Editing Rhythm Guitars w/ Flex Time For Project Perfect Tempo

00:00 - Intro
2:13 - Trying to add Drummer, but doesn’t line up
5:00 - Identifying timing discrepancies w/ Metronome
5:56 - Identifying variable tempo w/ Smart Tempo Editor
7:28 - Enabling Flex Time for rhythm guitar
8:46 - How to Fix Audio Regions That Change Tempo on their own
10:33 - How to Flex timing of rhythm guitar
11:25 - Why not use Quantize in region inspector?
14:12 - Flexing commences (in fast-forward)
14:35 - Watch out - what to do when audio starts to cramp while Flexing
17:07 - Refining Project Tempo to reduce effects of Flexing
18:10 - Listening to the results of Flexing
20:13 - Don’t Forget to Flex Your Other Audio Tracks!
21:22 - Next Week: Beat-mapping with Smart 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.

[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.

[Christer_Englund]

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

[jasonhe]

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

[davide.]

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!

[hannahshipman]

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

[Agam_Abhi]

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

[michaelneal]

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

[markotten]

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.

[andrewharman]

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

[guzzoofoz]

Very informative and I like your presentation. Thanks. 🙏

[realrobarmus]

Great video, super helpful, entertaining and fun!

[MickBrownFolksinger]

Fabulous video, well done on explaining so well

[rahulrawat]

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😇

[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.

[Samvardhan]

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)?

[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...

[TheDoodostudio]

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

[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 :-)