also there is the export>all tracks as audio files, but this does render the plugins too so watch out.

 

Yeah no idea about this feature not working in 8.0.0 but I'm sure I tried it and couldn't do it with any of the split commands, I did also tell apple via the feedback form so maybe they did it.

 

Oh and like someone on this forum mentioned before if you're trying to edit drums along side other tracks, put them in a folder and edit them in the folder to stop ALL the tracks in your arrangement being cut too.

[Hricco]

This is really cool.....a bit more daunting than Beat Detective in PTLE, but very workable, and if you know your key commands, you can fly threw a full drum recording.

 

 

very cool

 

 

Thanks

[Waterboy]

I have overlooked this thread.

 

This is a very neat operation. I am yet to try it, but it looks like it may be relatively easy aftyer doing it once or twice.

 

Funny thing about this is that I hAve been talking about this very thing (Beat Detective type of thread) on another forum.

 

You see - I am hoping that we Logic users can start some kind of a trend where folks are less likely to hop over to Pro Tools to do a couple of things, and then come back to Logic.

 

The (2) most common things I have been hearing (as far as their "reason" is concerned: Elastic Audio, and Beat Detective).

 

What you have posted is inspiring (to say the least).

 

Thanks for sharing with us.

 

Take care.

[ChicoSatis]

[quote="Waterboy"

 

"You see - I am hoping that we Logic users can start some kind of a trend where folks are less likely to hop over to Pro Tools to do a couple of things, and then come back to Logic."

 

 

Here, Here!!!

[davidpye]

Thanks for your comments guys, I thought everyone had forgotten this thread.

 

Waterboy also check out my other thread in this forum for a more automatic way of doing this.

 

I personally don't see any reason to use protools, and I use it a lot at a studio where I work, HD3, and I prefer logic. There isn't anything in protools I can't do in logic anymore. Well except Elastic Audio, but as we're still on PT7.3 we can't do that in tools yet anyway.

 

More than anything I'm glad these workflows are working for other people, thanks for trying them.

[Waterboy]

Hi, David.

 

Are you talking about thread on MultiTrack Drum Quantize Workflow?

 

that look s like an awesome thread, too!

 

Thanks for the heads-up!!

 

 

 

*Just say no! Just say no!*

 

(to Beat Detective)

 

[davidpye]

Yeah that's the one, glad you liked it!!! Thanks again for your responses.

[Waterboy]

Thank you for going through the trouble of making these instructions!

 

I am actually linking other Logic users to them as well,

 

Take care.

[wip]

DavidPye - how do you manage to keep your regions selected while the marquee selection is on??

 

k

[davidpye]

Are you using Logic 8? It says in your profile 7.2.

 

I think that would be the reason. This seems to have only been working this way since 8.0.1 on my system.

[wip]

Aha! i was about to show this trick to my neighbour who have 8.0.

better tell him to upgrade.

 

k

[Rufuss Sewell]

Well, this is really amazing. But how do you split the drum tracks without splitting the other tracks on the page? I tried protecting the tracks, but that makes it so that the split key command won't work at all. This is ALMOST a 100% solution for multi-track drum quantizing... please lord let there be a way to split only certain tracks.

[Waterboy]

This is ALMOST a 100% solution for multi-track drum quantizing... please lord let there be a way to split only certain tracks.

 

I might be going out on a limb here - but were you are Beat Detective user?

 

 

8)

[Rufuss Sewell]

Yeah, I use Beat Detective and Elastic Audio in PT. But I'd prefer to stay in Logic. I just tried this out on a song and it went very well... except for the fact that it completely mangled all of the other tracks in the song.

[davidpye]

Put the tracks you want to edit in a folder temporarily.

Do the edits, then unpack the folder when you're done.

 

If you like Beat Detective, the you may like my other post about Multitrack Drum Quantizing on the tips and tricks forum.

[Waterboy]

Here is the link:

Multitrack Drum Quantizing

It rawks!

[Rufuss Sewell]

Put the tracks you want to edit in a folder temporarily.

Do the edits, then unpack the folder when you're done.

 

Err... as expected the folder gets sliced up just like a normal track would. Am I missing something here?!?

[Rufuss Sewell]

So far I'm have 3 problems.

 

1. As I've already stated, this only seems to work when you want to slice up everything in your song since there doesn't seem to be a way to protect regions from being split. The easy fix is of course to save as a new song and then reimport the quantized drums into the original... but I'd like to avoid that.

 

2. Doing the transient detection on a single track tends to miss a bunch of notes... which is to be expected. If I use the snare track, it will get some of the kicks but not all.

 

3. Using one track for detection is really fast, I can zip through the song. Using two tracks for transient detection is incredibly slow on my 2005 era G5 2.5ghz. It stops and thinks for second with every move, so I basically can't use more than one track for detection. Are you guys on modern Macs flying with 2 tracks selected? If so that might be a good excuse for me to upgrade. OR I might just do snares on one pass and kicks on another.

 

This functionality is VERY important to me, so this whole thread is exciting news for me.

[Waterboy]

Did you check the link I gave you at the top of the page?

[qtruck]

Pack the drum tracks into a folder and then work inside the folder. (Double click the folder to open the folder) The split by locators command will split all tracks in the folder, but not tracks outside the folder.

[Waterboy]

Go ahead! Good idea!

[Rufuss Sewell]

Ah... put the DRUMS inside the folder. I was putting everything else inside the folder. Ok, that'll work.

 

Waterboy. I'll give the other method a shot for sure, but it looks more suited to 1/4 note quantization. I work with a lot of metal bands so I'm constantly dealing with tempo and meter changes, triplets, 32nd notes. So an easy way to slice at transients is all I've been looking for. From there I just go through the song and quantize each section as needed.

 

I think my solution will be to do a pass for snares and another for kick. Then maybe the toms. All inside a folder to spare the other tracks. Thanks again to everyone for the great tips!

[Waterboy]

Not to act like a high school kid; but you and I do the same type of music .... dood!

Always cool to see another Logic user who is into Metal.

[davidpye]

I think my solution will be to do a pass for snares and another for kick. Then maybe the toms. All inside a folder to spare the other tracks. Thanks again to everyone for the great tips!

 

Just group the channels you want to detect transients for and it'll detect those transients only.

 

And yes, as previously mentioned, work INSIDE the folder and it won't affect the other tracks.

 

Also it sounds to me like the Multitrack drum quantize workflow is more suited to you. You can sense transients of as many tracks as you want with that and glue the resulting midi regions together, just make sure you don't have any notes TOO close together or it'll trip the beat mapping engine out.

[Rufuss Sewell]

As I said before, my 2005 era G5 is WAY TOO SLOW when grouping more than one channel for transient detection.

 

Also as I said before, I deal with lots of notes that are very close together, that's why I'm afraid of the other workflow. But I will give it a shot.