Workflow for song analysis & instrument practice in Logic

[PhaseRoll]

I've been dabbling in recording with Logic for some time, and am also a guitar student. Until recently I've been using dedicated apps (Capo, Transcribe) for slowed playback while learning pieces and practicing. Both of those apps I mentioned are great and fulfill a definite need for music students who don't have a DAW. However, these programs are obviously somewhat limited compared to Logic, and with these limitations becoming increasingly irksome over time I finally bit the bullet and worked out a workflow that I'm quite happy with for song analysis and practice in Logic (which I'm using anyway). Many of the pieces of this approach were gleened from this forum, so I thought I'd post my overall solution in hopes that it could be useful to someone and also perhaps I'll get suggestions on how to make it cleaner.

 

Transcription apps typically provide some basic spectral analysis (to identify notes) and the ability to change playback speed without altering pitch. This is great, but I was after a number of additional capabilities including:

 

- ability to work out the bar structure of a song, with time signature changes, resulting in a proper click/metronome track

- the ability to define multiple, possibly overlapping, regions for looped playback of difficult phrases during practice

- something that would allow me to use a recording imported from iTunes as a scaffold to learn the song and potentially record a full cover version

 

Obviously the last is what really indicates Logic as the solution for this, but the other things are also really nice for song analysis and practicing. I tested out this approach using Pink Floyd's "Money", as I wanted to learn the guitar solo and the song is in a combination of 7/4 and 4/4 time. It also has some non-melodic content at the beginning, and seems too complex for automatic beat mapping to work (maybe I did something wrong - suggestions welcome if that should have worked).

 

Here are the steps I've used:

 

1) Select desired song in iTunes, ctrl-click > "Show in Finder"

 

2) Drag m4a version of the song into Logic's Arrange window such that the musical content of interest starts on the *third* bar (the initial bars will be used to create a "count-in" for playback, which is helpful when practicing)

 

3) Create a software instrument track that will be used for tapping out the song's tempo. I found TR-808 works great, using the 808 Rimshot (C#1) for my click.

 

4) You may want to pull down the level of the audio source file to hear the click track better (I found -10dB worked well); obviously you could also boost the TR-808 track, or may not care if you hear the click as long as you're tapping in time. I use a KORG padKontrol for tapping.

 

5) Make sure "Click while recording" is off, cycle mode should also be off - can be useful to use left locator as a visual marker for beginning of actual music if track starts with non-musical/rhythmic sounds (so you know when to start tapping - the cash register sounds at beginning of "Money" are on tempo, which helped in this case)

 

6) Start recording and tap out every quarter note in the song.

 

7) Before the following steps, select the MIDI region of your click track and the audio region of the source song, and select Region > Lock SMPTE Position (this will keep audio and click track in sync during subsequent tempo changes)

 

8) Set the initial time signature to the correct value in the Signature Global Track

 

9) Enable display of Beat Mapping Global Track (View > Configure Global Tracks)

 

10) Select the MIDI region with your click track and start dragging from the "bar nodes" in the Beat Mapping track to the appropriate MIDI events from your click track. I found it was sufficient to just match the beginning of each bar to the corresponding click event.

 

11) When you reach any points where the time signature changes, beat-match up to the end of the last bar with the old signature, put the playhead at the beginning of the new bar, and enter the new time signature in the transport bar.

 

12) When you finish matching all the beats and entering time signature changes as needed, the tempo should be properly adjusted over the whole song and you should find that the metronome clicks in correct time, including emphasis on first beat, throughout.

 

13) You can create up to nine sets of markers using the different "Alternatives" from the popup button in the Marker Global Track header. For example, #1 can be verse/chorus/bridge/etc; #2 can be solo1/solo1; #3 can be used to select particularly difficult or subtle phrases for analysis and practice… Marker regions make it really easy to loop different sections of the song for practice - as noted below, Varispeed can be used to slow things down as needed (not that Money has such a blisteringly fast guitar solo…)

 

14) Optional: I like to have a one bar count-in for practicing, and the initial empty bars make this fairly easy. Because the Beat Mapped tempos are likely to start just at the beginning of the musical content, earlier bars will still be at the default tempo of the Logic project. You can just change the tempo in the bar preceding the music (bar 2 if you left two empty bars as suggested in step 2) to the same value as the first musical bar (by dragging the blue tempo line in the Tempo Global Track), but then all subsequent bars will be shifted as a consequence. The solution to this is to adjust the tempo of bar 1 in the opposite direction as needed to bring the start of the first musical bar back into sync with your click track.

 

15) Unlock SMPTE Position for the MIDI and audio regions in preparation for the next step

 

16) Now you can remove any unwanted bars at the beginning, such as the first bar discussed above for balancing a tempo change in the second bar (for a count-in). To do this, use "Edit > Cut/Insert Time > Snip: Cut section between locators". This will correctly shift all tempo, signature, audio, and midi information to the left. As described here, we end up with a one bar count-in followed by the song. The only thing that is not shifted by this are the Beat Nodes in the Beat Mapping Global Track. This will now look "wrong", as the MIDI click events you tapped in will be shifted to the left but not the beat mapping nodes. This is not a huge deal as theoretically the tempo is already set and *will* be shifted correctly. However you should make sure any tweaking of the Beat Map is done before this step or it will get messy.

 

16) Best of all is that, even though each bar may have a slightly different tempo (needed to keep things in sync), Varispeed will work perfectly with all this and the internal metronome will play in sync with the source audio at any modified tempo.

 

17) It can also be useful to globally adjust the pitch of a song, independently of the tempo. For example to bring a piece within vocal range for singing (Karaoke here we come!) This can easily be achieved by adding the "Pitch Shifter II" plugin as an insert on the output channel. It could also go on the input track with the source audio, but if you've added any other elements in other tracks then putting the shifter on the output should apply the shift to everything. Set the mix to 100% wet, and adjust the pitch shift to the desired number of semitones.

 

If you don't need the internal metronome or care about bar structure, it's enough to just drag the song into Logic, create different Marker sets for parts of the song you want to focus on, and use Varispeed to slow it down. This scarcely takes more time than a dedicated transcription app - note that one advantage of these apps is that they generally won't create a copy of the source audio file on disk, saving space over the Logic approach above (which creates a copy of the audio file). This is why m4a is the preferred format (of formats used in iTunes) - for learning a lossy compressed copy would probably also be fine if disk space is an issue.

 

Hopefully this is helpful to someone - if there are features or tricks I've overlooked would be happy to hear.

 

PR

Edited March 9, 2013 by PhaseRoll

[ski]

FWIW, the sound effects intro of Money is in 7/4 just like the musical intro that follows.

[Eric Cardenas]

Hopefully this is helpful to someone - if there are features or tricks I've overlooked would be happy to hear.

 

Thanks for sharing your workflow PR!

 

FWIW, the sound effects intro of Money is in 7/4 just like the musical intro that follows.

 

 

Do you remember the post when someone was saying it was 7/8 because Roger Waters said it is?

[ski]

Do you remember the post when someone was saying it was 7/8 because Roger Waters said it is?

Didn't see that one.

[Eric Cardenas]

Do you remember the post when someone was saying it was 7/8 because Roger Waters said it is?

Didn't see that one.

 

Found it:

 

Pink Floyd: Money - A songwriting arrangement analysis

[PhaseRoll]

Thanks for the replies - didn't mean to respark the 7/4 vs. 7/8 thing! That's just what made this song useful for working out the workflow... 7/4 seems to work pretty well. I'd noted the intro was also on tempo, which made it a bit easier...

[ski]

Oh gawd! Just scrolling through that made my eyes water(s).

 

[ahem]

 

[PhaseRoll]

Oh gawd! Just scrolling through that made my eyes water(s).

 

[ahem]

 

 

The time signature debate, or my long-winded workflow?

 

I made it even a bit longer with an edit to mention you can globally pitch shift all tracks by putting Pitch Shift II on the output strip. I know this is probably obvious to most here, but took me a bunch of time to figure that out...

 

On the topic of Pink Floyd time signatures, my next project is "Mother" which I found a lot trickier than "Money". In Money, both 7/4 and 7/8 work fine for purposes of beat mapping (the metronome emphasis actually sounds a bit more appropriate with 7/4, regardless of what Roger Waters has said). "Mother" starts with something like 5/8 and seems to switch right away to 4/4 - Wikipedia's entry on the song notes that Nick Mason gave up trying to drum it, and had a session drummer do it.

[ski]

Oh gawd! Just scrolling through that made my eyes water(s).

 

[ahem]

 

 

The time signature debate, or my long-winded workflow?

 

Both.

 

 

 

 

Just kidding, though I have to say, I think you'd be MUCH better off in the long run learning how to do all this by ear with the aid of ear and rhythm training. People have been doing it this way for years, if not centuries, and it's very effective . Not that computers shouldn't be used, but with actual training by a human being you'll learn a lot more and what you learn will be more meaningful. For example, you said that either 7/8 or 7/4 work for Money. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, why not 7/2 or 7/16? You're not going to know the answer to why one is preferable to another from Logic.

 

Regarding Mother... It's a tricky one, but here's another situation where it matters how it's written out if you want to discuss it with other musicians or play it with other musicians. Below is a transcription of the time signatures for the first part of the song. Where you see "?" are theoretical alternatives for how to write out the time sigs, but all all cases, only one is preferable.

 

5/8 (1x, Mother do you think...)

4/4 or 8/8 (4x)

5/8

4/4 or 8/8 (4x)

4/4 or 8/8 (1x)

4/4 or 8/8 (2x)

7/4 (or) 4/4 + 3/4 (or) 4/4 + 6/8

 

(yes, that's a test )

[PhaseRoll]

Just kidding, though I have to say, I think you'd be MUCH better off in the long run learning how to do all this by ear with the aid of ear and rhythm training. You'll learn a lot more that way, and what you learn will be more meaningful. For example, you said that either 7/8 or 7/4 work for Money. Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, why not 7/2 or 7/16? You're not going to know the answer to why one is preferable to another from Logic.

 

Point taken that technology can sometimes be too much of a crutch, and agree that it's good to sit with the guitar and a simple player *away* from the computer... Especially for song analysis, which really just needs your ears and an audio player. Still, recording stuff has played an important role in helping me progress, and within limits I think bringing the workflows together has some inherent value. I generally do try to work out the rhythms away from the computer, but learning how to set up the tempos in logic has been a good exercise.

 

Regarding your test, I have to say I'm still trying to work that one out in a convincing way... I'm inclined to go with 5/8 to 4/4, but have to think a bit more...

 

PR