Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 20 - Flex Time Part 3 - Speed and Tempophone Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy
welcome to episode 20 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
we'll take a look at the speed and tempo
phone algorithms in flex time and this
will be my final part part 3 of my
series on flex time however we will come
back to flex time when we talk about
tempo changes in the next video and then
also we'll come back to flex pitch in
episode 22
so essentially what the speed and tempo
phone modes do is they allow us to
create special effects with our audio by
stretching or compressing so our example
here is just a basic drum pattern with a
bass and some rhythmic effects
so our goal here is to use the speed and
tempo phone modes to Morphin change
these two loops to maybe do something a
little bit more interesting with them so
first let's enable flex time by clicking
right here and then what we're going to
do is enable flex time in each of the
tracks
right now I have slicing selected for
both of them but we're going to change
that so let's just click here to turn on
flex time let's zoom in a bit here and
actually what I'm going to do to start
is I'm just going to solo out just the
beat here and I'm going to let's go
ahead and minimize the the track for the
bass so at the drum part solo let's take
a listen to what it sounds like alright
so that's a pretty stock
four-on-the-floor pattern what we can do
with slicing and this is something we
covered in the last video but I'll cover
it again is you can click toward the top
of each of the transient markers to
create a flex marker or you can click
toward the middle of the transient
marker to create three flex markers and
I'm going to do that in two places I'm
going to do it here as well and so what
I'm going to do is using slicing I'm
going to move the middle of the three
markers to the left to offset and change
the rhythm I also have my snap mode set
to division so that each of the Flex
marker snaps to the divisions on the
grid so now we've changed the rhythm
here let's go let's listen to what this
sounds like now you might be asking
music tech help guy why are you just
rehashing the slicing mode I came here
for a speed and tempo phone tutorial the
reason why I'm rehashing slicing is
because I want you to realize that the
whole idea of time compression expansion
comes from the tape recording world
where if you increase or decrease the
playback speed of tape you actually
affect the pitch of the recording so
even with the rhythmic algorithm
even though there's a few more digital
artifacts produced from rhythmic as
opposed to slicing rhythmic still
doesn't affect the pitch of the
recording when we adjust the playback
speed and that actually goes for
monophonic slicing rhythmic and
polyphonic so finally let's talk about
the tempo phone and speed modes let's
actually start with the speed mode speed
actually works a lot like what's called
a varus speed effect and what it does is
it increases or decreases the playback
speed of stretched or compressed
material so if you compress material you
are increasing the playback speed and if
you stretch material you're decreasing
the playback speed so when I play back
this example the waveforms in white that
have been expanded that have been
stretched so that the playback speed is
going slower and pitch will actually
drop the areas where the waveform have
been compressed the pitch will actually
go up so you can hear that the pitch of
the snare drum has gone up and you can
also hear the pitch of the kick drum has
gone down so let's try reversing that
let's stretch out the snare drum and
then compress the kick drum so when I
play this back you'll hear that the
snare drums pitch has dropped and we'll
also hear that the kick drums pitch has
been raised so let's take a listen to
what this sounds like
so you can see that the pitch mode is
really useful if you're trying to
intentionally create playback speed
effects or if you're trying to create
special effects where you can alter the
pitch of part of your recording alright
next let's talk about the tempo phone
algorithm the tempo phone algorithm
emulates the effect of a historical tape
based time stretching device called a
tempo phone and what happens is this
results in a very mechanical sound that
has a lot of digital artifacts in it so
this can be
used to create special effects and a
kind of effects pitch a little bit but
not not directly like the way that the
speed algorithm does and yes I'm reading
the definition for Tempah phones
straight out of the logic 10 manual
that's pretty much the best definition
for it so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to choose tempeh phone but I'm
going to keep my Flex markers in the
same place they were before and we'll
hear those digital artifacts in this
example so next let's try compressing
our kick drums like we did before and
see how tempeh phone effects this so you
can hear there that the snare drum has
been expanded and instead of producing a
pitch effect like speed did tempeh phone
produces a glitchy ER gargled effect
that's a result of granular synthesis
which essentially means that we chopped
the sample up into a bunch of smaller
grains and then reconstruct those grains
based on our time compression or
expansion all right so now that I'm done
with the drum pattern here I'm going to
turn flextime off and I'm going to mute
that track and I'm going to focus on the
bass and sound effects track here and
first I want to kind of remove some of
the analysis markers here the transient
markers that we looked at in the
previous two episodes so I'm going to
double click on the region the top of
the region here open it up in the file
editor and one of the things I didn't
show you in the previous episode is that
when you work in transient editing mode
you can actually increase or decrease
the sensitivity of the analysis so what
I'm going to do as click on the minus
sign here a couple times to decrease the
analysis of the transient markers and
you can see that now I have one
transient marker per note in the track
rather than having multiple transient
markers per note in the track so this is
going to make the analysis just a little
bit more accurate so let's just take a
listen to what this sounds like by
itself
all right so what we're going to do is
we are going to apply some speed and
tempo phone effects to this track so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm
going to work in slicing but what I'm
going to do is I'm going to right click
at the top of the region here and then
I'm going to choose the slice at
transient markers that I showed you in
the previous video so this is just going
to slice this region up to a bunch of
smaller pieces and then what I'm going
to do is duplicate this track by
clicking right here and what this will
do is duplicate the track with all of
the same settings on it and now this
allow will allow me to pull some of the
slices from the upper recording down
onto the lower track so what I'm going
to do is I'm going to make sure that I
have a Division selected in my snap mode
and I'm going to make sure that I'm in
relative values so that I can pull these
straight down and make sure that they
maintain their position on the grid so
I'm going to pull these three slices
down and I'm going to affect them
starting with speed and then with tempo
phone later so what I'm going to do is
change the Flex algorithm of just this
duplicated track to speed and then the
upper track won't be affected by my
speed changes so there's basically two
ways you can affect the you can change
the waveform here one is you can click
within the region and stretch and or
compress within the region and basically
just creates a flex marker for you like
I showed in the previous video the other
way to do this is if you hover over the
right side of the region you can
actually just affect the boundary of the
region it'll actually stretch or
compress the entire region so that's
just that's just another way to do it so
I'm just going to affect just this one
region and stretch it out will stretch
this one out as well and this third one
will stretch out as well and so let's
listen to what this sounds like
so that just affected the playback speed
in the pitch let's see if the tempeh
phone algorithm produces a little bit
more interesting effect so that's
definitely a more interesting effect
let's go ahead and stretch our first two
regions here out a bit more and let's
see if we can create a more dramatic
effect yeah so that's definitely a much
more dramatic special effect that we can
create with tempeh phone and like I said
before it's it's unlike speed it's less
of like a pitch effect and more of like
a gargle II glitchy effect so it's
really more of like a Tambor tone change
than a pitch effect so let's unmute our
original beat here and let's just hear
what all three of these tracks sound
like simultaneously now that we've
created this kind of more interesting
tempo phone effect yeah that's a lot
better than what we had originally this
those tempo phone effects really help to
just bring out some new tones and
Tambor's that we didn't have in the
original loops so one thing I want
everyone to be aware of is that these
last three videos I've done it but so
it's 18 19 and 20 are in no way a 100%
tutorial of flex time I just want you to
be aware that there are additional track
parameters in the inspector for each of
the different Flex algorithms and you
can go and you can further customize
each of them and if you're really
interested in that sort of thing you can
actually go on Apple's website and
reference the Logic 10 user manual and
the manual will tell you exactly what
each of those additional parameters does
I'm basically just showing you an
overview of the above the most important
points of what you need to do to get
flex time working for you in the next
episode we'll
take a look at tempo changes and how
flex time applies to that and then
finally in episode 22 we'll take a look
at flex pitch a new feature that was
added to Logic 10 so I hope you enjoyed
the video and thanks for watching