The BEST Way to Edit Guitar DI in Logic Pro X (No Flex Time)
With the rise of amp sims and high-quality yet affordable recording equipment, more and more guitarists, bassists and audio engineers are recording the DI signal instead of miking a real cabinet. Many people edit the DI’s via audio stretching, or Flex Time in Logic’s terms, but I’m a big opponent of that way of editing because I find stretching the audio to always leave artifacts in the DI’s, which will then become much more audible after going through an amp sim or a real amp. There have been cases where I received lifeless sounding DI’s from clients, and the culprit was stretch editing.
As an audio engineer, I believe slip editing is the best way to edit guitar DI’s. Unfortunately, Logic Pro X doesn’t have a slip tool (I know it has two slip key commands, but relying on keyboard shortcuts is nowhere near as fast as having a slip tool for the mouse). However, I developed a workflow in Logic Pro X that resembles slip editing in other DAWs, and I believe it’s comparable to slip editing with a slip tool.
Now I will show you how to edit guitar and bass DI’s without Flex Time in Logic Pro X.
What You Need
Guitar or bass DI signals (duh)
The right tempo map for the song. This is very important because you will be editing the DI signals to the grid lines.
An amp sim plugin, inserted on the DI tracks. It’s important to always audition the edits you have done through an amp sim, because sometimes the amplification will amplify any artifacts, especially when you are using high gain tones. Similarly, sometimes the distortion will hide editing artifacts, in which case you can just leave them, because your listeners will never hear the DI signals anyway.
A drum track for the song. The drum track will allow you to audition the edits you have done to see if the guitars or bass are in sync with the drums, and help you see whether or not the DI’s are off time (since you can’t really see the grid lines through the audio regions).
Setting Up
Assign the following key commands to keys you can easily access (Logic Pro X > Key commands > Edit):
Trim region start to previous region
Drag mode: No Overlap
Drag mode: X-Fade
Enable background grid lines
Set Division to 1/16 or 1/32 if the song has a slower tempo. This will help you move the DI’s to the grid lines so they are on time.
If you don’t see this, right click on the Control Bar and Display, and select “Customize Control Bar and Display….” Then, check “Time Signature / Division” under the “LCD” column.
Set the Left Click Tool to “Pointer Tool,” and the Right Click Tool or Command-Click Tool (depending on your preference) to “Scissors Tool.” This so you can split audio regions with one button and click and drag the regions around with the other.
Set Snap to “Off” and “Drag” to “No Overlap” at the top right corner. If you are on a smaller screen, it’s in the gear icon drop-down menu.
Editing the DI
It’s best to watch the video, because it’s hard to explain this through text well, but I’m going to try my best for those of you who prefer to read. You can click the screenshots to enlarge them.
Below is an instance where the guitars are off time. The upper one is too early, and the lower one is too late.
Using the Scissors Tool to cut at the pick attack, NOT at the transient (ensure Snap is set to Off or Smart):
Click and drag the audio regions and drag them so they start at the grid (ensure Drag is set to “No Overlap”):
After dragging an audio region to the right, there will be a gap, as you see in the screenshot above. This is where the key command “Trim region start to previous region” comes into handy. Simply select that audio region, and hit the key command. It will connect to the previous region:
That’s the procedure to editing the DI’s without Flex Time. It’s the same as how you would do slip editing in other DAWs—basically split at pick attach and drag to grid, except in Logic’s, you need to use that additional key command to close the gaps.
Remember to ALWAYS audition the edits you have made.
Sometimes, this kind of editing will result in a hiccup in the connection points between two audio regions, but it’s very easy to fix it.
First, you can hover your mouse cursor at the connection point, and when the mouse cursor becomes “<Ɪ>,” drag it left or right (try both) and see if that will get rid of the artifact. Most of the time, you will be able to find a better connection point.
Second, you can change the Drag to “X-Fade,” hover your mouse cursor at the edge of one side of the audio region, and when the mouse cursor becomes “<[>” or “<]>,” drag it a bit over so it overlaps the other side. When you do that, you will see the crossfade at the connection point:
A combination of both method will almost always fix up any hiccups from this style of editing.
That’s it! Hopefully you find it helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment! I will be responding quickly :)
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