Editing Rhythm Guitars w/ Flex Time For Project Perfect Tempo

[@weschilton]

Great demonstration of Flex Time for sure, but it should not have had to have been this drastic. I'm glad you pointed out at the end how much editing work it would take to salvage this recording. The real lesson to learn here is that the guitarist clearly did not pick a tempo or use any kind of rhythmic reference to lock to, and can't play in time well enough with out it. They're just winging it and paying no attention to the tempo chosen for the song. I could hear the time shifting within the first few beats--even without a click (and you can see it in the waveform as well). What's more frustrating is that they then apparently blame the issue on Logic (Logic isn't "keeping up" with me) which they clearly don't know how to use well enough to edit their own performance... Hence this video. This is a fundamental issue with a lot of people getting into music. This supposition that you don't have to practice and develop BASIC musical skills because software will just "fix it" for you. Like becoming a competent musician is somehow "gatekeeping." Yes... I have heard people make that ridiculous statement when confronted with their lack of basic skills. What the guitarist SHOULD have done, is gone back and re-recorded this part with a tempo reference to lock to. Even if they weren't perfectly in time, it would have been a much less invasive edit. They would have then also gained experience in developing their timekeeping skills. Not to mention having significantly less to edit, since everything else would have been built on a solid foundation. I understand that some people don't like playing to a click... however, there is an unwarranted stigma surrounding the use of a click as though its "cheating" or "destroys the feel," and yet people will happily quantize and auto-tune their performances! But the reality is, when you are recording alone, layering instruments into the recording, you HAVE to have some kind of tempo reference... whether its a click, a Drummer track, some percussion part or even another recorded part *that is IN TIME.* Otherwise, you get THIS chaotic mess that requires a lot of editing experience and potentially hours of editing. Or that may not be salvageable at all. Relying on DAW tricks like this to "fix" significant problems... like not being able to play in time... is a crutch. A shovel used to bury the functional issue that needs to be addressed. Playing in time is a fundamental musical skill every musician needs to develop in order to make music well.

[@markvanhorne3276]

Hence the saying “Before there was ProTools there were Pros.”

[@rinkydinky-ob9pe]

Absofreakinlutely !

[@saggygnaw]

I feel bad for any competent human drummers he’s played with…

[@thejameslealartco.7625]

Same

[@michaelneal900]

I've used flex on rhythm tracks to varying degrees of success. Sometimes it works, sometimes it sounds bad.

[@jeffrey.a.hanson]

Sometimes it’s best to just warm up those fingers and nail the part. Flex struggles with any legato and needs a push/pull feature like drummer has. It wants to align with the initial attack of a chord, but that’s not always correct. Then when it gets it correct it chops it up 😔. Flex frustrates me lol.

[@DavidFell]

I agree it’s a great feature. My years-old Apogee Duet supports this and I use it all the time. When the time comes to replace it, this is among the features I will look for.

[@andrewharman6861]

you are the man May I be allowed to give another solution to this guitar track, obviously the guitarist here is competent but often when laying down distorted guitar tracks such as this with only a metronome click as a guide you can lose it especially as in this case you get into the groove and get a little carried away,, the best solution or prevention to this is: Lay down a rough 44 rock drum guide track and play along to that. Sometimes the simple option is the way to go and I really felt sorry for you as it looked like a real headache of an edit I think for this particular one as the old saying goes prevention is far better than cure looking forward to the next video with anticipation but on the beat

[@davide2.07]

I love logic (and I’m looking forward to next week’s lesson) but warp mode in Ableton saves me hours of this post editing work. Both softwares have great pros and cons, and I tend to use both for the same song. Great lesson btw; thank you!

[@Agam_Abhi]

You really saved my project ...you have very Nic e explaining skills. Than k you so much..

[@Christer_Englund]

Thank you!! Learnt a lot from this video, super helpful! Looking forward to the next one!!

[@jasonhe6947]

That's such a great tutorial. Thank you so much for making things easy to follow yet very informative.

[@markotten1755]

Excellent video as always Chris! What I’ve been doing is take a performence like that into a new project, let Logic figure out the tempo variations project-wide (Adaptive Tempo), activate Flex Time and then remove all the tempo changes so it flexes to one tempo. Then possibly bounce that. Might be a nice alternative to (a large part of) the manual stuff.

[@3x157]

Master class. Thank you.

[@hannahshipman]

Your videos are always helpful, but this was JUST what I need! Thanks!

[@rahulrawat2539]

Thank you the all the video. I recently shift myself from garageband to logic and your video help me lot. btw im not a professional producer, i’m just a learner😇

[@WhyLogicProRules]

So happy to help!

[@testtubebabyca]

This was super helpful, thanks!

[@audiocircleband]

if you have an area of the tempo that wants to suddenly play on the off beats and then back on the beat. How can you adjust the tempo to match and stay on the beat. It seems that when you do anything to correct tempo it screws up everything we just did. Followup. I figured out that after you do everything you showed us . you then have to bounce the tracks in place so that the new tempo clock data is baked into the track. Then you can edit the tracks with flex etc and it will work great for you.

[@Samvardhan15]

This was really helpful! Could you please do one for more complex guitars such as lead guitar parts or fingerpicking patterns on acoustic, and more specifically how to align these things when doing a double take(for hard left and right pan)?

[@realrobarmus]

Great video, super helpful, entertaining and fun!

[@seanohaimheirgin1047]

Very nicely done, thank you 🙂

[@MickBrownFolksinger]

Fabulous video, well done on explaining so well

[@TheDoodostudio]

Thanks very much, Chris! This is super useful! I'm looking forward to the opposite, as my drummer do not play on click.

[@guzzoofoz]

Very informative and I like your presentation. Thanks. 🙏

[@bruceskelton8160]

I have tried this and failed. This helps so much. Thanks!

[@Half_Plus_Seven]

Super helpful!

[@quezster]

I'm excited about your next video on Flexing! This was a timely revisiting of the topic for me. Does KEEP/ADAPT potentially have bearing on projects like this? Seems like there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Is it true that some functions like Q-strength-in Inspector>Region or Inspector>Track-are disabled when Flex-time is enabled? Was unable to tell because the More... section was collapsed in the video. Also it appears that Flex-time and Flex-pitch are mutually exclusive.

[@BrianHuether]

Is there no way for Logic to use the beats you identified in a track with Smart Tempo and then set those as Flex markers? Seems there should be automatic way to conform a recording to a grid if Smart Tempo let you place beats in a file that match where beats are in the project... This is what I am trying to do. Basically a function equivalent to "Convert Beat Markers to Flex Markers." Then as long as your beat markers are divided in some logical way (beats, eighth notes, etc), should actually be straightforward to have a function "Conform Region to Selection", where you would then specify a resolution (beat, etc). This would be awesome...

[@Sjarlewietjen]

Very good explanation! Thx

[@RichieWynne]

My friend has trouble playing to a click (or even sometimes keeping to the time signature, never mind the tempo). For me, some grunt work to get his guitar strums/notes and vocals into time is a given and Flex-time is a (time sucking) godsend. It's weird - playing in a band he's fine. I find that because of his performances, simply applying Quantize to detected Flex transients doesn't cut the mustard. One thing/trick I have to do is create a blank region later in the track and join it to the original recording so I get a long enough region to make flex edits in, otherwise the region length demands the end of the performance becomes very fast. EDIT: I'll try moving the end transient marker to save me faffing with the extra blank region - thanks Chris :-)

[@scottm8285]

My only suggestion for this is to use a simple drummer track instead of a click. I play way better to that than to a click.

[@heyyypatrick]

100K! CONGRATS!

[@WhyLogicProRules]

Thank you so much!!! I’ve been sitting here waiting to see the number roll over :) Very much appreciated, video to come!

[@heyyypatrick]

@@WhyLogicProRules been following you since the beginning, very well deserved Chris! Your tutorials are top notch and have helped so many people!

[@21stCenturySin]

If you make Flex edits to a track, do you need to keep Flex enabled so the track plays with your edits? Or will your edits be saved & play if you disable Flex for the track after editing? Do you need to bounce the track with Flex enabled to get the edits saved to the track?

[@soureel]

Very interesting. So what about a situation where I'm using variable tempo backing tracks (karaoke-version) where each instrument track DOES adhere to the variable tempo click track, but I want everything to adjust to a fixed project tempo?

[@michaelvarney.]

No click track when recording parts?

[@ssuraea]

Hmmm. Any reason you didn't just open the rhythm guitar in edit, choose Smart tempo, analyse the track and then choose "Apply Project Tempo to Region and downbeat"? That's what I do and it seems to work automatically.

[@girotto5467]

is it true that ableton live warp audio algorithm is better then logic?

[@dan44762000]

Awesome video but just more proof that when learning guitar always always always practice to a metronome, it’s so important, this person on guitar would stand no chance playing live with a band

[@redguitar6062]

Is it possible (or even necessary) to hard print the flex edited audio into the project?

[@thesullivanstreetproject]

One thing you can do is bounce the track in place, and that will burn the edits into the audio file.

[@redguitar6062]

@@thesullivanstreetproject I though of that but it just seems out that there is no way to print once happy. I suppose this way you alwaysa have access to the original recording, warts an' all.😀

[@berkaydemiralp]

[@markvanhorne3276]

I must be missing something. Wouldn’t it be easier to re-record the guitar track with a metronome or drum track so it’s right? Seems like a lot of work to adjust every strum. What is the advantage of this method?

[@NaweedQadirdotcom]

The most significant advantage is when the guitarist is not available, or the tracking is done in a studio that cannot be booked again due to shift availability or financial reason, or simply the guitarist can't keep up with the metronome or tempo.

[@harveydean7952]

Yeah, this is totally stupid way to go about things. Surely you'd create the drummer track first, find something that roughly fits with want you want to play on guitar and then play along with the drummer track recording your guitar parts afterwards.

[@wglotz]

Lots of great info in your videos but PLEASE enlarge you cursor and give it some bright color . You know where you are moving it to, but we can't read you mind.

[@scottm8285]

The example from the get go would be an automatic re-record for me. Don't get me wrong ... I prefer my recordings to sound alive and I don't want them to be perfectly on the grid at all times, but this is waaaay off. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time trying to fix such a lousy performance.

[@Jesuslovesyou1993]

its a easiest way

[@sendforacar9323]

Why don't you save Jim a lot of time and hassle and just tell him to play to a click track? Why go through this rigmarole when you can just do it right the first time?

[@peterbondy]

There are many answers to your comment. For someone like me for example who’s a keyboard player who likes to add guitar parts it’s because I can’t play the guitar that well and pretty much always have to adjust what is otherwise exactly what I want. We live in an age of the DAW and that means people who aren’t necessarily 100% proficient with an instrument can still create music and write parts that are outside their area of expertise. Not to mention the ability to change the tempo of a track after you’ve started and being able to adjust already recorded parts to work with the new tempo. There are a myriad of reasons why this function exists and why it’s used often.

[@dan44762000]

Correct, some people are lazy or never bothered to practice with a metronome so literally can’t play along to one

[@cbrooks0905]

It depends on the genre and/or feel/intention of the song. I’ve done productions where a click track is necessary, and I’ve done productions where a more natural ebb and flow is necessary.

[@Hammerman48]

You might have a live rehearsal track that you want to add stuff too……most drummers live will vary slightly.

[@michaelneal900]

God I hate these stupid drummer names. They have no use.

[@bratvasea230]

Why the author is stick to 108 bpm? It’s obvious that the recording is about 115 bpm, why don’t just set the correct bpm and quantise, without applying such dramatic and drastic editing?