Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 16 - Editing Audio in the File Editor (aka Sample Editor) Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy
welcome to episode 16 of my logic pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
we'll take a look at the file editor in
logic and some of the unique editing
functions that we can do down there by
the way the file editor in logic 10 is
the same thing as the sample editor in
logic 9 they just gave it a different
name
so the way you open up the the file
editor is you can you double click on a
region and typically actually what it'll
do by default is open you open the track
editor here and then you just click on
file to get to the file editor now one
thing to keep in mind I think I
mentioned this in one of the previous
editing videos but when you edit in the
arrange area up here editing is
non-destructive there which means that
when you edit a region you're just
editing the it's in and out points
you're not actually changing the files
in your audio files folder on your hard
drive when you edit in the file editor
it is destructive which means that when
you edit here you're actually changing
the source file so you have to be
careful you can still undo your edits if
you just press command Z but if you get
too many edits ahead or if you you know
maybe open up this file three weeks from
now and try to work on it you eventually
will not be able to to undo them anymore
so one thing you can do to kind of
safeguard against this is if you click
on the region you're working with press
control B you can actually do a bounce
in place which I think I showed in a
previous video we just type in the new
name up there press ok and it'll
actually rerender a copy of that file
for you so you've got one working copy
and then one is a backup I'm not going
to do that because I don't need to now a
quicker way to open up the file editor
is to click on the region and press
command 6 and if you don't remember the
command 6 key
and you can always go just go to window
open audio file editor now when you do
it through the the window menu or you
press command 6 it actually opens up a
separate window for the sampler for the
file editor I actually like this better
because it's bigger it's easier to see
alright so after you open the file
editor you'll notice that it has its own
set of six different tools and it also
has its own zoom controls you can zoom
horizontally you can zoom vertically as
well and this is a trend that will
continue on in other editors that we
start working with like the piano roll
editor or the step editor each editor
and logic has its own unique set of two
tools and also zoom controls so let's go
over the basic way to get playback going
down here in Logic 9 you could simply
click somewhere with the the pointer
tool and create this little line for you
and all you do is you press spacebar and
it start playback what's different in
Logic 10 is that when you press space
bar to start playback it's actually
starting playback from where the
playhead is here in the arrange window
not necessarily where we selected here
so the way so when I press a spacebar
it's actually going to start from the
very beginning even though I've put my
selection here so it actually started at
the beginning of the file rather than
where I had selected the way to get
around them is you click where you want
to start playback and you can click on
this icon right up here this is pre
listen essentially pre listen is
essentially playback without any of the
effects on the on the track so if I
click on that it'll start right where I
selected - any effects that were on the
track and I don't have any effects on
the track so it's not going to matter
and you just click on the icon icon
again to stop it another one thing you
can do this is a a little faster as you
click where you want to start and then
press control space bar instead of
spacebar so if I want to start like
right here
hit ctrl spacebar and then hit ctrl
spacebar again to stop it so now we get
the playback controls all the way let's
go over the Edit tools there's six edit
tools you have the pointer tool eraser
tool hand tool zoom tool solo tool and
pencil tool the pointer tool which we've
been using a little bit just now allows
you to drag over an area you can make a
selection and by the way when you make a
selection like this you can actually
press control spacebar it'll just play
that selection for you you can also drag
over an area and you can hit delete on
your keyboard and it will warn us hey
this is a destructive operation the
selected portion will be permanently
deleted the audio files stored on your
hard drive will be overwritten so this
is just warning us hey this is a
destructive edit that you're doing here
and when you delete it you're you're
actually changing the file on the hard
drive you'll see it actually got rid of
the waveform there and then shuffled the
two halves together now again if you hit
command Z you can always get it back but
you can only do that so many times
another thing that changes when you
change the the way far up here is this
little region boundary here basically
the region boundary this green bar it'll
be different colors based on what the
color of your region is that determines
how much of the waveform in the sample
editor is being shown in the arrange
window so what happened there as we lost
a little bit of it so if we pull this
out all the way you'll see that up here
now the region is back to where it was
before okay so that's the that's the
pointer tool in a nutshell the next tool
is the let's actually go to the hand
tool first the hand tool is I hate to
say it but basically a useless tool and
here's why the only thing that the hand
tool does is when you are in transients
mode over here transient editing mode
what you can do is you can double click
between two transients
with your hand tool and it will select
that little slice sulphide that little
slice of you know snare drum or kick
turn or whatever maybe here this is a
just a little piece of a snare drum if
you use the pointer tool for this you
can actually do the exact same thing and
you can make selections so the hand tool
basically is just used for selecting
something in between two transients but
you cannot make a selection with it now
the cool thing about using this
transient editing mode or transient edit
mode is you can find like maybe one
little sample of a drum loop or one
little note or a chord or something from
a song and then you can drop it into a
sampler or maybe reuse it as part of
your song and the way you do that is you
double click on it in between the two
transients there you go two functions
trim and what this is going to do is
it's going to trim everything around
that little selection that we made there
and so now I've got just this little
slice of the original recording it's
just a snare drum and now I could maybe
use this snare drum and a sampler or
maybe use it and copy and paste it to
use it musically in my own song I'm not
going to do that for now though so I'm
just going to hit undo there and again I
have to go back and set my region
boundaries to be to show the entire the
entire waveform here okay so that's the
the hand tool in the pointer tool next
tool is the eraser tool the eraser tool
is really only also only useful when
you're editing in transient mode here
what the eraser tool does is it lets you
delete those transient markers we'll
come back to how this is useful in a
very soon and within a couple episodes
here when we start working with flex
time and flex pitch because sometimes
you may want to ignore a transient and
sometimes you may want logic to
recognize that transient so that's what
the eraser tool does it allows you to
delete transient markers so I'm going to
get out of transient editing mode here
and we're going to go to the next tool
which is the zoom tool and the zoom tool
works
like the zoom tool worked back in the
arrange window if you drag over an area
it zooms in and if you click again with
it it zooms back out simple enough
next tool is the solo tool essentially
the solo tool is a scrub tool what you
can do is you can click and drag to the
right to start playback and you can also
drag left to play in Reverse so this is
useful if you're trying to pinpoint a
specific part of the waveform and you
don't want have to keep pressing ctrl
spacebar over and over again so if you
just click and drag to the right and
you'll see if I stop there it back will
just stop and if I dragged backwards
it'll actually play in Reverse so again
this is useful if you're trying to maybe
pin pinpoint an individual note or drama
hit or a chord or something like that
within a recording and the last tool is
the pencil tool and the pencil tool is
actually very useful because what it
does is it allows you to draw in your
waveform and modify the waveform and one
of the things that we said when we were
talking about I think it was when we
were talking about sample rate and bit
depth is that essentially your waveforms
are just in a digital reproduction of a
volt voltage that fluctuates above and
below a zero line here a DC point
whatever you want to call it once you
can actually do with the pencil tool is
you can modify a waveform to to be drawn
differently and actually what you just
saw there was I tried to use the pencil
tool and when you try to use the pencil
tool and you're not zoomed in far enough
it'll actually default to the the zoom
tool and then once you're zoomed in far
enough then you can start drawing with
the pencil tool so you have to be zoomed
in far enough for it to work but
basically what you can do is you can
draw in your own waveform here
and honestly for that function it's not
very useful because it's probably not
gonna sound too good if I just you know
randomly draw in some shapes then press
play and see you know see what I made
it's actually more useful when you're
trying to fix a damaged recording so let
me get out of this view here I'm
actually going to just delete my drum
track here I no longer need it and I'm
going to pull up this vocal recording I
have here and it's just a singer just a
male singer and what you'll see here
which you can probably see here in the
waveform is this big peak here and that
peak is a pop and what happened was we
had a bad input on our board that was
causing the signal to crackle and pop
and so you'll be able to hear that
there's a pop in the recording there now
normally you just have to go back and
rerecord it but with the file editor in
the pencil tool you can actually redraw
that part of the waveform to correct it
and get rid of that pop so let's just
let me just press play here so you can
hear this feeling phase lost in music so
you can hear that pop in the recording
it's very noticeable so what we're going
to do is we are going to open this up in
the file editor find that pop in the
recording there it is and let's just
listen to one more time just drag over
it and hit ctrl spacebar ooh ooh yeah
you definitely can hear that so we don't
want that in the recording but maybe we
don't have the means to go back and you
know hire this guy it back bring them
back in the studio pay him more to sing
this again so what I'm going to do is
I'm going to zoom in here and you'll see
that essentially is voice is just a
fluctuating repeating voltage what you
can do with the pencil tool is you can
try to just round off that that pop in
the recording and so let's see if we can
if we can tell that we edited that and
now it's not a perfect process we'll
probably still be able to hear a little
bit
of a little bit of a noise in there not
quite as hard of a pop as we had before
but you'll probably still be able to
hear a little bit Dan Muse yeah let's
try that one more time Dan Muse I don't
know if you can hear that but it's it's
very subtle so this is something that's
you know this is this is doable you know
I could hide this in a mix pretty easily
and we don't have to completely trash
this recording now there's actually
another way that we can do this so I'm
just undo that a couple times let's zoom
in on that little point there a little
pop there and one one thing that we can
do with the pointer tool is you can
actually just drag over that pop and
then hit delete and what it'll do is
it'll shuffle the two sides of the
recording together now you might be
saying well well this is going to you
know maybe this is going to short our
record shorten our recording it's going
to offset the rhythm might offset phase
issues the thing is that in the grand
scheme of things if you look up here on
the ruler we are working at a sample
level now the ruler is you know showing
between these two different notches here
four hundred and seventy three thousand
and four hundred and seventy four
thousand samples now this recording was
recorded at 96 K which means that
there's 96 thousand samples per second
so in the grand scheme of things ago
saying if we delete five or six hundred
samples you know five or six hundred
sample deletion is not really going to
be noticed however if you're working
with audio that needs to be phase-locked
like live drums you'll want to use the
pencil tool instead because if you
delete a section from one track it's
going to cause that track to go out of
phase from the rest of the track one
more thing you want to double check here
before you hit delete is right-click and
make sure that this snap edits to zero
crossings is on what this will do is
it'll guarantee that when you drag over
this little waveform here it'll
automatically snap the beginning and end
point to the nearest most logical zero
crossing and what that does is it keeps
from having pops and clicks in the
recording so that's one more thing you
want to make sure that you do so I'm
just going to hit delete press Delete
again it's essentially shifted the two
waveforms together and deleted what
gotten rid of what I just deleted there
and so let's see what this sounds like
this is probably going to be very clear
you're not going to be able to hear that
there was an edit there just drag over
it
press ctrl spacebar Dan Muse Dan Muse
yeah you can't even tell that there was
ever a pop there so the pencil tool and
then also being able to zoom into the
sample level and delete little tiny
little slices out of the recording can
really help to help to reconstruct a
recording that otherwise you'd have to
just trash alright now that we're done
with the Edit tools let's take a look at
some of the Edit functions all of the
edit functions here are under the
functions tab up here you got functions
like normalized change gain fades
silence invert reverse trim which we
talked about earlier and remove DC
offset we're going to go over all these
so the very first one there normalize
what normalize does is you make a
selection or you just hit you can hit
command a to to do it all but you
whatever you select it will analyze that
material find what the peak value and
that recording is and then bump that
peak value up to its maximum volume so
I'm gonna dive dragged over that I've
selected this I'm going to go up two
functions normalize or ctrl N and what
it does is it finds the peak point the
peak volume in that waveform and then
pushes it up to basically zero point
zero dB so it can't go any further
without clipping and so it's a way to
get the most out of your recording
volume wise so that's what normalized
does if you want to change gain but you
don't want it to be max Valley
you can actually use the change gain
function or you can press ctrl-g and
what change gain lets you do is it
allows you to manually adjust the gain
what my window showed up on the other
screen over here here we go
but it allows you to search for the
maximum gain in that selection and it
tells you what it is so right now this
is currently at max volume at negative
4.0 for decibels you can change that
maximum volume in a percentage or in
decibels and so let's say I want to
increase this by 7% which is going to
result in a 0.6 decibel increase and you
can see the results of your gain change
at the bottom here and we've boosted
that recording just a little bit so this
is a great way you know if you've got a
recording where maybe one phrase is
recorded to quiet and you don't want
have to go in with automation and bump
it up you can actually just select that
area that you want to bump up do the
change gain function bump it up or bump
it down to meet the volume of everything
else okay um the next the next tool I'm
going to show you our destructive fades
now these two fade in and fade out
options are destructive fades they're
not like the fades that we add in the
arrange area basically it's pretty
simple basically what you do is you
select what you want to fade in or fade
out you go up two functions fade out and
it fades it or you can do a fade in as
well functions fade in and it's a
destructive fade so it's actually
changing the source file if you want to
change the shape of your fades what you
do is you go to functions settings and
from here what you can do is you can
alter what type of fade in or what type
of fade out you want and so you can
adjust the curve maybe you want my fade
in to be more of like an exponential
curve and then the next fade that I
create that's a fade in
functions fade-in will be more of an
exponential fade so that's just how you
can create destructive fades in the file
editor all right the next function is
reverse reverse is really cool because
what you can do is you can reverse the
playback of your audio now actually why
I guess I shouldn't have deleted that
track drum track ahead let me get that
back there here we go
and what I'm gonna do with my drum track
here is I'm just going to isolate that
very last crash cymbal at the very end
there and so this is what it sounds like
it's just a kick in a crash cymbal and
after I drag over I'm going to go to
functions trim it's going to trim out
everything except for that selection and
what we can do now is we can apply the
reverse function to it and it's actually
going to play back in Reverse now so now
we're going to have this cool kind of
sweeping sweeping in swell effect so if
you want to use that musically as like a
special effect or like a build up or
something well you can the problem is
going to be that when you try to let me
get back in there yeah the problem is
going to be that when you try to use
this up here and for some reason my file
disappeared there you go I just had to
go find my in my project folder here I
had to go find my my drums region for
some reason it disappeared from up here
but anyway what I was saying is that the
problem now is that what if you you know
what if we shorten this a little bit and
then what if we want the let's shorten
it with ticks actually what if we want
the end of this region to match up say
with a bar line or a beat line instead
of the beginning of the region one of
the things we talked about in a previous
episode was that you know if I use bar
mode set it to
absolute and then maybe set my drag mode
to actually the drag mode doesn't matter
but basically the front end of the file
the front end of the region is going to
match up with the grid line so what if I
want the tail end of this to match up
with the grid line what you have to do
to make this work is in your file editor
you have to change your anchor point and
what the anchor point is is the anchor
point is where the region is going to
snap to the grid so if I drag this
anchor all the way over here through the
end of the region here not right at the
end of the region but toward the end of
the region let's try that again
there we go now the anchor is there if
we go back to the arrange window and
I'll zoom in a little bit you'll see
that the anchor is denoted by a little
dot there and basically what that means
is that little dot is going to snap to
grid lines now so if I set my snap mode
to beat mode that dot will snap to the
beats rather than the beginning of the
region so if I want this kind of swell
up to snap to the grid now you can see
that the dot there the anchor point now
snaps to the grid line so that's just
the anchor it's another thing that you
can go and adjust in the in the file
editor all right let's go back to the
vocals here okay
the next function I want to show you is
silence and all silence does is it
inserts silence wherever you select so
maybe if there's like a point where we
maybe we want to cut something out here
you drag over with the pointer tool go
to functions silence and instead of
deleting and shuffling it it just
inserts silence at that point so if you
want to keep the position of these two
waveforms where they were before without
being shifted and shuffled together
instead of deleting you just use silence
all right um the next function I want to
show you is a remove DC offset we
actually already talked about
before I showed that so I can go over it
and invert I'm going to come back to in
the next video because it's going to
take far too long for me to go over
inverting in inverting techniques and
things we can do with that in this video
I'm already up to like 25 minutes
already so so I'll actually make a
separate video for the invert function
so what remove DC offset does is it
removes DC offset but occasionally
you'll end up with the recording I'm
going to delete these delete this vocal
recording here occasionally on the end
up with the recording has a waveform
that kind of looks like this and you're
like what's going on here and if you
open it up in the sample editor you'll
actually see that the waveform is not
oscillating not fluctuating above and
below the zero line or the DC line and
this is what's called DC offset and it's
usually caused by some voltage
inconsistency in your mic preamps or
your converters or maybe the preamps and
converters are not getting enough power
or too much power and the problem with
it is the problem with DC offset is it
doesn't allow the waveform to be as loud
as it possibly could be because the
waveform has been shifted upward or
downward so what you can do is you just
hit command a to select everything go to
functions remove DC offset
it'll analyze it and it'll tell you how
much DC offset you have a forty three
point zero seven percent DC offset which
is a lot I mean it'll never be that much
in a practical situation I had to
artificially make this have DC offset
but what it'll do is it'll tell you how
much you have and then you say remove
and it'll Center the waveform on the
zero line like it should be so so now
that now that we've corrected the DC
offset we will have we have equal
Headroom above and below the zero line
to amplify compress add gain to the
signal so we have more room to make the
signal louder if we need to
all right so that's the file editor in a
nutshell in the next episode I'll get
promised I'll show you how to work with
the invert function and I'll show you
how you can use phase cancellation
techniques to isolate vocals from a song
and also remove vocals from a song