Video: Drum Editing in Logic March 11, 2008
Posted by ConnorSmith in : Editing, Logic Studio 8, Videos , trackbackNow that you learned how to group your tracks together in Logic Pro (by watching the video posted right below this one) you are ready to edit drums. I cover two types of drum editing. First, I show you how to edit multitrack drums (with a group) to fix timing issues/errors. Then, I show you how to disable the group to edit individual tracks to remove pops, clicks, false hits… etc.
Transcript:
Now that all of our drums are grouped together, we are ready to edit drums in Logic Pro. Let’s go into the arrange window with [key command] Apple+1. Now before you start editing, look at a couple things. First, in the upper right hand corner [of the arrange window], there is the drag menu. There are five different options, but I am going to suggest crossfade (X-Fade) simply because, that means when you make edits and regions overlap, Logic will automatically draw crossfades in. Also, there are three different cursor (or mouse) options. There are choices for left click, command+click, and right click. I am OK with my left click on the pointer tool for selecting and dragging regions, and my right click is on the scissors tool for making edits, but I am going to change my command+click to the text tool (rather than the Marquee). That way, if I need to rename any audio regions, I can do it pretty easily. In the bottom right hand corner of the arrange window, click the waveform zoom button. You will notice a slider appears. By moving the slider up and down, it will increase and decrease the individual waveform zoom on each track. That’s really helpful when you are editing drums, because you can see the transient peaks a lot better. So let’s leave some zoom on. Ok, lets listen to the drums and find a spot that needs an edit. There’s one. Here, that kick drum that hits when the guitars come back in sounds like it is a little bit early. For those of you who don’t know, to zoom in and out, click your cursor in the timeline, and then either move your mouse up to zoom out, or down to zoom in. Now, we know that kick drum is early. So, lets zoom in on it both horizontally and vertically. Since our tracks are grouped together, if you zoom in on one track, they will all zoom the same. So, put your cursor in the bottom left hand corner of the track name, and click and drag downwards. Notice all of the drums zoom in together (since they are in a group). To make edit points, we have our right click assigned to the scissors tool, so that’s going to be very fast. Make an edit point right before the kick drum starts. And make another edit point somewhere before the next transient. In this case, its our next snare hit. Now just drag to the right. As a reference point, look down here. The guitars and bass all start a little bit later than the kick drum. So if we can edit our kick to start when they do, it will probably fix the problem. Logic is a little confused about how to display our crossfade since the way the regions overlap, but click in there regions over here [to the right], and the crossfade is fixed. Now drag back with the edge edit tool. That will appear automatically if you put your cursor near the end of a waveform. And Logic automatically put in a crossfade on those regions. Let’s zoom out and listen to that. Its a lot better, let’s listen one more time. Great. Now there’s one more type of editing you may have to do when one drum has a little “bop” [artifact] in it, whether the drummer hits the mic or the cable got kicked, and you don’t want to edit all your drums at once. I have an instance of this over here in my low tom. Where the cable must have gotten stepped on or something. Listen to the nasty noise in the left channel. Hear that? And you can actually see it [the noise]. Now, we just want to edit our low tom, so we need to disable the “ALL DRUMS” group. Lets go into the mixer window with Apple+2. And just like we did before, highlight all your drums, and in the group selection box, just go to “No Group”. That will disable the group. OK, back to the Arrange window with Apple+1. Let’s just edit that noise out completely. So, using your scissors tool, make an edit right before that nasty noise and right after it. Click [select it] and delete with the delete key. Lets see how that sounds. That’s a lot better. Now if you are getting pops and clicks, you are going to need to use the fade tool to fade in and out at your edit points. Now you know how to edit multitrack drums all at one time, and you know how to go in and do “surgical strikes” on bad noises on individual drum tracks.
C
The Studio Files
Comments»
Great stuff Connor.
How do you get the scissor tool (right-click, correct?) to “scrub” over the audio before selecting the exact edit point?
Oh, yeah I should have explained that.
When using the scissors tool, if you HOLD right click and move your mouse, it will “scrub” the audio while moving the edit point. Then, when you find where you want to make the edit, just let go.
Can’t seem to get the edge edit tool to appear when I move to the end of the waveform, any further explanation on that feature or any other way to fill in those gaps left by editing?
Thanks for all these great videos!
I was too hasty posting the question….it only appears in the lower corner of the waveform. Still…thanks for the great videos!
Do you think you’ll make a more in depth video? I would really need this type of videos. The drum editing process is really hard.