Logic Pro X - Beat Mapping (part 1) - Acoustic Guitar and Drummer Plug-in Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to this Logic Pro 10 video
tutorial on using the beat map function
beat mapping allows you to sort of wrap
your tempo around a source recording
like drums or in our case acoustic
guitar here and then you can vary the
tempo in the tempo track every bar every
beat so basically you're matching up the
grid to your recording rather than
matching up the recording to the grid
sort of like you'd do with with flextime
it's sort of the the opposite of flex
time so this is helpful when you have a
recording that you like but it wasn't
played to a click so this helps if you
just want to make sure your recording
sound sort of natural and organic and
the tempo sort of naturally ebbs and
flows a bit just like a live performance
this video is actually a specific
request that someone had emailed me
about this particular guy asked hey I'm
a singer songwriter I play guitar I
don't like to play to a click and I
often record both the vocals and guitar
at the same time and one straight take
just with two mics and that's it
but I want to be able to add some MIDI
instruments like MIDI bass particularly
the drummer plug-in to his performance
so and he didn't have access to a real
drummer or any good way to really record
drums that's what we're going to do here
today is we're gonna beat map our
acoustic guitar here and then sync up a
drummer track to it so the first thing I
always do when I when I beat map it's
not a hundred it's not really a
requirement but I always like to sort of
make sure the front end of my first note
or chord or whatever it is is right on a
bar line and I'm going to put it on bar
two because I don't really just don't
like I don't like to not have a gap at
the beginning it just ends up cutting
off the very first course I'm gonna
start it measured two here the second
thing I like to do that's again it's not
required is I like to sort of sense the
tempo as closely as I possibly can so
this is what our recording sounds like
just uh just by itself
so our tempo sounds about like right
there
so if we play this with the click track
on you'll hear that it's very very out
of time with the click yeah it's not
even close I like to just get the tempo
as close as possible just as a starting
point so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to add the BPM counter over here
under u2 under metering actually I'm
just going to hit play and let's see if
it can sense a tempo
so it's telling us or somewhere around
92 so we just pull the BPM counter off
of there I'm going to change my session
tempo to 92 so we're probably a little
bit closer now let's just make sure that
our front end of our waveform doesn't
get to off there there we go next I'm
going to do is I'm going to pull up my
global tracks up here just by clicking
right here or you can hit G on the
keyboard does it as well we want to have
the tempo track up but I'm also going to
right click here and I'm going to choose
show beat mapping and what the beat
mapping does is when you click on a clip
it shows you the transients it's
detecting in the clip now you can
actually control the sensitivity of
those transients here for some reason
for me in logic 10.2 point I think one
or two lineman right now when I click on
the transients it just crashes logics I
don't know if that's something a problem
that everyone is having that's a problem
I'm having but I don't really have to
really use that anyway that big of a
deal
so what I'm going to do and this is part
of the reason why I made the I made the
the tempo as close to the original
recordings tempo as possible try to sort
of get a rough rough idea is I want my
down beats to kind of be as close to
where the down beats really need to be
and what I do is click on this clip I'm
going to go up here to the beat mapping
and we're going to choose beats from
region and then you can tell it how to
interpret the beat mapping I'm just
going to say I want it to be by bars so
each bar I want it to to sort of
interpret where the downbeat in the
recording is and we'll see how good this
works because there's some sort of weird
up beats going on but we could do
something more like an eighth note or a
quarter note but let's go with the bar
and see how that works
yeah so it's got uh some goes off a
little bit
let's try something different let's try
let's try an eighth note this time see
how well this does and the way that sort
of test this is turn the click track
back on and if the click basically
sounds like it's in time you're you're
okay because the the click track will
change its tempo based on the beat map
up here
you
let's jump to the end here looks like
it's working pretty well there's a
little slow down at the end here I want
to make sure it got it correctly yeah so
right on the downbeat here there's that
last chord so this is a situation where
we can manually sort of manipulate the
map because it didn't quite do it
correctly so I'm gonna do is I'm use my
eraser tool and the eraser tool I'm
going to erase some of these beat
mapping markers here there we go let's
delete those and let's listen this one
more time yeah so this is just a one
beat really like a one beat slowdown so
really this marker right here should go
right here on the downbeat of measure
twenty-eight like maybe the last cymbal
crash by the drummer so what you do is
you don't grab the marker here you
actually again that's that's what you'll
probably want to do because if you've
worked a flex time at all you say oh I
grabbed a marker I move it around well
it works a little bit differently you
grab the the ruler up here see how it
highlights and you drag over it
you grab the ruler and you pull that
pull that over to whatever position you
want it to go to so we do something like
that so see how I did that I would just
try that again you click you can create
a marker and then you pull the map to
wherever you want to go let's just try
that again I'm going to go back a couple
steps you can see it one more time it's
a little bit it's a little bit confusing
whoops okay so I hover right here where
I want this beat to go and you click any
drag over to the right and it pulls the
beat over again it's not we're not
flexing the audio we're flexing the map
flexing the tempo so you just get this
bit of a slowdown here at the end from
91 something to about 65 so let's listen
to this with the click track
there we go so now we've got a pretty
precise looking map here it varies a
little bit you know it's basically
around ninety one ninety two like we
were saying before but because we have
an accurate beat map now we can apply a
we can basically quantize MIDI notes to
this grid we can use flex time to sync
up other things and quantize other audio
recordings to this this map and what the
the person who emailed me specifically
wanted was to use drummer with their
recording so let's try that let's try
that let's use a new drummer track so
track new drummer track
I think the drummer I liked when I was
playing around this earlier was Aiden
here and I think we were using the it
was the who do the who do pattern so I'm
just going to pull these over so they
kind of match up here let's snap two
bars
I'm going to hit command R to repeat
this a couple times and then what I did
last time I played this is we if we want
the groove of the drummer to sync up to
the groove up here what you can do is
you can click follow right here and then
choose the track that you want the
drummer to follow which is really cool
so let's try this out and let's see if
the drummer sounds like he's in time
with the drums
yeah it does I just don't like that kick
drum very much let's go in here and he's
a tighter kick there we go who's that
I know over here there's one spot where
it gets extended by two bars let's
listen over here real quick yeah so the
new section starts here at 20 so I need
to do is use my marquee tool to maybe
just cut a little a little bit out of
here hold option duplicate it over and
now let's listen to that slow down at
the end
yeah we just want to get one more little
crash in there let me just undo my or
turn off my snap mode and then just trim
this out just a touch it'll give me one
last little crash in there there we go
and there we go so we've got a drummer
track synced up groove wise and also
tempo wise with our original guitar
recording and we didn't have to apply
any sort of flex time to the acoustic
guitar here to sync it up to the tempo
of the song or the our original tempo 92
I know I will probably do another one of
these videos but sort of the opposite
way
starting with live drums that weren't
recorded to a click and then syncing
those up to the tempo and then recording
other instruments on top of that so
that's that's actually the way I
normally work with beat mappings I work
with an initial live drum recording and
then I match up the the tempo the tempo
track to the drum recording and then I
start recording and quantizing things to
that new grid that we created so I hope
you guys enjoyed the video and thanks
for watching
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