Basic Flex Time Editing

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Level 1

6 points

Basic Flex Time Editing

I think this is probably the most basic thing I could ask for help with regarding Flex Time. I have an audio track which is a recorded metronome click that I brought over from another DAW. It's in perfect time because it was generated by the DAW itself. At the end of my song, there's a ritard in the rest of the audio tracks, and I would like to slow the click track down to match. Right now the click track is not slowing down at all.

I used Beat Matching to align the tempo to the ritard, and Logic's internal metronone matches perfectly. Now I want the audio click track to match Logic's metronome. I figure I'd use Flex Time for this.

So I turn on Flex Time for the click track and after analyzing the track, Logic moves all of the clicks to a position that I would call "off-beat." This doesn't make sense to me because they were "on-the-beat" before -- from my perspective as a listener and also verifying visually.

I don't want to have to adjust every click. They were fine before. It's just the end that I want to adjust. What should I do?

Message was edited by: racingheart

MacBook Pro 17" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (late 2007), Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 9, 2011 2:25 AM

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Answer 1

racingheart Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 21, 2011 8:30 PM in response to racingheart

Is there anyone using Flex Time out there?

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Answer 2

seeren

Level 4

3,485 points

Feb 21, 2011 11:50 PM in response to racingheart

You could just bounce a new click...
Flex and tempo changes don't get along very well. One thing you could do is to cut the region right before the tempo change, then turn of flex for the first of the two new regions. This will at least isolate the problem to where the tempo change is.

But unless there is something special in the old click - since you say the Logic click is correct - just mute all tracks, make sure the click is on and bounce.

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Answer 3

Feb 22, 2011 5:31 AM in response to seeren

seeren's right... flex time and tempo changes = disaster.

If you need that click track to ritard with the pre-recorded tracks, personally, I would bounce it as an audio file (as suggested) and the last bar or two of the song, I'd make cuts right on the waveform transients of that click track, and MANUALLY move align them to the grid.

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Answer 4

racingheart Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 23, 2011 10:38 PM in response to Jim Frazier

Thanks guys. I wanted the particular click that I had because it was recorded in another program and I like the sound better. Now I know not to use Flex Time with tempo changes, but actually I can't imagine how the problem is with the tempo changes. The tempo change is not until the ritard at the very end of the song. Most of the song is a single tempo. Throughout the song, the recorded click is right on the beat or only very, very slightly behind (if I zoom way in and check). When I turn on Flex Time in slicing mode and quantize the audio, I would expect Logic to find all the click transients and probably not move them much at all or snap them right into place. Instead, Logic moves them all out of whack completely.. totally ruined. It's just so much the opposite of what I expect from Flex Time that I wonder how anyone can use it for Drum quantizing. How can it be any simpler than to quantize a click track?

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Answer 5

Feb 24, 2011 4:07 AM in response to Jim Frazier

hi jim,
how are ya?
anyway, just got me a new MacPro.
hmmmmmm.
udder dan de problems already stated here - you cannot move the anchor on a file with flextime engaged. it stays right at the start of da clip, mon.
lol.
sooo, my advice is to really plan to use flextime - don't just go gung-ho into it.
you'll be sorry.

actually, i'm pretty underwhelmed by these new machines.
sure, they do rendering faster and have more headroom 4 VI's and such, but once this one starts to
stress......?
and there's still bugs in here from logic 4.
what gives?
looks like i, for one, am still in the honeymoon period with this, and i don't think i'll be tying the knot anytime soon.
i pray to god every night now for a 3rd computer company dedicated to transparency, communication, debugging and un-bloating with there products.
j.

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Answer 6

Feb 24, 2011 5:36 AM in response to David Robinson9

david...good to see you here! It's been a while...

racingheart, I know it seems bizarre that a tempo change way at the end of the song would cause such ridiculous and disastrous results with the flex editing... my theory is that logic sees those tempo changes, no matter where they are, and tries to average them into an over all consistent tempo.

My advice would be, if all your tracks are audio files (in other words, there's no midi actually ritarding with the tempo change, just smpte lock all your audio regions, and delete the ritard in the tempo track. Then, at the end of the song, where the ritard occurs, delete FLEX markers to keep your drums retarding naturally, as they were played, or make cuts, and manually move transient hits around by small amounts, if needed (just for the last couple of bars where the ritard occurs)

Keep Logic at a constant tempo, and flex will work as expected... the key being, there can't be tempo change ANYWHERE in your tempo track.

It defies ALL Logic, and practical usefulness for FLEX audio to behave this way... I know. Just trying to help you use the functionality despite this serious handicap...

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Answer 7

racingheart Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 24, 2011 6:43 PM in response to Jim Frazier

Thanks for the advice. Whew...

In this case, I'll won't use Flex Time. I moved the clicks manually as you suggested (but kept my tempo changes, since Beat Mapping DOES actually work. Thank God.).

Not sure I'll use ever use Flex Time after this test. Apple makes such a big deal of Flex Time in the marketing videos, and it was one of the reasons I chose Logic Studio 9 over PT 9. I was excited to try it out.

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Answer 8

Rusty K

Level 1

8 points

Feb 24, 2011 8:51 PM in response to racingheart

No expert here but I saved a whole session that I thought was a goner by using Flex. My drum track was one stereo track. Admittedly after locking the drums I had to do a lot of hand manipulation of other tracks but it all fit together sweetly after that. To me Flex is amazing.

Not to be argumentative but what is so sacrosanct about a click track. Why not build a click track with ultrabeat and do your retard there?

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Answer 9

seeren

Level 4

3,485 points

Feb 25, 2011 1:26 AM in response to Rusty K

Rusty K wrote:
what is so sacrosanct about a click track. Why not build a click track with ultrabeat

Good point, but people can be picky when it comes to click tracks. I prefer a more drum sounding click that's lower in pitch, while a drummer I work with can't stand that and needs a more traditional higher pitched click.

You can adjust Klopfgeist to some extent, and you can also replace the instrument on the metronome channel with anything you please. You could, for instance, chop out a measure of the click you are trying to flex, create an EXS from that region, and move that instrument into the click slot (in the mixer choose the 'all' in the view buttons). You will need to move the zones around in the EXS editor, or change the notes the metronome plays. But now you have the old click and it will follow your tempo.

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Answer 10

Sep 19, 2012 12:33 PM in response to Jim Frazier

Nearly 2 years on and I concure Jim. Flextime is worse than useless . I'm prepping live 'not to click' band tracks for mix.

I tap in a manual click for the whole song, beatmap it and it works great.

Then , I foolishly think to myself, I'll just 'tighten up' the drums and bass a little using FutzTime and........DISASTER.

Anyone since Feb 2011 actually got Flex to work well in this way?

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Answer 11

Ed Egned

Level 1

94 points

Sep 20, 2012 2:46 AM in response to welshwiggle

For me FT is one of best thing, happened with Logic, just learn how to use it- it's brilliant !! Multitrack drum quantize- no competition around. Before FT i spend hours on drum editing- now few minutes.

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Answer 12

Sep 20, 2012 3:08 AM in response to Ed Egned

Well Ed,

Your response actually excites me as one of the great things about a discuss groups is we share our expertise where we're strong and get help where we're weak.

So would you mind sharing how you get flex to lock drumtracks that were NOT originally played to click.

In my current gig for example the band gradually speed up from 112 BPM thru 125 over a 5 minute live set.

If you can take me how you would make Flex work for you in this context you would bacome a hero here very quickly.

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Answer 13

Ed Egned

Level 1

94 points

Sep 20, 2012 12:15 PM in response to welshwiggle

At what point you get that big Disaster and what you want to do:

1) keep tempo changes in takt and just tighten bass to drums, or

2) make drums in constant tempo (for example 120bpm) and rerecord rest of instruments ( no big chances to quantize guitars in good quality so drastic ) ?

Both is possible.

Trick is to use audio editor for transient detection (treshold and some manual edition) let transients is 1/4 or 1/8 ( music, not grid)

Don't make tempo track, keep it constant.

1) For bass you can make quantize template from drums (kik track maybe) quantize bass with it. Don't forget about advanced quantization, Q-range. For bass, probably, best will be monophonic flex mode.

2)For drums best is slicing.

Start with setting mid tempo of song, then match bar count of song with actual in grid by flex stretching of wole tracks, ( if your song f.e. 200 bars in music, let it is 200 bars by grid).

It is good idea bounce tracks in place now, then edit transients and quantize as always. Probably you will need some manual edition , cuz 112- 125 that a lot.

Best luck and sorry my bad English !

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Answer 14

ZXC

Level 2

188 points

Sep 20, 2012 3:21 PM in response to welshwiggle

welshwiggle wrote:

I tap in a manual click for the whole song, beatmap it and it works great.

Then , I foolishly think to myself, I'll just 'tighten up' the drums and bass a little using FutzTime and........DISASTER.

Anyone since Feb 2011 actually got Flex to work well in this way?

Hi,

I don't think there's a need to add a manual click to make this work. Just do the beat mapping before you do anything else (no Flex active, no tempo changes added to the files from previous attempts of making this work etc).

For simplicty, please try this with only one track:

Record something without a click in an empty song.

Use Beat Mapping to make the grid match the audio, and BIP (Bounce-In-Place) that file.

Now, try to correct the hits that ar still out of time, using Flex and either the quantize function or manually edit the regions.

If this doesn't work as expected, what exactly goes wrong?

Note that if you totally beat map the region (every note in the region) befor eyou quantize, quantie won't do anyhting, because all the notes atcually already match the grid - as a result of the beat mapping.

If you explain actually what you want to do - and what goes wrong, it will be easier to help you out.

ETA - the reason I don't think adding a manually played click before you start the quantizing process is a good idea is that such a click rack will add small timing changes. As a result of this, Logic will, when quantizing, try to move a lot of notes to your click ven if they were perfectly fine, simply because your click positions aren't identical to the original note positions.

Message was edited by: ZXC

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Answer 15

Sep 20, 2012 3:31 PM in response to ZXC

Thanks Ed and Double thanks ZXC

I actually found this 3 year old article and I'm working thru it now

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3855

The painful thing is it appears to be transient by transient MANUALLY which is a drag

Any 2012 updates on how Logic might do this better now?

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