Chapter 4: Editing Audio

Logic Pro X makes editing audio easy with its tools to copy sections, delete sections, and replace sections, all non-destructively in the Tracks area. There are also two other places to edit audio, the Track Editor and the File Editor. The former is also non-destructive while the latter is destructive.

Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics:

• Soloing and muting in Logic Pro X
• Renaming and colorizing tracks and regions
• Zooming in and out on regions
• Copying and repeating regions using the Snap and Drag settings
• Working with an imported audio file in the Audio Track Editor

Logic Pro X gives you many ways to solo and mute either tracks or regions, and it can get confusing. Let's try to give you some clarity on this first.

Soloing and muting tracks and regions

Frequently, you will want and need to solo or mute tracks and regions while editing audio, and frankly, it can be confusing in Logic, because there are so many ways.

Here you see the beginnings of a little blues song I created for this chapter:

Figure 4.1 – My blues song tracks and regions

Mute/solo buttons on the Track Header

On my track header in the preceding screenshot, you can see an M and an S, for mute and solo. If you don't see it, you need to configure the track header, and this is something you will need to know how to do, so let's take advantage of this opportunity to learn how.

If you right-click (or Ctrl-click) in the track header, or simply press Option + T, it brings up a window in which you can choose the things you want to see in the track header, including the Mute and Solo buttons. (If, like me, you find that you frequently have multiple tracks flowing through a channel strip, I recommend you also add the Power On/Off button. Since the Mute/Solo buttons affect the channel strip, not the individual track, you need the Power button to solo or mute tracks discretely.)

Once you have made your choices, navigate to the gear icon at the bottom of the panel, as shown in the following screenshot, and select Store as User Defaults:

Figure 4.2 – Storing Track Header defaults

The most direct way to solo a channel strip is to simply press the S button in the Track Header or press S on your computer keyboard. When you do so, the S button turns yellow. A yellow S button also appears at the top of the Track List, and the M button on all the other channel strips turn to a blinking blue.

If you Shift-click the Track Headers, then the S button at the top of the Track List toggles that selection on and off.

Well, that's fine, but there is one drawback to this method. If I select a different Track Header, it doesn't change to soloing that selection. There are times when that may well be how I want it to behave, but for me personally, those occasions are very rare.

Mute/solo buttons on the channel strip in the Mixer

Press X to open the Mixer and on the channel strip faders, you will see the same S and M buttons as on the Track Header, and they behave identically to the way they do on the Track Header.

Region solo button in the Control Bar

This is the method of soloing I employ most frequently:

Figure 4.3 – Solo button in the Control bar

With the S in the Control bar checked, you will notice that it does update when you select a different Track Header, as by default, selecting the Track Header selects the regions on that track. This is especially helpful when playing back your project and listening for various things. Pressing Ctrl + S also toggles this region solo button on and off. If in your Preferences | General | Editing tab you have unchecked select tracks on region/marquee selection, then with solo switched on in the Control bar, selecting regions will not select the tracks. Then, it will only solo the one or more regions you select in the Tracks area.

Note

I recommend that you do uncheck it, because in my opinion, unlike selecting regions when you click on a Track Header, which is helpful, I think this option creates more problems than it solves.

Another option is to change one of your tools to the Solo tool. With the Solo tool, you can solo regions by holding down the Solo tool on them. It does take a second or two to kick in though, when you choose a different region during playback.

Renaming and colorizing tracks and regions

Before you get down to some serious audio editing, you may want to rename your tracks and regions so that they are consistent.

You can rename a region either by changing your left-click tool from the Pointer to the Text tool. With the Text tool, you can then simply select the name on the region and type in the new name. Even easier, after selecting the region with the Pointer tool, just press Shift + N.

Alternatively, with the region selected, you can click on the name in the Region Inspector and do it there.

In the following screenshot, you see that my track names and region names are not consistent with each other, nor are their colors:

Figure 4.4 – Inconsistent track/region names and colors

On track 1, I want the region to have the track name, while on the other tracks I want each track to have the region name and I want the region's colors to be the track's colors.

Easy-peasy.

With track 1 selected, go under the Functions menu and find Name Regions/Cells by Track Name, which has the default key command of Option + Shift + N.

Select the other four regions and under the Functions menu, find Name Track by Region/Cell Name, which has the default key command of Option + Shift + Command + N.

Then, find Color Track by Region/Cell Name, which has the default key command of Option + Shift + Command + C.

Now, we are ready to start editing.

Zooming in and out on regions

When you are editing, especially with audio waveforms, you will want to zoom in and out to accommodate the regions or sections of regions you are trying to edit.

Logic, being Logic, gives you a number of ways to do this.

Let's practice zooming in on some regions. Press 2 to open Screenset 2, as shown in the following screenshot. (We will discuss the use of screensets more deeply in Chapter 13, Organizing for the Mix):

Figure 4.5 – Regions for zooming

In the upper-right corner of the Tracks area are two zoom sliders: vertical and horizontal, highlighted on the right of the following screenshot:

Figure 4.6 – Zoom sliders

Dragging these sliders zooms in or out of all the regions.

There are also a bunch of helpful key commands already assigned:

1. Press Option + K to open the Key Commands window.
2. In the search field, type the word zoom:
   

   Figure 4.7 – Preassigned zoom key commands

3. Select the Used button.

Wow, that is a lot of options! The one I rely on most is Toggle Zoom to fit Selection or All Content. No matter the number of regions you select, your selection fills the window by simply pressing Z, and pressing Z again returns it to its original zoom level.

Copying and repeating regions

Presently, my song is only 8 bars long and I want to make it longer. Logic being Logic, there are a few user-friendly ways.

Copying by holding Option + dragging

I decide to mute my vocals and work on the instrument tracks. I can copy the regions easily by holding the Option key and dragging them, keeping an eye on the help tag for positioning.

NOTE

If when you do this, but you do not first release the mouse and then the Option key, you will find that instead of copying it, you have moved it.

Copying parts of regions with the Marquee tool

My chord progression is a basic blues phrase: G7 for 2 bars, C7 for 2 bars, G7 for 2 bars, D7 for two bars. Now, I want the next section to be: C7 for 1 bar, D7 for 1bar, C7 for 1 bar, D7 for 1 bar C7 for 3 bars, and finally, D7 for 1 bar.

The Marquee tool is ideal for this task, but my Snap settings can make it even easier.

If you hold down the mouse on the field to the right of Snap, you'll see that you have the following settings options:

Figure 4.8 – Snap settings

Smart means Logic takes into account how zoomed in you are on the Tracks area and frequently makes the right decisions, but precision and ease of use is key for me here, as I want to copy a section of the guitar, bass, and organ that begins exactly on bar 3 and copy them exactly to bar 17. So, it makes sense to change from Smart to Bar. If it began a bit earlier or later than precisely bar 3, Snap Regions to Relative Value would be the right choice, but here I want Absolute Value.

By default, the Command-click tool is set to the Marquee tool.

1. While holding the Command key, I drag over the guitar, bass, organ, and drums from bar 3 to bar 4, and if I hit play, I hear that measure.
2. If I click on the selection with the Pointer tool, it creates new regions that I can copy, which works fine, but I don't have to.
3. Instead, I simply Option-drag them to bar 17.
4. Since I want them to be a D7, with the new guitar, bass, and organ regions selected, in the Region Inspector I enter +2 next to Transpose. (Obviously, I don't want to transpose the drums.)
5. I select 6 new regions and copy them to bar 19, then bar 21.
6. I select the regions at bar 17 and copy them to bar 23, then 24, then 25.
7. Bar 8 is perfect to finish this section. I select the regions and copy them to bar 24 with the Marquee tool.

Almost perfect!

Editing with Shuffle Mode

We now have seen the power of changing the Snap settings, but the Drag settings have a powerful effect as well.

I think this section might be more powerful without the section you see highlighted in this screenshot, going instead to the end of the regions:

Figure 4.9 – Sections of regions selected with the Marquee tool

To ensure this works seamlessly, I want to change the Drag from No Overlap to Shuffle L (left).

Now when I delete the Marquee tool selections, the following material snaps right to the border of the previous sections of the region.

Fantastic!

Repeat Regions

In the Tracks area local menu called Edit, you can scroll down to Repeat, and see that you have the option to repeat selected regions/cells/events once or multiple times. Only the former is assigned to a key command, which I think is a mistake. If you choose Multiple, by default it comes up as 1, but also gives you other options, as you see here:

Figure 4.10 – Repeat Multiple options

The advantage of choosing Copies is that you can have independent control of each region, knowing that the changes you make to one region will not affect the others. There may be times, however, when you want any edit you do to one region to affect all the others. That is where Aliases or Clones should be your choice.

Looping regions

Looping regions is a quick and easy way to repeat regions. But in this example, taken from another project, we can see an example where we have a region length inconsistency that we need to deal with first:

Figure 4.11 – Inconsistent region lengths

The Tambourine region is exactly one measure long and will loop perfectly. With it selected, I can either press L to loop it, check the Loop box in the Region Inspector, or position the Pointer tool in the upper-right corner and it changes to the Loop tool, allowing me to draw in the number of times I want it to loop.

But looping the claps on beats 2 and 4 is a problem. Region folders to the rescue!

Under the Functions menu, we need to navigate to Folder | Pack Folder, and my claps are now in a one-bar folder that loops perfectly.

Working with an imported audio file in the Audio Track Editor

Returning to our Chapter 4.logicx project, let's learn a couple of ways to import an audio file into a Logic project.

You can open the All Files Browser by clicking the icon in the Control bar, or pressing F, and then navigating to where the file is stored:

Figure 4.12 – Selecting an audio file in the Browser

The advantage of importing an audio file this way is that you can click the speaker icon at the bottom of the window to audition it.

To add an audio file into the Tracks area at a specific position in the project, change the left-click or Command-click default tool to the Pencil tool, then hold it down on the track in the Tracks area at that position.

Alternatively, you can import an audio file by dragging it from the Finder to the same place or go to the File menu | Import | Audio File.

Audio Track Editor

Once it is in your project and you have placed it approximately where you want it to go, you can of course move it around in the timeline to get it exactly where you want it, but the Audio Track Editor is more efficient for doing so.

With the region selected, press E and make sure you are in the Track view. As with the Tracks area, anything you do here is non-destructive:

Figure 4.13 – An imported audio file in the Audio Track Editor

I want to position the region so that the loudest part lands right in bar 17. In the Audio Track Editor, it's nice and large, especially if I enable the waveform zoom by pressing the icon to the right of the Snap menu.

Now, it's super easy to drag it so that it crests at bar 17.

For my ears, though, it takes a little long to happen. If I position the Pointer on the lower-left corner, the Pointer tool changes to the Resize tool and I can drag it to the right to shorten it. I can then do the same thing on the right side, so it now unfolds and exits more quickly. But it isn't as smooth as I might like, so I need to add some fades.

While I can change one of my tools to the Fade tool, holding Shift + Control in the Audio Track Editor changes the Pointer tool to the Fade tool while I hold the keys down, and I can then draw in fades and then tweak them by again holding down that key combination and adjusting the fade.

I ended up with this; it sounds really good and peaks where I want it to peak:

Figure 4.14 – The audio file well positioned, shortened, and with fades

Audio File Editor

This is the editor where you do destructive audio editing. A few years ago, even though this book is for beginners, I would have felt the need to introduce you to some things to do with it, but frankly, it is rarely necessary to do destructive audio editing in Logic Pro X anymore, so I will only show you a screenshot of some of its functions and caution you to work from a copy of the original audio file in this editor so that you don't risk damaging your original audio file:

Figure 4.15 – Audio File Editor

Summary

In this chapter, we covered different ways of soloing and muting tracks and regions. You have learned how to use the Marquee tool to copy, repeat, and move regions and parts of regions in the Tracks area, and how the Snap settings and modes affect the result. Also, you are now familiar with techniques for importing audio files and working with them in the Audio Track Editor, while the destructive Audio File Editor was briefly discussed.

In the next chapter, we will become familiar with how to record freely, without a click. You will learn a way to change the project's tempo with an imported audio file, along with the Flex Time and Flex Pitch tools, which are great tools for improving the timing and tuning of your audio recordings. Finally, we will explore the history of Varispeed, and use Logic's version to speed up or slow down an entire project without changing pitch, unless we want to.