If you’re human, you’re not perfect. But that’s okay. Robots are, and they work for us — at least for the time being. When you lay down recording of your otherwise excellent guitar playing, you’ll notice that timing and pitch isn’t perfect – even after you’ve tuned with your Roadie.
Sometimes that can work in your favor, other times it can ruin a song. You could always record the part again, but that’s not always an option. So let’s have a look at how you can fix timing and pitch in my weapon of choice: Logic Pro X.
Why Logic Pro X?
I’m not paid by Apple to promote Logic, it’s just a great DAW (digital audio workstation). Like many bedroom musicians, I started out with Fruity Loops. But then I grew up and realized no one takes Fruity Loops seriously. Don’t believe me? Then why did they re-brand to FL Studio? To sound like a serious DAW that people use (spoiler: they don’t).
Then I moved on to Reason. It’s a neat little DAW that gearheads will love, because all the plugins look like an actual hardware rack. But I had to buy a separate piece of software just to record audio, so out the window Reason went. Pro Tools is a cool DAW, but again you had to buy a separate piece of hardware back in the day. No thank you.
Logic Pro X Flex Time
Flex Time in Logic does what it says on the can. It allows you to stretch and contract audio files so you can synchronize them with the rest of the tracks. It’s very handy for when you want to correct recording mistakes or just polish an otherwise good recording. Check out this video to see how it’s done — and then I’ll show you a little shortcut afterwards:
Here is the shortcut. You select the track you want to edit, enable Flex Time, open the Region section on the Inspector, then click Quantize. That will do all the heavy lifting for you and correct the timing for the entire track. It might not be perfect in all places, but you can edit those manually afterwards. Here’s a screenshot to show you what it looks like:
Logic Pro X Flex Pitch
Even though you’ve tuned your guitar to perfection with your Roadie Tuner, the final recording might still need some tweaking in the pitch department. Flex Pitch is great for that. While it is not as good as Melodyne, it does come with Logic so you don’t have to invest in more software. Flex Pitch will allow you to correct minor mistakes and create some really cool effects that would otherwise be a headache to work out on the guitar. Check it out here:
