20 Pro Audio Editing Tips For Logic Pro

Get a clean, tidy and punchy session with these editing tips!

If you work with audio good editing is crucial to a tidy session, a good mix and punchy master.  It’s something that is easy to overlook because let’s face it editing audio is ..well.. pretty dull!  Help is here though as Mastering In Logic guides you through some pro tips that will keep your music in check, tidy and sounding great. What I can do for you is make it any less boring for you but I’ll try!

NUMBER ONE – Cut in the right place

We know a waveform form rolls up and down like, well, a wave but if you zoom right in on that waveform you’ll notice the 0 crossing point where the wave meets the centre line.  Make you cuts here at the 0 crossing point and you’ll have less chance of the part clicking or popping. Better still if there space between where the waveform is silent for a period of time make your cut there and you’ll be sure to have made a ‘safe’ cut.

But, I hear you cry what about if you can’t cut at the 0 crossing point. Don’t worry the next tip deals with that one!

NUMBER TWO – Fades and Cross Fades

If you need to cut or split the audio and the join two parts together and the audio pops because the waveforms end abruptly then Logic’s crossfade tool is the perfect fix and will eliminate the pop. It’s a great way to join two parts together without having to worry about a nasty pop poking through in the middle of your masterpiece.

NUMBER THREE – Cross Fade Curves

When you have fixed the pop you might find the two audio parts that have been joined together momentarily dip in volume. This could be for two reasons: first the fade you created might be too wide and may only need to be right around the join, second the curve might wrong.  You can adjust the curve of the fade by clicking in the fade area and dragging the fade tool left and right.  This will change the shape and centre point of the curve giving you maximum control over how the fade interacts with the audio.

Get the fade width and shape perfect and no one will ever know you edited the part.

 

NUMBER FOUR – Vocal Editing

When I record a vocalist or receive vocal files for mixing I rarely use a gate.  Gates can be problematic in that they aren’t always perfect, excluding automating a gate it’s a static process.  It usually set at one level and then triggered by the set threshold.  This is fine but you can running in too all sorts of problems, the gate can stutter the vocal if the vocal part is triggered multiple times around the threshold, it might remove every breath in the part but didn’t want every breath to be removed, it might cut parts of the actual vocal that you don’t want cut.  I think you get the where I’m goin with this!

Editing and cutting the waveform is a much better way of doing things, yes it takes longer but the result is much better.  You can remove all the unwanted stuff but leave the bits you need to create the final vocal sound. I find being able to control what breaths I do and don’t keep really helps add to the vocal performance so editing the audio rather than gating is the best way to go for most situations.

NUMBER FIVE – Vocal comping

Speaking of vocals comping is a great way to speed up you work flow and Logic’s comp function is absolutely fab!  When you are recording and you want to create multiple takes in order to choose the best one set up a loop region and hit record. Logic automatically creates a Take Folder, which gives you the ability to quickly and easily pick the best composite take of your performance.  Like editing an audio file make sure your comp crossovers are sounding natural.  Logic does however automatically create the cross fades for you which is jolly nice of them to do that!

NUMBER SIX – Double your audio

This works especially well on guitars and vocals, for guitars it’s the classic big double tracked rock guitar sound and for vocals it’s the classic big pop sound. Aside from simply re-recording and double tracking a part you can also make a part bigger by simply duplicating to a new track as long as you follow a few rules.

When you duplicate an audio file to a new track it can cause phase cancellation, which can be a massive pain in the buttocks but if you warp, distort, change the character of the double audio you can quickly create a new sound that adds to the original.

Let take a vocal as an example: say you want double it to a new track to add more flavour to the original part you could apply a low cut filter, add some clip distortion to bring out different frequencies (which helps to avoid phase) and finally add some subtle modulation such as a chorus to spread the sound and give it movement.  Double audio is a great way to fatten up your music and provides scope for new and creative approaches.

NUMBER SEVEN – Selection-Based Processing

With Logic Pro X 10.3 came Selection-based Processing.  It’s a super feature that allows you to take any audio file and shape the file in any way you want with what ever combination of plugins you choose to use.  So you might be thinking what does this have to do with top pro tips on editing?  Well changing the sound of an audio file is to some degree considered editing, your taking a part and changing it in some way.

For example you could use Selection-based Processing to highlight one part of an audio file with the marque tool and process it with the Tremelo plugin creating a stuttering effect for the region or portion of the region selected, thus the file has been edited.

I would highly recommend you dive in to the Selection-based Processing tool and see how far you can push your creative boundaries!

 

 

NUMBER EIGHT – Use the Gain Feature

Another new addition to Logic Pro X came with the ability to increase the decrease the gain of an individual audio region.  This isn’t new to other DAWs but was long overdue in for Logic.  It’s a massive time saver and is perfect for making a part more consistent before reaching for the compressor.

For example a singer may sing a lead vocal with the odd word and line sung quieter than intended. Rather than re-record you can simply edit the audio so that word or line becomes a new and separate region and then increase the Gain from the menu option in the top left of the Arrange page.  It’s a great addition to helping your editing task run more smoothly.

NUMBER NINE – Edit then Mix

It’s a simple concept but an important one, edit before you mix.  Why? Depending on the song and how clean you want the parts, editing out the clutter before you get to mixing means you won’t be dealing with extra frequencies that could get in the way of the mix. The second reason is when you are ready to mix you want to focus your attention on one thing GETTING A KICK ASS MIX! If you are having to deal with edits that quite frankly should have been done earlier then you’ll end up being distracted from focussing on making your music sound amazing.

And before you ask yes I have been guilty of this many times but I’m trying to get better!

NUMBER TEN – Don’t be afraid to move regions

I consider myself to have a good sense of timing when I’m writing that is until I have finished recording play back the part and realise I’m not the guitar god I think I am, personally I blame it on audio interface latency but that’s an ongoing dispute with my hardware!

In any case even on the rare occasions I have a session guitarist like timing I still go in and move the audio around, maybe tweaking the timing or even moving it to another rhythmical value. Logic’s snap functions are really useful and I use them in a number of ways.  Sometimes I set the snap value to ticks or samples because I don’t want to sound like a machine and place everything on an exact value.  Sometimes I’ll set the snap value to Frames, if I’m working to picture it’s a great way to ensure something is sync’d to the images in frames rather than beats.

Other times I’ll set the snap to beats or bars if I know I want the part to snap exactly. The Absolute and Relative feature is a great aid here as it can preserve where the part was recorded in time or place it to an absolute beat ensuring the part is fully quantised to the beat.

NUMBER ELEVEN – Get Flexible

Speaking of timing Logic’s Flex features are an invaluable aid if you want to re-align an audio region without the hassle of chopping things up and the moving individual regions.

Using Flex can help you to quantise audio parts or even mess with the rhythm’s feel. The other advantage of Flex is it allows you to not only alter the timing but bring the part in time or have the same feel as other audio regions too.

NUMBER TWELVE – Eyes and ears and mouth and nose!

Ok well maybe not all of those anatomical parts but feel free to pause for a moment to sing Head’s Shoulder’s Knees and Toes if you so desire too!

USe you ears to spot if the parts are in time and recorded well. IF you spot clipping, distortion, pops etc your ears are telling you that somthing may have been recorded too hot or an audio region hasn’t been properly edited.

Use your eyes to spot if things are out of time or don’t look right in relation to other audio parts. Looking at transient peak on audio files will tell you if a part might well clip and zooming right in to a region will give you the ability to see if any glitching might occur if the part wasn’t cut correctly.

I know it’s stupid of me to put write this in hear and it’s so obvious it hurts but trust me the obvious things are often the overlooked things!

All together! 1 2 3 4 “Heads shoulders knees and toes knees and toes!  Eyes and ears and mouth and nose”

NUMBER THIRTEEN – None likes it to be squeaky clean

So no I’ve told you to make everything as clean and tidy as possible go make it all messy again! That is depending on the style of music you write? If you write full on guitar punk then you’re not likely to want you music all clean, if you write grime it’s unlikely you’re going to a sweet, perfumed sound so make sure whatever style you write in you’re music is a clean or dirty as it should be.

OF course you don’t want to clutter the lows with lots of rumbles so you defo want to remove things like that but if you vocal needs lots of breath sounds to add to the energy don’t edit them out. You know you music better than I do so I think you’ll have a good handle on what should stay and what should go.

NUMBER FOURTEEN – Stretch out your audio regions

This is something I love about Logic, it’s nothing unique and is something found in most DAW’s but the ability to stretch audio is a great feature and something you should defo use when the time is right!

I use it for all sorts of ways to treat audio, if I need to make a keyboard chord last longer I can stretch it a little. If I want the final short or resolving note to last longer at the end of the song I can. If I want to go crazy on an audio file and really stretch it out I can, not that’s a great way to really wreck a sound and create something new and unique.

It’s really easy to do just grab alt when the mouse pointer is hovering over the bottom left corner of the audio region and whilst holding down the alt key simply drag the part to the right for as long as is necessary.

NUMBER FOURTEEN – The Marque tool

If had to pick a favourite tool in Logic hands down it would be the Marque tool or maybe the fade tool that can do some cool stuff.  Anyway back to the Marque tool I use this tool set up using Click Zones so I don’t need to select when editing it’s there ready to use every time I hover of the bottom half of an audio files.

The Marque tool has so many uses but it’s really at it’s best when splitting audio, selecting a portion of a region to either delete of move to another part of your project.

Having the Marque tool at you finger tips is something I’d explore, to do this all you need to do is go to preferences > General > Editing and tick the Marque tool click zones.  Every time you hover over a region the Marque tool can be used at the bottom of the screen.

I have an in depth tutorial on click zones you might want to check out, it covers all you need to know about using click zones with regions.

NUMBER FIFTEEN – Bounce In Place

With Selecton-based Processing you might think Bounce In Place is now a bit long in the tooth?  But it’s far from that and is still a great feature that I use when the need arises. It’s perfect for double audio parts that have been treated in a certain way and can give rise to you editing the region even further. I like to use it when I want to reverse a part, yes there’s the reverse button I know but I still from time to time like to Bounce a part in place, edit it, process it and then reverse it leaving the original audio file in the project untreated and in it’s original form.

You may want to consolidate a number of regions together to make one brand new audio part/loop. Bounce in place is great for that, making a loop for example stacking lot’s of audio regions up to make a big dance beat that can then be Bounced in Place and dragged to the Loop Library. It’s a good way of you being able to create loops that are unique to you that no one else has!

NUMBER FIFTEEN – Make samples for the EXS

Another good reason to edit you audio and chop up your audio is to create smaller regions that you can drag or import into Logic Pro’s EXS sampler. This is another way of getting creative with you audio regions. By chopping up a loop or audio part you can get creative and change your audio into anything you like. Make it more rhythmical, glitchy, filtered or even combined with the original in some creative way.

Running audio regions into Logic’s EXS is a great way to edit and treat your audio parts.

NUMBER SIXTEEN – Create new beats from the Loop Library

I like to find drum loops in the Logic loop library and then start to chop up the audio and combine it with other samples from the loop library. This is good for two reasons, first you’re creating a new sound that is unique and second you can further shape the loop so it fits better with your music. You can go one step further and arrange the chooped audio across a number of tracks allowing you further control over the volume levels. You could for example have a kick, snare and hat part split and re-arranged across three separate tracks giving you maximum control over your new loop.

NUMBER SEVENTEEN – Push your creative boundaries

Logic Pro X is an amazing tool for editing audio and the creative possibilities are only limited to some extent to your imagination when it comes to editing audio. You have reverse buttons, fade tools, the marque tool, bounce in place, selection-based processing and more to tweak, twist and be inspired be the creative opportunites that are at your finger tips.

So always push the boundaries, use Logic’s editing tools to be more creative and come up with something that is unique to you and no one else!

Happy mixing and mastering