How to Align Old Analog Track inside Logic Pro

The problem you will probably run into here, as you may have already discovered, is that tape speed fluctuates. It's usually a small amount, but definitely enough to not be "rock solid". Your guitar and vocal tracks may appear to be in a consistent tempo, but they are most likely drifting.

I'm assuming the tape was striped with SMPTE time code, and the computer played back the MIDI tracks by chasing the time code from the tape machine?

Do you know the original tempo of the original sequence? Even if you did, clock rates may be different, and a tempo of 100 BPM's on that sequencer may differ slightly from Logic's internal metronome.

If it were me, I would try and determine the approximate tempo from the original recording, and lay down a solid 2 bar drum or perc loop. Then, go in, and either using FLEX time, or a simple "cut and nudge" approach, manually get the vocals and guitars to play with the new loop, which is at a solid consistent tempo.

Being that it's vocals and guitars, you may be able to get away with it being a little "loose", but you should be able to nudge things around until it feels right.

rockfort wrote:
I have an old song that was recored on a hybrid Analog-MIDI setup so it really did no conform to an internal clock(I was not aware back in 89 I let the tape machine trigger the MIDI back then). I have now imported the analog vocals and solo guitar tracks in order to lay new instrument track to them. Is there a tool inside Logic Pro 9 That will allow me to set the imported vocal (and solo guitar tracks) to conform the _*internal metronome/clock*_ so that I can then lay new drums etc and all be in *perfect time?*

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

There is no easy way. You'll have to do it manually, bar by bar.

Or try to do a bunch of tryouts with the audio quantize function... but I warn you the results will not be good, since it is not big transient tracks.

If I were you, I'd do it once manually, until you are very happy with where things lay, and then record new material.

Cheers

I did that a lot in the 80s/90s and plan to do that again as I get me a Tascam ATR60/8. I transferred tracks the other day but even having an Unitor8 to manage the SMPTE I decided to transfer the tracks on the fly (SMPTE included, just in case). As sometimes SMPTE gave me problems back then I always recorded a reference track for restoring sync in case SMPTE failed. I used it once transferred to automatically detect tempo and fluctuations. Worked perfectly. Maybe you have some beats recorded you can use. Or you can record a manual click, correct it to "perfection" and use it to calculate the original tempo with fluctuations. Once you have that you can use flex to force a "fixed tempo" if that´s what you´re after. I´d stick in the step before, but that´s me 🙂
Another option would be find an approx. tempo, chop them and trigger the parts "more or less in time with the new beats and adjust from there. It depends if the material is continuous or has gaps.

Time is money, as they say. Wondering if it would be worth your while to hunt down (i.e., buy or rent) a SMPTE Slave Driver ("SSD") or a similar device, and, a MIDI interface (such as the Unitor8) that will accept a SMPTE input. The SSD would read SMPTE and adjust the wordclock rate to match the wow/flutter in the playback. The SMPTE-reading interface would keep Logic sync'd with the timecode on tape.

Alternately, you could forego the SSD and just get an interface that follows SMPTE, recording the audio "wild" against the constant wordclock of your audio system. That'd be better than nothing and it could potentially save you dozens of hours of work and all of the second-guessing that comes with manually creating clicks and timestretching.