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April 5, 2018

How to Successfully Edit Drums Using Flex Time

 

Drum editing has become par for the course in modern audio production.

As listeners, we’re used to the sound of a drummer who’s locked in. It’s not so much we expect it. But when a drummer isn’t tight, it just doesn’t feel right.

The great news is Logic delivers a brilliant system for editing drums! And that system is Flex Time.

But there seems to be a lot of confusion about how to achieve quality results with Flex.

Doing Your Flex Homework

Books

There are folks who genuinely want to use Flex to fix their tracks. But they can’t seem to sort out how to get the result they’re looking for.

Then there’s a group of people who insist Flex isn’t accurate, doesn’t sound good, or just isn’t up to the task.

That’s B.S.

The confusion and myths about Flex doesn’t mean it’s broken. The problem is not knowing the steps necessary to be successful with Flex.

So today I want to share my step-by-step workflow to successfully edit drums using Flex Time.

There’s a tiny bit of set-up you’ll need to do to have your drums Flex-ready.

But once you get used to the workflow, you can blaze through Flex edits with quality results.

1. The Science of Editing

Logic Pro X Group Editing (Selection)

Whenever you edit a multimic instrument, you have to edit all the tracks in the same way.

In this case I’ll assume you have a drum recording with several drum tracks:

  • Overheads
  • Kick
  • Snare
  • Toms

All these tracks are interwoven. When the drummer hits the snare, all the microphones catch some semblance of that hit.

If you move a snare hit on only the snare track, you’ll disrupt the delicate phase relationship of your kit.

The result? Bad phase relationships. Which means your kit will sound like it’s going through a phaser pedal.

That’s why it’s important to make sure you commit Flex edits at the same point on all the drum regions. And when you move a hit, that hit needs to be moved identically across all the drum tracks.

And we do this with Groups.

2. The Mechanics of Grouping

Grouping gives you an easy way to tie tracks together. Want to easily edit 7 or 10 tracks at the same time?

Groups are the way to go.

To do this, navigate to the Mixer, and select all your Drum tracks:

Logic Pro X Mixer Grouping

There should be a field on your Drum Mixer Strips for selecting Groups. Select the next available Group:

Logic Pro X New Group Menu

When you select a new Group, Logic will open the Group dialog in the Inspector. Give your Group a convenient name such as Drums.

From here it’s important to enable two Group Settings in particular:

  • Editing (Selection)
  • Quantize-Locked (Audio)

Logic Pro X Group Settings

Editing (Selection)

When enabled, Editing (Selection) ensures any selection you make is applied to the whole group. So if you decide to chop a section out from the overheads, that same cut will occur for all other the drum tracks.

Quantize-Locked (Audio)

In this case, Quantize-Locked (Audio) ensures your Flex edits are exactly the same across the kit.

By enabling both of these settings, you can commit Flex edits with confidence.

Once you’ve nailed those, there’s just one more step for locked in Grouping:

Q-References

Logic Pro X Q Reference

Q-References are essentially your guide tracks for Flex. You get to tell Logic which drum tracks are the most important ones in the Group.

Since most drummers play the kick and snare the most, I always choose the Kick and Snare as my guides.

But don’t worry – Flex will analyze all your drum tracks. And Logic will cross-reference them with your guide tracks. This means you won’t have way more Flex markers than you need.

Before we go ahead and enable Flex, let’s fine-tune our transients a touch.

3. The Transient Touch

Logic Pro X Audio File Editor

For this step, you’ll want to turn your Group off. To do this, use key command Shift – G.

Double-click on your Kick track, and navigate to the File Editor. Then go up to Audio File in the Audio File Editor menu, open the menu and select Detect Transients near the bottom:

Logic Pro X Detect Transients

Logic will now analyze your Kick track for any and all kick transients.

The goal here is to finesse any mistakes that might pop up in the transient analysis. This can save you some grief later.

When you have an inconsistent drummer, Logic might make mistakes in its analysis. Logic might detect the wrong transients. Or it might not detect the right ones!

So it’s our job to double-check that the analysis is accurate. If you find something that looks wrong, you can double-click a transient marker to remove it:

Logic Pro X Audio File Editor Remove Transient Marker

Or if you need to add a marker to a missed hit, pull up the Pencil tool in the Tool menu with key command T:

Logic Pro X Tool Menu Pencil Tool

And add a transient marker:

Logic Pro X Add Transient Marker With Pencil Tool

It takes a little bit of time, but double-checking Logic’s analysis of your kick and snare can save you time later.

Flex Markers at Zero Crossings

There is one goof Logic tends to make when placing transient markers. And that’s placing markers in the middle of a transient instead of before the transient.

This can be a big problem when it comes to kick drums.

Because when you edit a whole song worth of kick hits and then bounce, you could very well end up with pops and clicks everywhere.

To remedy this, I’ll take this opportunity to finesse the transient markers for all my kick hits.

All you have to do is make sure Snap Edits to Zero Crossing is enabled. To do that, go to Edit in the Audio File Editor menu:

Logic Pro X Audio File Editor Snap Edits to Zero Crossings

Now go to each kick hit and click once on each transient marker.

Logic will move each transient marker to the closest Zero Crossing before the kick hit. It takes a bit of time, but will save you a ton of frustration.

4. Flex!

Logic Pro X Flex Slice Mode

Phew! Now that you’ve taken the steps above, re-enable your Group with Shift – G.

Turn on Flex Mode with key command Command – F.

You’re only going to use one mode for editing your drums.

And it’s not Rhythmic!

Using the Flex menu in the Track Header, choose Slicing:

Logic Pro X Slicing Mode

Slicing is your designated Flex Mode for natural sounding drum edits.

Logic will then analyze the rest of your drum tracks and populate your regions with Flex Markers.

Now’s your chance to edit!

Conclusion

You can achieve great sounding, natural drum edits with Flex. And it’s about 1000 times better than the alternative!

Logic simplifies editing with a great sounding and advanced time-stretching tool kit.

All you need is the proper checklist for making your tracks “Flex ready” 🙂

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Filed Under: Editing, Flex Time

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Charles says

    April 11, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    Great stuff, Chris — thanks. I’m just starting out w/ LPX so these advanced features are beyond me at the moment but super-useful for future ref. Speaking of Grouping, it’s interesting to see how it’s used in Beck’s ‘Colors’ (sample project shipped with Logic).

    Keep up the good work!

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      April 11, 2018 at 1:23 pm

      Thanks Charles! I appreciate the feedback 🙂 What kind of posts would you like to see?

      Reply
  2. Thaddeus Corea says

    May 21, 2018 at 7:59 am

    Solid article for the beginners on drum editing. I think you hit some very important points.
    I’ve been using Logic professionally since 2000.

    Yes, the zero-crossing is a frustration. I find that Logic mostly gets it right, but you have to check.

    I know slicing mode is the first choice on Flexing drums, but Polyphony can have some excellent and interesting results in situations where you only want to quantize to the beginnings of a bar, or just half note.

    I find that one quantization choice usually doesn’t work for every section of a song. I often chop and apply different Q to different sections, sometimes in different percentages.
    Thank you, good luck.

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      May 21, 2018 at 12:33 pm

      Love it! Thanks Thaddeus 🙂

      Personally I’ve never needed to switch Flex Modes for different parts, as Slicing has always been useful to me. But I don’t doubt that each Mode can be useful in a way it was originally intended. I bet Polyphonic can be great in certain drum situations.

      Definitely agree on needing to use different Quantize values! I always find Quantizing to complicate my work, more than help it. So I go old school, lining up each hit one at a time.

      Thanks for the contribution 🙂

      Reply
  3. Rick says

    November 11, 2018 at 10:30 am

    Thnx for the very informative article! I have the following question/problem: is it supposed to be that only by enabling slice mode in flex tool, the audio is already changed/splitted? On my cymbal tracks I can hear and see that there are small gaps on the Q reference transients from my kick and snare. I haven’t set a single flex marker but the audio is already splitted. This occurs only in the mode slicing. In all other modes the audio seems untouched after analyzing. Thnx for helping me out.

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      November 17, 2018 at 8:10 pm

      Hey Rick, thanks for your comment. Slicing shouldn’t split your audio up when you first turn it on. It makes me wonder if you have Quantizing enabled in the Region Inspector? Or perhaps the audio file has a different tempo than your Project?

      One other thought – when you look in the Track dropdown in the Inspector, is “Fill Gaps” selected? If not, that could also result in gapped audio.

      Reply
  4. Åge Eriksen says

    February 25, 2019 at 5:04 pm

    Great lesson! I especially liked the part about all the manually work one just have to do to get a good result.

    But I do feel you need to finish up this lesson, because that group of drum tracks need to be bounced when the quantization is done, right? When I try to bounce one group track, the result is a bounced track with the audio from all the tracks in the group. And I can’t ungroup before bouncing, because then the group-interlocked quantization gets lost. How do you do this?

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      February 25, 2019 at 5:17 pm

      Thanks so much for the feedback and question Åge! The way I manage it is by disabling the group by using key command Shift-G, and then select each track individually and using Control-B to bounce each track in place.

      I’ve never had issues with the phase relationships suffering from disabling the group. I do hope that helps!

      Reply
      • Åge Eriksen says

        February 25, 2019 at 7:22 pm

        Oh, if it was just as easy as that… When I select all the tracks in the group and press Com-shift-G, then a stack is created (!?). If I try it with a single track selected, I just get a message telling too few tracks are selected. And not in any way is it possible to select just a single region, they’re all tied up in a group. Must be a bug here. Btw: Flex time is on for every track while bouncing.

        I’ll tried googling it, and there seems to be more people having this problem, but I haven’t found a fix yet. Or, there is a fix playing the track to a bus and route it to a new track while record it, but it’s not meant to be done like that. It’s meant to be as easy as you describe it.

        Oh, well, I won’t bother you with this tangle. I’ll try starting the process all over again, following your recipe. Thanks for your reply, Chris.

        Reply
        • Åge Eriksen says

          February 25, 2019 at 7:58 pm

          Wait… You wrote “key command shift-G”, not “com-shift-G”. My bad! (hard facepalm)
          Tried it, and it works fine now. Thanks!

          Reply
          • chris.vandeviver says

            February 25, 2019 at 8:56 pm

            Booyah! So glad to help, and glad you figured it out! 🙂

      • Dan Boruchowitz says

        August 4, 2021 at 8:10 am

        Hey Chris
        Amazing video on grasping flex for drums. My question is – once you have bounced in place does that save all the flex edits and quantizing done one the track? Not sure if it goes back to the original source track.

        Thanks!

        Reply
        • Chris says

          August 4, 2021 at 8:43 am

          Hey Dan, Bouncing in Place should commit all Flex edits to the newly generated files. Just used it yesterday for some acoustic guitars 🙂

          Reply
          • Dan Boruchowitz says

            August 4, 2021 at 9:06 am

            Thanks so much Chris. Was worried there for a moment, lots of conflicting opinions online as you know. Love the channel.

  5. Åge Eriksen says

    March 19, 2019 at 10:02 am

    A philosophical question: Should the kick and snare always be 100% in time?

    I’m recording rock/pop, but don’t want to kill the drummer’s feel with to strict timing. So far I try to keep it human by only setting kick/snare timing at 100%, and leaving the hihat as is (only fixing the parts that become too far out when moving kick/snare). And I move all beats manually in Flex Time, for more control with the vibe. But I’m getting a nagging feeling that 100% timing maybe too harsh for the human touch… Any thoughts about this?

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      March 21, 2019 at 10:52 am

      A great question Åge 😉

      I think it all depends. Many modern styles demand an almost unnatural tightness with the grid. While some other forms of music – I would posit jazz or some other styles that rely on vibe and improvisation – shouldn’t be locked in with the grid.

      Rock/pop tends to be more rigid about timing these days. You don’t have to be! But that seems to be the style these days.

      Your method of locking the kick and snare and leaving the hi hats is a totally respectable method. My suggestion is to be very judicious about how you edit the fills 🙂

      Reply
      • Åge Eriksen says

        March 21, 2019 at 6:28 pm

        Yeah, I’ve followed your advice to only put the first and last beat in time in the fills. That works great👍

        Reply
  6. Charles says

    March 26, 2019 at 8:57 pm

    Guess I fell behind being too focused on other aspects of tracking, because I just had my mind completely blown by choosing a Producer Kit (for no particular reason except to see what it is)….

    I’ve been using LPX daily for the 12 mo. and have had very good results with the many adjustments available with the “packaged” drummers and kits. But today… today I saw, for the first time, access to Levels and EQ for EACH INDIVIDUAL drum kit component (only in Producer Kits). I had no idea of this…

    { SFX: mind being blown }

    Reply
    • Charles says

      March 28, 2019 at 1:59 pm

      Sorry, I realize Producer Kits is off-topic for this blog post. I meant to add it elsewhere — that’s how flabbergasted I was when I found this feature 😉

      Reply
      • chris.vandeviver says

        March 29, 2019 at 3:27 pm

        All good Charles! Agreed – the Producer kits are the way to go. Love the in-depth control over all aspects of Drum Kit Designer.

        Reply
  7. electronicdrumguy says

    April 17, 2019 at 5:21 am

    Awesome written.I really need this kind of articles. I want to gain some more knowledge for drum techniques. Thanks for sharing the superb information. Keep it up and keep posting.

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      April 25, 2019 at 8:54 pm

      Happy to share! Thanks for checking out the website 🙂

      Reply
  8. Alex says

    August 2, 2019 at 5:07 pm

    Thanks for the great info Chris! I knew all the steps, but I really need you to help me with going a step further, meaning, commiting to the flexed drum tracks. I have a problem if I don’t do that: I change the length of my drum tracks in a specific region (to find the perfect crossfade area) and my flex edits get messed up. So, I need to commit to them before changing the length of my drum tracks again…Thanks in advance!

    Reply
  9. Morgan Wright says

    February 6, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    Sitting down to drum edit an entire album and I think this’ll be super helpful!

    Question: how does this work if the drummer uses a lot of ghost notes? Particularly with the transient detection and using the snare as an anchor.

    Or does that not factor at all when it really comes down to it?

    Reply
    • chris.vandeviver says

      February 7, 2020 at 6:36 pm

      Hey Morgan! I would leave the ghost notes alone and focus on lining up the major hits (kick and snare). The ghost notes are more like window dressing/vibe. If some of your ghost notes feel a little funky (as in audible artifacts), only then I would adjust their timing.

      Reply
  10. Dustin says

    February 14, 2020 at 6:43 pm

    Excellent post Chris!
    Quick Question… I want to loop a section that I’ve already quantized, but it seems to not be an option… I can only time stretch the region where I would normally drag the end to loop it… If I turn flextime off, it goes back to normal… do I just have to make a .bip? or is there another way to “lock in” quantization once you’ve made all your edits?

    Reply
  11. John says

    May 18, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    Dude! That Snap To Zero Crossing tip is a life saver. I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. Thank you so much!

    Reply
  12. Nate David says

    November 5, 2022 at 2:24 am

    Lets say you have a kick in and a kick out track would you snap to zero crossing on both tracks?
    Thanks

    Reply

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