Here, my drums comp has been duplicated and renamed to indicate it contains Flex edits. Quantize Reference has been enabled on appropriate tracks, and the Slicing algorithm is selected. The different coloured regions indicate that they come from different takes; the highlighted markers are manual edits.
Now that your drums are organised, it’s time to whip them into shape!
It’s time to wrap up this series on working with live drums in Logic Pro. So far, we’ve discussed grouping, organising Track Alternatives, track stacking, phase alignment, gain staging, and constructing our final comp. We’ve also looked at approaches to routing the individual drums to busses and creating sends for processing.
Now it’s almost time to finally start time‑editing the drums.
Prep Work
We not only want our drums grouped, we also need to ensure that groups are enabled (Shift+G to toggle on/off). You can easily tell if groups are enabled or not; simply click on one of the drum tracks or regions, and if all the other regions become selected, groups are on.
Confirm in the Group Settings that Editing (Selection), Quantize Locked and Track Alternatives are all ticked/checked.
If you have a comp that you’re satisfied with, duplicate the track alternative and add ‘Flex’ to the name. Now, whatever timing edits you make, you can always revert back to the clean comp.
Flex Factor
Besides tuning and timing individual tracks, Flex allows you to time edit multitrack drums. You’ll notice a green Q button on each track. This is for quantise reference, ie. telling Logic which tracks to consider when determining how to line things up. Enable this button on your inside kick, snare top and tom tracks. This means that Logic will, for example, use the snare top track as a reference for snare drum timing, rather than the snare in the overheads, room mics and so on.
Enable Flex view (Command+F) and engage Flex on each drum track by clicking on the ‘twisty bow tie’ icon. If your tracks are grouped (as they’d better be!), clicking it on one track will enable Flex on all of them.
If Logic doesn’t pick the Slicing algorithm automatically, choose it from the drop‑down menu. While it may be tempting to choose the Monophonic or Rhythmic option, rest assured that Slicing is the one to use for optimal drum editing results. After Logic does a bit of analysis, transient markers will now be visible on each hit of each track. If you see hits that don’t have transient markers, there’s no need to panic. You can easily add them by manually clicking on the start of the transient.
If you zoom in on the tracks, you can then see to what degree they line up to the grid.
Rather than using your eyes to determine how in‑the‑pocket the drums are, use your ears and try to feel what’s going on.
Manual Labour
If your drums are mostly to your liking and have a great feel, you may only need to move a few hits here and there. But rather than using your eyes to determine how in‑the‑pocket the drums are, use your ears and try to feel what’s going on. I stress this because I’ve fallen into the trap of attempting to lock a drum performance to the grid to the point that the feel is lost. It’s definitely something to be wary of when editing drums. Another potential pitfall is to move one errant hit to the grid without considering the overall groove. Move the hit a little at a time until it sits nicely with what’s happening before and after it.
To move a transient, simply grab the marker and slide it forward or backyard in the timeline. You’ll see the move updated in all of the other drum tracks. Make sure to grab the marker in the bottom half of the region to use the three‑pronged option. This will allow you to move the hit while keeping the other hits on either side in the same place. The single transient option you get when click‑dragging in the top half of the region moves everything in the region, which is definitely something we don’t want here.
To Q Or Not To Q?
While manually nudging drum hits may seem overwhelming, this truly is the best way to start. But why not just quantise the whole thing?
There are two considerations to, um, consider. Firstly, any really good drummer is going to play the way they want the drums to sound. That doesn’t mean they don’t make minor timing errors, but the majority of what they’re playing is what they think works. That could mean playing the snare a little behind the beat or getting on top of the beat in the choruses. Do you really want to undermine their artistry and professionalism by snapping every hit to the grid?
Second, is the rest of the band exactly on the grid? Probably not. There’s nothing wrong with everybody being off the grid if they’re doing it together. Also, keep in mind that every style and genre is going to put different demands on a drum performance. A dance track probably should be quantised while a jazz track almost certainly should not be.
Selecting your entire drum performance and applying quantisation to it is a solution that does work well in many cases. Of course, you would still want to listen and make adjustments and even play with the Q Strength value. But if your tracks are more groove‑oriented and need subtle refinement, you might want to explore further.
Logic’s quantise behaviour works differently for audio and MIDI. With MIDI data, eighth notes are forced to quarter notes when quantising is set to 1/4, but with audio, only transients on or near quarter notes will be moved, while the eighth‑note upbeats remain in place.
Audio Quantisation
While Logic can quantise Flex‑enabled audio in the same manner it would with MIDI, it’s worth examining how Logic approaches audio quantisation. I couldn’t find any explanations of this online, so I had to do a few experiments to draw these conclusions.
With MIDI quantisation, Logic will move all of the notes to the nearest division of the quantise value. If you record eighth notes and quantise to quarter notes, Logic will stack the upbeat eighth notes on top of the downbeats, leaving you with only notes playing on downbeats.
With audio, it seems, Logic does a bit of interpretation, and only moves the notes that are close to the quantise value. So If you have a hi‑hat playing eighth notes and you quantise it to quarter notes, Logic will move the quarter‑note downbeats to the grid, but will leave the upbeats untouched.
Understanding this concept gives you more options when quantising a drum performance. The common approach to quantising has always been to determine the smallest note value in the take and quantise to that value. Now you are free to only quantise the first beat of the bar, for example (Q=1/1 Note), while keeping the rest of the measure’s feel intact. Use the Q Strength parameter to aid in making the performance even more natural.
If this nuanced approach is more than you need, your simple takeaway should be that you can still quantise a straightforward rock track to eighth notes even though there are 16‑note fills. Logic won’t make them eighth‑note fills. It’s too logical for that.
You can’t create a Groove Template directly from multitrack drums, but you can easily create a stereo bounce for the purpose, by drawing an empty region on the track stack lane and bouncing in place.
Groove Templates
Another method for quantising your live drums is to use Groove Templates. I haven’t had success creating a Groove Template from multitracked drums yet, so, instead, I bounce the multitracks down to a stereo file and use that.
First, find a two‑bar section of your drum take that’s as close to ideal as possible. Make any adjustments with the Flex markers if needed. On your drum bus (or drum track stack), use the pencil tool to draw a region that’s the length of your optimal groove. Now, right‑click on that empty region and choose Bounce In Place. Set it to create a new track and to leave the original.
Now you’ll have a stereo bounce on a new track. Enable Flex on that region, go to the Region Inspector, scroll down to the bottom of the Quantize menu, and choose Make Groove Template. Then select your entire drum performance (or just the sections that need help) and, in the Quantize drop‑down, choose the newly created groove.
Tidy Toms
In the previous installment of this series, I described a quick and dirty method for automating the toms’ level without touching the tracks themselves. Now that we have our drums fully edited, we can start getting a bit more surgical on them.
A tried‑and‑true method is to add the Noise Gate plug‑in to each tom track. Start by adding it to the first tom, then dial in settings so that the gate only opens when the drum is hit. Make sure to go to a loud section of the song and ensure that the gate isn’t opening on the rest of the kit.
After you have your settings, copy the plug‑in to the remaining tom tracks by Option‑dragging it, and tweak the settings as needed.
However, if the performance is simply too dynamic, Noise Gates are not going to cut it. If you’ve been reading my columns here for a while, you can probably predict my first suggestion: make a duplicate Track Alternative and add ‘Tom Edits’ to the name. You can achieve great results by simply using the Marquee tool to select the measures where the toms are inactive and then muting them (just remember to turn Groups off first).
Editing your toms like this cleans up your mix without much fuss. Just remember to turn Groups off for these edits.
As a final step, select all of the regions (the muted ones too) and add a small fade in/out from the Region Inspector window. It may not be obvious where to add this. You need to double‑click next to the Fade In/Out drop‑down menu for the field to be exposed.
