2. Working with Elastic AudioAuto-conforming imported loops| 00:00 | The beauty of Elastic Audio inside Pro
Tools is that it can be as hands-on or
| | 00:05 | hands-off as you want it to be and
nothing demonstrates this better than the
| | 00:09 | ability to auto-conform audio loops and
regions to your session's tempo simply
| | 00:13 | by dragging them into the Edit window.
| | 00:16 | Now, there's two ways we can approach this.
| | 00:19 | I can drag-and-drop from my Finder or
Windows Explorer, so I could drag-and-drop
| | 00:23 | from files on the desktop directly into
Pro Tools or I can use the built-in Pro
| | 00:28 | Tools workspace to drag-and-drop.
| | 00:31 | Basically, the same idea. I
n both windows we're going to be
| | 00:34 | dragging-and-dropping but
slightly different workflows.
| | 00:37 | So, looking at dragging-and-dropping
from the desktop, there's a specific
| | 00:40 | preference that I want to go over
before we do this, because it's going to
| | 00:43 | affect how files come into the system.
| | 00:46 | So if I go to Setup > Preferences and
I go to the Processing tab here, I'll see
| | 00:52 | I have a preference called Drag and Drop
from Desktop Conforms to Session Tempo.
| | 00:56 | Now, I can choose No Files, so that
anything I drag in will just be left alone.
| | 01:01 | REX and ACID Files Only, so REX and
ACID files are special types of sound files
| | 01:06 | that have metadata that tell the
tempo of the file and tells it where the
| | 01:11 | transient points are so that it
can re-conform easily, or All Files.
| | 01:15 | This would be any sound file
that I brought into Pro Tools.
| | 01:18 | So in this case, we're
going to choose All Files.
| | 01:21 | Now, you might come and tweak this preference
because it really will do this to all files.
| | 01:25 | So if you're bringing in a CD
reference track, it'll try to analyze and
| | 01:29 | reconfirm all four minutes of the song,
and that tends to get a little bit weird.
| | 01:34 | This generally works best with
shorter sound bites, loops, things under
| | 01:40 | eight bars in length.
| | 01:41 | But for now, we'll leave it
on All Files and I'll click OK.
| | 01:45 | Now if I want to import from a folder on my
computer, I can just bring up that folder.
| | 01:51 | I've got a little folder called Loops
to Import here and I'm just going to go
| | 01:59 | ahead and drag in the Funk Drum Loop
right to the Tracks list so that it
| | 02:03 | automatically creates a track for me.
| | 02:05 | Now, I get a dialog that says
Import original tempo from file.
| | 02:08 | What this is asking me is if I want to
use the original tempo as analyzed by
| | 02:13 | Elastic Audio of the loop itself.
| | 02:15 | So the tempo of my session is 120 to start with.
| | 02:18 | It's going to change it
to the tempo of this loop.
| | 02:21 | Now I'll choose Import and we'll see
that it's changed the session tempo to 100
| | 02:26 | BPM and drop this in on its own track.
| | 02:29 | It named the track with the name of the
file here and I can rename that if I'd like.
| | 02:35 | Now for subsequent files, it's actually
just going to automatically conform them
| | 02:39 | to this new 100 BPM.
| | 02:41 | So it won't ask you that every time.
| | 02:43 | It's just for the first file
you import into this session.
| | 02:47 | Now if I import the Shaker Loop, which
is at 90 BPM, I'll just drag-and-drop
| | 02:50 | that on the Tracks list.
| | 02:52 | You'll see that's automatically going to
conform the 90 BPM Shaker Loop to 100 BPM.
| | 02:58 | So I have two measures here.
| | 03:00 | If I want to remove the conform,
I can right-click and choose Remove warp.
| | 03:05 | That puts me back to the original 90 BPM.
| | 03:07 | So you can see that's slightly
longer for two bars of the Shaker.
| | 03:11 | If I want to return it to 100 BPM,
I right-click and choose Conform to Tempo.
| | 03:16 | Now I can continue to drag-and-drop
files into this session, just drag them to
| | 03:20 | the Tracks list, and that will
automatically conform to the session tempo of 100 BPM.
| | 03:25 | If the file is already at that
tempo, like the bass groove here,
| | 03:30 | no conforming is necessary.
| | 03:32 | Now, if we look over here at the
Regions list, you'll see that in addition to
| | 03:36 | the bold whole file region, I also get
an additional region that's created from
| | 03:40 | the Elastic Audio engine and the Shaker,
the one that had to be re-conformed,
| | 03:44 | I get a little icon here that lets
me know that it's been elasticized.
| | 03:50 | So in this case, I have the
original 90 BPM region here and the
| | 03:55 | re-conformed region here that's
been elasticized to fit two measures
| | 04:00 | relative to this session.
| | 04:02 | Alternatively, I can import files,
conforming them to the session's tempo
| | 04:06 | using the workspace.
| | 04:08 | The Workspace under Window >
Workspace is a file management system built
| | 04:14 | directly into Pro Tools.
| | 04:16 | It allows me to preview, organize,
delete, rename, do all kinds of file
| | 04:21 | management tasks directly
inside the Pro Tools software.
| | 04:25 | So I've set up a little
catalog with some of my loops.
| | 04:28 | Now the difference here is that I can
actually preview these directly using my
| | 04:36 | Pro Tools soundcard.
| | 04:37 | When you're using the Finder or the
Windows Explorer to import audio content,
| | 04:43 | the problem is that unless you have
your soundcard patched into your Pro Tools
| | 04:47 | audio device, it's very difficult to
monitor the sound plane back off, let's
| | 04:52 | say, your desktop or a
folder on your hard drive.
| | 04:55 | Now, in the Workspace, this is
directly tied into your Pro Tools interface.
| | 05:00 | So to preview, all I need to do is
just hit the little speaker here.
| | 05:03 | (Music playing)
| | 05:24 | If I want to use something in the
session, I can just drag it in either to the
| | 05:28 | Tracks list, to the Regions list, or
directly into an existing track, or right
| | 05:34 | underneath the last track
to create a new track there.
| | 05:37 | Now if I want to preview something in
the context of this session's tempo, for
| | 05:41 | example, if I wanted to first preview
this Shaker loop at 100 BPM to see how it
| | 05:46 | sounds, what I can do is I can
activate the Preview to Tempo option.
| | 05:51 | By clicking the small metronome up at
the top of the workspace, I can preview
| | 05:56 | each loop or each file in the
workspace to the 100 BPM session tempo.
| | 06:01 | (Music playing)
| | 06:09 | I can even preview the files in a
loop by right-clicking on the speaker and
| | 06:13 | choosing Loop Preview.
| | 06:15 | (Music playing)
| | 06:22 | And right next to the Preview to Tempo
checkbox, I can choose the Elastic Audio
| | 06:27 | plug-in that I want to preview
and process the sound through.
| | 06:30 | (Music playing)
| | 06:44 | If I import this file with the Preview
to Tempo box checked, it automatically
| | 06:50 | conforms that to session tempo.
| | 06:53 | So again, in the workspace, if you want
your loops or your regions to conform to
| | 06:57 | the session's tempo, you need to
check this little metronome box here.
| | 07:01 | When audio is automatically conformed
using drag-and-drop, you'll notice that
| | 07:06 | the track's timebase gets set
to Ticks instead of Samples.
| | 07:10 | So in this auto-conform process,
it automatically sets this track up to
| | 07:16 | re-conform to tempo changes.
| | 07:18 | Now, some of the other cool things
you can do when dragging-and-dropping to
| | 07:22 | conform is you can actually preview
in context conforming the loops to the
| | 07:28 | session's tempo while you play the session back.
| | 07:30 | So if I was going to play back this Drum
Loop here, I'll select this, make sure
| | 07:34 | Loop Playback is checked.
| | 07:36 | Go ahead and solo this.
| | 07:38 | Start playback.
| | 07:39 | (Music playing)
| | 07:43 | I bring my catalog back up.
| | 07:44 | (Music playing)
| | 07:48 | Preview the Shaker.
| | 07:49 | (Music playing)
| | 07:54 | I can control the volume in context here.
| | 07:56 | (Music playing)
| | 08:30 | I can even import stuff while
this session is playing back.
| | 08:33 | I don't have to stop.
| | 08:35 | Now you will get a little bit of
pause in playback when you do that.
| | 08:38 | (Music playing)
| | 08:42 | But you could build a whole session
just previewing different audio files on
| | 08:47 | the fly as you go, previewing them to
tempo and then importing them into the
| | 08:53 | session ready to go.
| | 08:54 | (Music playing)
| | 08:56 | Now using either the workspace or the
Finder to drag-and-drop audio in,
| | 09:02 | Pro Tools is automatically analyzing the
content and re-conforming it to the session's tempo.
| | 09:08 | What we might find is with more difficult
material, it can make mistakes in the analysis.
| | 09:15 | Some manual massaging is going to have to be
done of the analysis and the warp markers here.
| | 09:20 | For drum parts, it generally
gets it right on the first time.
| | 09:24 | The more complex the audio, polyphonic
material like piano, guitar or things
| | 09:29 | like that, it might make some mistakes.
| | 09:31 | So we're going to have to go in
and correct some of this stuff.
| | 09:34 | So even if your workflow doesn't
include a lot of loops, I think that
| | 09:38 | you'll find these tricks for auto-
conforming audio with drag-and-drop
| | 09:42 | really handy. Just for building
scratch tracks or quickly forming ideas,
| | 09:46 | this is a real time-saver.
| | 09:49 | This sort of GarageBand-esque
drag-and-drop loop workflow in Pro Tools is
| | 09:53 | especially powerful if you integrate
some of the more advanced features of
| | 09:56 | Elastic Audio to better match the feel
of your imported loops to one another.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enabling tracks for Elastic Audio| 00:00 | Even if you didn't conform your audio
on import, Pro Tools makes it easy to
| | 00:04 | take advantage of Elastic Audio on any
audio track using the dedicated Elastic
| | 00:09 | Audio plug-in selector.
| | 00:12 | To enable a track to use Elastic
Audio, simply click on the Elastic Audio
| | 00:17 | Plug-in button here and choose any of
the four real-time plug-ins or the fifth
| | 00:23 | Rendered Only plug-in.
| | 00:25 | Because this is drums, I'll
go ahead and choose Rhythmic.
| | 00:28 | Now, if I hit Play here and
listen to this track with a click...
| | 00:30 | (Music playing)
| | 00:37 | I'll notice that it's out of time.
| | 00:38 | It's playing back a little too slow at
100 BPM while this session is at 120.
| | 00:43 | So, if I want to correct that, now
that I've enabled Elastic Audio on this
| | 00:47 | track, I can simply right-
click and choose Conform to Tempo.
| | 00:50 | We'll listen one more time.
| | 00:52 | (Music playing)
| | 01:00 | That sounds pretty good.
| | 01:01 | So, the first time you enable Elastic
Audio on a track, what actually happens is
| | 01:06 | Pro Tools analyzes the regions on that
track as well as any other playlists that
| | 01:12 | you have associated with that track
and creates analysis points within that
| | 01:17 | region, so it can use those to warp to the
region in the case of re-conforming to
| | 01:22 | new tempos or actually warping
individual points within the region.
| | 01:28 | Sometimes when you enable Elastic Audio
on a track, it can take a long time to
| | 01:32 | analyze, especially if
you have a lot of material.
| | 01:35 | Let's say you have a four-minute
song and you have five playlists of
| | 01:39 | four-minute regions.
| | 01:40 | It can take quite a while to analyze.
| | 01:42 | So sometimes what you'll see is that the
region will be sort of whited out a little bit.
| | 01:47 | You can even go into your Task Manager to
see how long these events are going to take.
| | 01:53 | With these loops that almost happen
instantly. You don't even see the analysis.
| | 01:56 | But with longer files, you'll see
they'll be offline for a little bit before
| | 02:01 | you're actually able to manipulate them.
| | 02:03 | Now, one option you have if you know
you're going to work with Elastic Audio
| | 02:08 | is you can go to your preferences, Setup
> Preferences, and under the Processing tab,
| | 02:14 | you can check to enable Elastic
Audio on all new tracks and choose the
| | 02:20 | default plug-in for that.
| | 02:21 | Now you can always choose the plug-in later.
| | 02:24 | We'll start with Polyphonic.
| | 02:26 | That's a really good
catchall for all kinds of material.
| | 02:30 | Now, every new track I create is
automatically assigned the Polyphonic Elastic
| | 02:37 | Audio plug-in and I'm ready to go.
| | 02:39 | Anything I record on that track
automatically gets analyzed for Elastic
| | 02:44 | Audio and is ready for me to
manipulate. I don't have to enable a plug-in
| | 02:49 | or wait for it to analyze.
| | 02:51 | So sometimes this is a great way to work,
if you know that you're going to use
| | 02:54 | Elastic Audio on your tracks.
Just have it enabled automatically.
| | 02:59 | Now, if you want to enable or disable
Elastic Audio on all tracks or a group of tracks,
| | 03:03 | what you can do is use Option or
Alt while clicking on the Elastic Audio
| | 03:08 | plug-in selector or Option+
Shift for just the selected tracks.
| | 03:14 | That's Alt+Shift on the PC, click.
| | 03:18 | Now, if tracks are grouped together, the
Elastic Audio selector will follow the groups.
| | 03:22 | So if you had a group of drum tracks
and you enabled the Rhythmic plug-in on
| | 03:27 | those tracks and the group was active,
it would enable that for all the
| | 03:31 | tracks within the group.
| | 03:33 | Once audio has been analyzed and
warped in any way, you're going to see it
| | 03:38 | represented in the Regions list, in
addition to the original whole file or any
| | 03:42 | regions you've cut from that.
| | 03:44 | You'll also see elasticized regions.
| | 03:47 | The way we know this is there is a
little Elastic Audio icon to the left of the
| | 03:51 | region in the Regions list, telling
us that's the one that contains warp
| | 03:55 | markers, the one that's been
manipulated using Elastic Audio.
| | 03:59 | I always know the ones that are
unaffected by Elastic Audio, based on whether or
| | 04:03 | not they have this little icon next to them.
| | 04:06 | Now, within the Elastic Audio plug-in
selector menu, I can choose to have tracks
| | 04:11 | process in Real-Time or Rendered Processing.
| | 04:15 | Now, Real-Time Processing
takes up active CPU cycles.
| | 04:19 | So, when it's actually stretching or
shrinking the audio, it's processing that
| | 04:23 | information in real-time, using
the plug-in that you have selected.
| | 04:27 | Rendered Processing actually renders
a temporary file on your hard drive.
| | 04:32 | As you can see it turned white for
just a moment there rendering the file.
| | 04:37 | This would actually go into your
Rendered files folder in your Session folder.
| | 04:42 | Now, you don't have to manage this manually.
| | 04:44 | It's managed automatically by Pro Tools.
| | 04:47 | The benefit to using Rendered
Processing is that it doesn't take up extra
| | 04:51 | CPU cycles that you could use for plug-
ins, more tracks, virtual instruments,
| | 04:57 | and stuff like that.
| | 04:58 | The benefit of using Real-Time
Processing, however, is that when you make a
| | 05:02 | change, it's nearly instant.
| | 05:05 | So, you can actually be warping or
moving things in real-time as the session is
| | 05:09 | playing back and it updates.
| | 05:12 | Specially, for really big files that
would take a long time to re-render,
| | 05:16 | this can be really handy when you're
working within the context of the editing process.
| | 05:21 | Now, when you go on to the mixing
process, it might be wise to switch to
| | 05:27 | Rendered Processing when you're done
editing that region to save CPU cycles.
| | 05:32 | You can always get an idea of what
Elastic Audio is doing CPU-wise, by going to
| | 05:38 | Window > System Usage.
| | 05:41 | Under your Activity pane you have CPU (Elastic).
| | 05:44 | That's going to tell you what's going
on with any of your Real-Time Processing.
| | 05:48 | So, if I am using Real-Time Processing,
I might see a little movement there.
| | 05:52 | Now, I'm hardly doing anything in
the session, but if I had let's say a
| | 05:56 | session of 40 tracks and each one of
those was enabled for Elastic Audio in
| | 06:01 | Real-Time Processing, I would
definitely see some movement there.
| | 06:04 | That could definitely choke
out plug-ins and other resources.
| | 06:09 | So, again, when you go to the mix
stage, it's a good idea to just switch
| | 06:13 | all tracks to Rendered.
| | 06:14 | It's not going to sound any different.
| | 06:16 | It's just going to process those to a
temporary file in your session files folder.
| | 06:21 | Now, if for any reason you want to
disable Elastic Audio and go back to your
| | 06:26 | original region or original recording
or permanently commit that Elastic Audio
| | 06:31 | in the case of where you're going to
be exporting the files to another DAW or
| | 06:35 | moving back to an earlier version of
Pro Tools that didn't have Elastic Audio,
| | 06:40 | you can simply from the track's
Elastic Audio Enable window, choose None or
| | 06:46 | Disable Elastic Audio.
| | 06:48 | You're going to get a dialog that
says Elastic Audio regions cannot be
| | 06:52 | maintained when disabling
Elastic Audio processing on the track.
| | 06:55 | Now, you have two options. You can Revert.
| | 06:59 | That's going to take us back to the
original speed of that file, no warping.
| | 07:04 | So you see in my Regions list, it's
removed those Elastic Audio regions there
| | 07:08 | and brought me back to the 100 BPM Rock
Drum Loop. Or if I just Undo, and choose None,
| | 07:16 | I can choose Commit.
| | 07:18 | Now in this case, it's actually going to
render that elasticized region to a new bold file.
| | 07:25 | So, what I'll have on my hard drive
in the audio files folder is a new file
| | 07:29 | called Rock Drum Loop.
| | 07:30 | You see there is the Rhyt, as it was
actually processed by the plug-in in a sort
| | 07:37 | of AudioSuite style manner.
| | 07:39 | Now, in this case much like Rendered
Processing, it's not taking up any CPU cycles.
| | 07:45 | In fact, this would be compatible with
any system now in this file, even if it
| | 07:50 | doesn't have Elastic Audio.
| | 07:52 | So, the file has been committed into a
new file with all the changes or warps
| | 07:56 | that I've done in Elastic Audio.
| | 07:58 | Now, you may have noticed that Elastic Audio
selector is only available on audio tracks.
| | 08:04 | If you look on let's say an
instrument track, you won't find that there.
| | 08:12 | The reason for this is
this is an Audio Only concept.
| | 08:15 | In the case of MIDI, because it's
just note data, we can already move
| | 08:19 | that around easily.
| | 08:21 | Elastic Audio, hence the name, is only
applicable to audio tracks in Pro Tools.
| | 08:26 | So, you're not going to see that plug-
in selector on aux tracks, master faders,
| | 08:30 | instrument tracks, or MIDI tracks.
| | 08:33 | Now, again, I personally like having
Elastic Audio enabled on all my audio
| | 08:37 | tracks right from the start
| | 08:39 | so I'm not waiting for analysis
times whenever inspiration strikes.
| | 08:43 | Let's say I want to tweak a bass note
or tweak a drum hit. I don't have to wait
| | 08:47 | for that to render the analysis
and then start making my changes.
| | 08:51 | It happens directly after the
recording and I'm easily able to grab a warp
| | 08:56 | marker and just move back anywhere I want.
| | 08:59 | Remember to keep track of your system
resources when heavily using Elastic Audio.
| | 09:04 | Like I said, you may wish to switch
to Rendered Processing on all tracks.
| | 09:08 | Just hold down Option on the Mac or Alt
on the PC and switch that to Rendered.
| | 09:14 | All tracks will switch to
Rendered Processing there.
| | 09:17 | That's going to save system resources
when you move onto the next stage of mixing.
| | 09:21 | Now, you can always go back to Real-
Time Processing and make any tweaks on
| | 09:25 | an individual track or group of tracks
and then switch back to Rendered for playback.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Pro Tools Elastic Audio plug-ins| 00:00 | The Pro Tools Elastic Audio engine is
powered by five distinct time compression
| | 00:04 | expansion plug-ins, each optimized
for certain types of audio processing.
| | 00:10 | While the default setting of Polyphonic
works okay on most material, knowing the
| | 00:14 | ins and outs of the Elastic Audio plug-
in allows you to take your processing to
| | 00:18 | the furthest extremes possible,
extracting every last ounce of fidelity from
| | 00:23 | your source material.
| | 00:24 | So from the Elastic Audio plug-in
selector, we're going to see that there are
| | 00:28 | four real-time plug-ins:
| | 00:30 | Polyphonic, Rhythmic, Monophonic,
Varispeed, and one exclusive rendered
| | 00:35 | only plug-in, X-Form.
| | 00:37 | Now like I said, the catchall plug-in,
Polyphonic is best to use for full mixes,
| | 00:43 | layered instruments, anything with
chords or melodic lines that have overlapping
| | 00:48 | notes and lots of harmonic content.
| | 00:51 | It primarily relies on this concept of
granular res-ynthesis, where small grains
| | 00:56 | or sort of micro-loops of 6-180
milliseconds are duplicated or removed, while
| | 01:03 | attempting to retain the dynamic
relationship of the transient to the sustained
| | 01:08 | portion of the sound.
| | 01:10 | Now, the Polyphonic plug-in
relies heavily on correct analysis.
| | 01:15 | That is to say, the region
analyzing for transients versus sustaining
| | 01:21 | portions of the sound.
| | 01:23 | If this isn't done correctly, it doesn't
know how to add or subtract these small
| | 01:28 | little windows to the sound.
| | 01:30 | Now, as far as settings go, this
window or these grains can be manipulated in
| | 01:36 | the Polyphonic Plug-in Settings
window just by clicking on the plug-in.
| | 01:41 | I can change the window from 6
milliseconds all the way up to 185 milliseconds.
| | 01:47 | And what this does is it sets the
Window that will repeat in the sustaining
| | 01:51 | portion of the sound.
| | 01:52 | The best way to listen to this is to go
ahead and stretch something out really,
| | 01:56 | really far, and play with the Window.
| | 01:59 | (Music playing)
| | 02:09 | And your best bet here is to
go somewhere in the middle.
| | 02:12 | Let's say the default setting
between 50 and 100 milliseconds
| | 02:16 | is going to be great for most material.
More sustained material will benefit
| | 02:21 | from a larger window size.
| | 02:22 | Well, you need to be really careful
with the small window sizes as they can
| | 02:27 | actually affect the pitch.
| | 02:29 | So you hear less looping with smaller
window sizes, but if you get it too low,
| | 02:34 | especially with low frequency
material, it can really affect the pitch.
| | 02:37 | Now the Follow option just attempts to
reintroduce the same decay profile as
| | 02:43 | the original sound.
| | 02:44 | So if you stretch something out a lot,
the Follow option is going to adapt the
| | 02:48 | amplitude of the sustain and decay
portion of the sound to match the original,
| | 02:53 | or at least try to match the original.
| | 02:56 | So you can generally leave that checked.
| | 02:58 | You might not hear it with small changes.
| | 03:00 | It's a very subtle effect.
| | 03:05 | Now, the Rhythmic plug-in here is
designed for percussive or drum material.
| | 03:10 | That is material
| | 03:12 | that is primarily a transient
followed by just a lot of empty space.
| | 03:17 | So if we think about a drum when
you hit a snare, and no matter if you're
| | 03:20 | playing it at a fast tempo or a slow
tempo, it doesn't sustain any longer.
| | 03:25 | It's sort of hit and quit.
| | 03:27 | So using this idea of just taking in
the silent space and increasing that or
| | 03:33 | decreasing that is what the
Rhythmic plug-in relies on.
| | 03:36 | Now, there is one
preference called the Decay Rate.
| | 03:38 | And what you'll find is
you stretch something out...
| | 03:42 | (Music playing)
| | 03:47 | You will hear that what sustain or
decay that was there, any reverb tail that
| | 03:51 | was there, and the original sound
sort of gets looped from front-to-back.
| | 03:55 | So the Decay Rate determines the sort
of end of the sound or the tail that's
| | 04:01 | going to be repeated in order to
reintroduce some of that reverb, ambience, or
| | 04:06 | decay sound over long stretches.
| | 04:09 | The problem with that is extreme
changes can tend a sound kind of wobbly, or wah,
| | 04:14 | wah, wah, wah, wah, as it attempts to
repeat the tail or ambiance of a drum note.
| | 04:21 | If you turn it to 1%, you'll
hear a very noticeable gated effect.
| | 04:25 | (Music playing)
| | 04:31 | But the quality of each note stays intact.
| | 04:34 | So sometimes I actually prefer a very
short Decay Rate to keep the original sound
| | 04:41 | intact using the Rhythmic plug-in.
| | 04:44 | Now the Monophonic plug-in doesn't
have any options, but it's specifically
| | 04:49 | tailored to monophonic pitched audio.
| | 04:53 | Now monophonic pitched audio, let's say
voice, single-note guitar, bass guitar,
| | 04:59 | horns, strings, things like that,
single-note violin, has a specific
| | 05:04 | characteristic called the formant.
| | 05:06 | Now formant is the resonant quality
in recording that's unrelated to pitch.
| | 05:11 | And what tends to happen is when we
stretch or we play with a sound's waveform,
| | 05:16 | we can tend to shift the formant accidentally.
| | 05:19 | So, speeding something up a lot can
make it kind of sound Mickey Mouse, even
| | 05:23 | if the pitch is retained. Or slowing
something down can really shift the formant
| | 05:27 | a significant amount.
| | 05:29 | And the Monophonic plug-in is
what's called formant corrected.
| | 05:32 | So it attempts to re-shift that
formant of the original audio, or reclaim the
| | 05:37 | resonant frequencies there that
aren't related to pitch to give you a better
| | 05:42 | quality of stretching or shrinking.
| | 05:45 | The Varispeed option here actually
changes the pitch with time, so much like a
| | 05:51 | vinyl record as the needle
hovers over the groove of the record.
| | 05:55 | If it does it faster, the pitch increases.
| | 05:58 | If it does slower, the pitch goes down.
| | 06:01 | Because the waveform speed is
directly related to the pitch, the slower or
| | 06:06 | faster you play that audio samples
will directly change the pitch of that
| | 06:11 | audio with its time. So, Varispeed...
| | 06:21 | (Music playing)
| | 06:26 | Actually just plays back
the samples of the audio faster or slower.
| | 06:30 | The good thing about this is that
quality stays for the most part intact.
| | 06:35 | It's just that the pitch changes along with it.
| | 06:38 | So if you're not doing it in let's say
half or double increments of the rest of
| | 06:42 | your session, what tends to
happen is the pitch no longer matches.
| | 06:47 | Now, with drums this doesn't matter so much.
| | 06:49 | So I tend to use it a lot with
drums to get really kind of funky tones,
| | 06:54 | really stretch it out, so kind of
get that really bass heavy sound from
| | 06:57 | slowing down the waveform.
| | 06:59 | And then I might render it and
return it to its original pitch for a cool effect.
| | 07:06 | Now the final plug-in, X-Form, is what
sounds as Rendered Only, so you can't
| | 07:11 | use it in real-time.
| | 07:13 | And X-Form is a high quality Elastic
Audio plug-in that actually needs additional
| | 07:18 | time to process the signal, which
is why you can't use it in real-time.
| | 07:23 | But it maintains that absolute
fidelity of the original recording even
| | 07:28 | over extreme changes.
| | 07:30 | Now, there are really only two
options. You can enable Formant
| | 07:33 | Correction, which you should do for
monophonic audio like this bass or
| | 07:37 | vocal or a single-note guitar.
| | 07:39 | And you can control the Quality.
| | 07:41 | The Quality just sacrifices some of
the fidelity in the elastic process for
| | 07:46 | faster processing time.
| | 07:47 | Now the processing time can be very significant.
| | 07:51 | You can actually see that in your Task Manager.
| | 07:56 | And even for this very short four-bar
loop, it's going to take a good 20 seconds.
| | 08:01 | So think about a four minute song, 40
tracks, every track processed with Elastic
| | 08:06 | Audio, X-Form could take hours to render.
| | 08:09 | So, generally how I use X-Form is
specifically on tracks using the Polyphonic
| | 08:15 | and Monophonic plug-ins. What I'll do
is I'll get everything where I wanted to
| | 08:20 | be using the real-time plug-in.
| | 08:23 | And then I'll switch it to X-Form.
| | 08:24 | I might have to walk away for a bit.
| | 08:27 | And I'll evaluate if the
sound quality is better.
| | 08:30 | Many times with extreme changes,
it is significantly better using X-Form.
| | 08:34 | Sometimes it's not. In that
case, we'll switch it back.
| | 08:38 | One case where I find it generally isn't
better to use X-Form is with percussive
| | 08:42 | or drum material, where Rhythmic
really is the ticket to success there.
| | 08:46 | So, ultimately how do
you know which one to use?
| | 08:50 | I find that you'll develop intuitions
over time, but for now just use your ears.
| | 08:55 | It doesn't cost you anything but a
bit of time to switch the plug-in and
| | 08:58 | listen, and you may be surprised.
| | 09:01 | Sometimes I find that the Rhythmic
plug-in works better on a bass guitar.
| | 09:06 | Like I said, many make the mistake
of thinking X-Form is the best for
| | 09:09 | everything, because it
takes a long time to render.
| | 09:12 | And while it can sound better on certain material,
| | 09:15 | there are many times where I opt to
use one of the other real-time plug-ins,
| | 09:18 | because it does sound better.
| | 09:20 | What do you do when no
plug-in sounds good though?
| | 09:22 | Well, certain things can only take so
much manipulation, especially things that
| | 09:27 | have a lot of harmonic content.
| | 09:30 | So, when no plug-in yields satisfactory
results, first make sure your analysis
| | 09:34 | is accurate, or you can just cut your
losses and accept that you've gone too far
| | 09:39 | with the audio, or try it in the mix.
| | 09:41 | It might just work. Sometimes you can
hide these errors inside the mix and you
| | 09:46 | won't be able to hear them.
| | 09:47 | So, just experiment, use your ears,
and develop intuitions about which
| | 09:52 | plug-ins are right for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding Elastic Audio analysis and event markers| 00:00 | Once you've enabled the track to use
Elastic Audio by choosing an Elastic Audio
| | 00:04 | plug-in, you can further refine the
performance of the processing by ensuring
| | 00:08 | that Pro Tools has correctly analyzed
the region and placed accurate analysis
| | 00:13 | markers or event markers on
the content's transient points.
| | 00:17 | This is especially important when
you're altering a region's original tempo
| | 00:21 | to match a new tempo.
| | 00:23 | So we're dealing with this concept of
event confidence and the transients of the
| | 00:28 | audio material and in order to
correctly stretch or shrink the audio by adding
| | 00:34 | or subtracting periods from the
sustaining portion of the sound, the Elastic engine
| | 00:39 | needs to know when one note ends and
another begins, which is generally defined
| | 00:45 | by the presence of a transient or an
amplitude peak within the waveform.
| | 00:50 | When the Elastic Audio system does not
detect a region's transients correctly
| | 00:55 | by either choosing too few or too many
analysis markers or event markers,
| | 01:00 | the performance of any warping, stretching,
or shrinking will be compromised because
| | 01:05 | the engine cannot effectively distinguish
which parts of the waveform need to be modified.
| | 01:09 | So in the case of something like drums,
if we were to stretch it out and each
| | 01:14 | transient wasn't correctly identified,
what would happen is that the overall
| | 01:20 | amount of stretching for the region may
be correct. Let's say stretching it from
| | 01:24 | in this case 4 bars to 8 bars relative.
| | 01:29 | That's correct, but the relative
distance between each beat, had there not been
| | 01:35 | correct event markers placed, would get skewed.
| | 01:39 | So the amount each waveform gets
stretched or the space between each waveform
| | 01:44 | gets stretched would be different and
the feel of the region would be lost.
| | 01:50 | So let me just say to
start here, it's pretty good.
| | 01:53 | Most of time the auto analysis that Pro
Tools computes when you activate Elastic
| | 01:58 | Audio, it's good enough for most cases
and no user intervention is required.
| | 02:04 | When in doubt, it is important to check
a track's analysis view to confirm the
| | 02:07 | presence of accurate event markers.
| | 02:10 | So how we do this is from the Track
View Selector, we choose Analysis and this
| | 02:16 | is going to show up only on tracks that
have an Elastic Audio plug-in enabled.
| | 02:20 | And what we can see if we zoom in here
is that each transient within the drum
| | 02:26 | track has been analyzed, even the
little high-hat hits that you can barely see
| | 02:31 | their waveform. You can see that an
Analysis point or an event marker is what we
| | 02:36 | call them has been analyzed and placed
there and so like I said, when the sound
| | 02:43 | gets stretched out, it knows how much
to stretch this beat relative to this beat,
| | 02:48 | relative to the next
beat and so on and so forth.
| | 02:51 | So that the relative distance is
maintained as we stretch and shrink the sound.
| | 02:56 | Now if I find that it's detecting
too many or too few event markers
| | 03:02 | automatically, what I can do is I
can right click on a region and choose
| | 03:07 | Elastic Properties and in the
Elastic Properties window I have an Event
| | 03:12 | Sensitivity and I can drag this down
to remove event markers or move it up to
| | 03:20 | 100% to add new ones in.
| | 03:22 | Now the things like drums, drums
have very rich transients so the Event
| | 03:26 | Confidence is going to be very, very
high, so generally 100% is going to work great.
| | 03:32 | But if we move down to this
bass here, we'll see that sometimes it
| | 03:37 | analyzes points that aren't actual notes.
| | 03:43 | The guitar. See it gets every kind of
little noise or anything in there and so
| | 03:48 | what we might want to opt to do is
select that and drag down the Event
| | 03:52 | Sensitivity to remove some of those so that
just the beginning of each note is marked.
| | 03:58 | If you don't have a correct event
marker placement what's going to happen is
| | 04:04 | that it's going to stretch the audio
in awkward ways that aren't in time
| | 04:07 | with the original region and it can tend to
sound bad, no matter which plug-in you use.
| | 04:13 | If you find that controlling the event
sensitivity doesn't get you where you
| | 04:17 | want to be, let's say you drag it down
and it removes one that you wanted, you
| | 04:21 | push it up too much and you get too
many, what you can do is you can actually
| | 04:24 | manually manipulate these.
| | 04:26 | So if you find that they're either
inaccurate or too few or too many, you can
| | 04:30 | actually use the Grabber tool here to
either move, add additional ones just by
| | 04:38 | double-clicking, or holding Ctrl on the
Mac, Start on the PC. You can hold down
| | 04:44 | Option on the Mac, Alt on
the PC to delete a marker.
| | 04:48 | And sometimes what you'll find,
especially in the case of things the guitar and bass,
| | 04:52 | I find that it tends to place the
analysis marker either too early or too late
| | 04:58 | so that it's getting into the
actual meet of the note and this can cause
| | 05:03 | really weird results, even
with small changes or small warps.
| | 05:07 | So sometimes it's necessary to just
kind of move that in a little bit.
| | 05:11 | You can kind of eyeball it.
| | 05:13 | Now generally I listen really
carefully when I'm doing this and for the most part
| | 05:19 | I'm going to trust the analysis.
| | 05:21 | The analysis uses a really advanced
algorithm that goes beyond what the eye can
| | 05:25 | see on the waveform.
| | 05:27 | I'm seeing a very simple rendered view
of all the frequencie's amplitudes here
| | 05:33 | in my Pro Tools Edit window whereas
the Elastic Audio Event Analysis actually
| | 05:39 | gets into the spectral content and
analyzes where the high frequencies actually
| | 05:45 | transition in terms of amplitude
power to determine the transient position.
| | 05:49 | So sometimes it can look like it's not
accurate but I tend to trust it more than
| | 05:54 | I trust my own eye with this view
because this view isn't exactly 100% accurate.
| | 06:01 | So just a few basic tips here for
placing or manipulating your event markers.
| | 06:07 | Use fewer event markers for legato
material, so strings, sustaining pad.
| | 06:14 | This is going to achieve more natural results.
| | 06:16 | If we go down here and look at the organ
track and we'll just increase the size...
| | 06:30 | I can see that the sustained notes
throughout a good part of this are getting
| | 06:36 | additional analysis points, that it's
not going to sound really good when I go
| | 06:40 | ahead and stretch that out.
| | 06:42 | So what I might do is use
a lower Event Sensitivity.
| | 06:50 | Just to pick up the heads of the notes.
| | 06:53 | Or I might go in and actually
remove things by hand, so I can go in
| | 06:57 | here in Option+Click some
of these to get rid off them.
| | 07:00 | Again really with this sustained
material you really want to have fewer event
| | 07:05 | markers just at the heads of each note
so that the plug-in can really do its
| | 07:10 | job and add in those little windows of
sound for those sustained notes.
| | 07:14 | So you get more benefit from manipulating
the window size than you would from placing
| | 07:20 | more markers that don't really represent
transients and this is the case also in voice too.
| | 07:25 | It seems to be fewer markers,
the better in those situations.
| | 07:30 | You want to be especially careful
when identifying these transients within
| | 07:34 | polyphonic material,. Many notes will be
overlapping in and sustaining over each
| | 07:39 | other, so one note continues to sustain
on the new note is struck, and this is
| | 07:45 | what makes polyphonic material so
difficult to treat, especially things like
| | 07:50 | piano with a lot of sustain
pedal or acoustic guitar strumming.
| | 07:54 | A lot of these types of audio can't
take a lot of processing and so your best
| | 07:59 | bet is to use fewer markers just on
the key transients, so the beginning of
| | 08:03 | cords and to really play with that
window setting in the polyphonic plug-in.
| | 08:09 | Now when changing a region's tempo
significantly, again this is really when
| | 08:13 | you're going to hear that Elastic
Audio working hard, especially when you
| | 08:18 | stretch something out.
| | 08:20 | You want to experiment with how many
number of event markers affect the region's
| | 08:24 | ability to retain its rhythmic
accuracy over the greater degrees of warping.
| | 08:29 | If you have too few markers you can
alter the timing or feel within notes in the
| | 08:34 | region as it stretches or
shrinks to match the new tempo.
| | 08:37 | When quantizing Elastic Audio, event
markers will be the default warp locations
| | 08:42 | for shaping events to the grid, so you
especially want to make sure your event
| | 08:46 | markers are accurate when you're going
to go ahead and use Event Quantize on
| | 08:50 | any elastic material.
| | 08:52 | Again many times you never need to
enter a track's analysis view and manually
| | 08:56 | manipulate a region's event markers.
| | 08:58 | Especially if you aren't altering a
region's tempo from the original recording.
| | 09:03 | But don't be afraid to experiment with
event marker placement when trying to
| | 09:06 | squeeze better performance out
of an Elastic Audio workflow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using warp markers to manipulate timing| 00:00 | While event markers in a track's
analysis view define where and how a region
| | 00:04 | will stretch or shrink and
warped at the region boundaries,
| | 00:08 | warp markers are user-inserted pushpins
or pivot points that allow you to anchor
| | 00:12 | notes or positions within a region,
giving you the ability to manipulate a note
| | 00:16 | or a group of notes timing
isolated from the rest of the region.
| | 00:20 | Region warping is achieved from the
track view called Warp where I see my event
| | 00:26 | markers already laid out.
| | 00:28 | And the best way to understand these warp
markers is as sort of a virtual pushpin.
| | 00:33 | Imagine that an elasticized region is
like a piece of elastic band anchored
| | 00:37 | between two pushpins, one at the
head of the band and one at the tail.
| | 00:42 | By moving these pushpins I can
stretch or shrink the band's overall size to
| | 00:46 | conform to whatever space I wish.
| | 00:50 | So I can grab the tail and stretch it
out or shrink it in like an elastic band.
| | 00:58 | Now, imagine taking additional pushpins
and inserting them into the elastic band
| | 01:02 | at different points.
| | 01:03 | By anchoring the band at points within
one could stretch or shrink only portions
| | 01:09 | of the band outside the context
of the master head and tail pins.
| | 01:13 | This is exactly what warp markers do for
the notes within an elasticized region.
| | 01:18 | I can actually place warp markers within
the region and modify notes outside the
| | 01:25 | context of all the other
notes within the region.
| | 01:28 | So I can actually change the feel or
the timing of just an individual note or a
| | 01:33 | group of notes relative to the whole region.
| | 01:37 | To insert a new warp marker all I need
to do is double-click in a blank space or
| | 01:42 | simply single-click on an
existing analysis point.
| | 01:46 | I can also Ctrl+Click on the
Mac or Start+Click on the PC.
| | 01:51 | To remove a warp marker all I need to
do is double-click or Option+Click or
| | 01:56 | Alt+Click on the PC. Removing a warp
marker would remove any warp associated
| | 02:02 | with that marker and return it back to
its original position within the region.
| | 02:07 | I find the best place to start with
warp markers is by adding them on the
| | 02:10 | analysis event markers, as the
transient is a natural point in which the audio
| | 02:14 | can be stretched in the context
of other notes or warp markers.
| | 02:19 | So there's three different styles of
warping that you are going to use in Pro Tools:
| | 02:23 | Telescoping, Accordion and Range Warp.
| | 02:28 | Telescope Warp is taking the tail of a
region and stretching it out or shrinking
| | 02:34 | it in, thus changing the
overall size of the entire region.
| | 02:38 | Now, the timing or the rhythmic integrity is
maintained because of all the event markers.
| | 02:44 | Now, an Accordion Warp has a single
warp marker placed within a region and by
| | 02:51 | stretching to the right, notice I am
only manipulating this half of the region.
| | 02:58 | The first half stays intact.
| | 03:00 | So I in a sense anchor a portion of
my region by placing a warp marker and
| | 03:07 | perform a Accordion Warp here, which
restricts the changes only to the last half
| | 03:14 | of the region between the
warp marker and the tail.
| | 03:18 | Now my favorite type of
warping is Range Warping.
| | 03:22 | Range Warping works by placing three
warp markers and manipulating the center
| | 03:31 | marker to change a single note's timing
relative to the previous and next note.
| | 03:37 | You can easily access Range Warp by
just holding down Shift when you click to
| | 03:42 | get three new markers.
| | 03:44 | This way you can radically alter the
timing of any note individually in a region.
| | 03:50 | So for example with this guitar,
if I wanted to change the timing here, I am
| | 03:54 | going to remove all the warp
markers that I have created already.
| | 03:56 | I can just select the region and hit
Delete to remove all those markers instead
| | 04:00 | of deleting them individually.
| | 04:02 | Now I can place a Range Warp here
and move this note to be later in time.
| | 04:07 | (Music playing)
| | 04:10 | So I started with.
| | 04:11 | (Music playing)
| | 04:13 | And I ended with.
| | 04:14 | (Music playing)
| | 04:16 | So I completely changed the
rhythmic feel of that phrase.
| | 04:20 | Now I like to work in Smart Tool mode.
| | 04:23 | When I do this, this allows me to
place my cursor to preview different
| | 04:27 | sections of the audio,
| | 04:29 | while still having access to my Grabber tool.
| | 04:32 | So top-half is Selector, bottom-half is Grabber.
| | 04:36 | I also like to work with the
Unlinked Timeline and Edit Selection.
| | 04:41 | So by un-clicking the option
underneath the Grabber tool, I can make a context
| | 04:45 | selection using my Grid.
| | 04:47 | So I'll make a one bar selection here.
| | 04:49 | That way whenever I hit Play?
| | 04:51 | (Music playing)
| | 04:52 | It always plays the Timeline and I'm
free to go in and manipulate and make
| | 04:57 | selections within my Edit window
here without losing that context.
| | 05:02 | It's really important to make these
individual note warps in the context of
| | 05:07 | the greater phrase.
| | 05:08 | So you always want to check your work a
bar or two ahead just to make sure that
| | 05:12 | fits with what's going on.
| | 05:14 | Now, groups will warp together.
| | 05:16 | This is really important with multi-
track drums. As long as you group those
| | 05:20 | tracks first before enabling elastic
audio they will all warp from the same
| | 05:25 | point, maintaining phase coherency.
| | 05:27 | So once you get the hang of adding and
manipulating warp markers, I think you'll
| | 05:31 | find that you have a great deal of
control over the phrasing and timing of
| | 05:35 | your audio recordings, much like
the way you edit MIDI Sequences.
| | 05:39 | I spend a lot of time just fine-tuning
the timing of my recordings by warping in
| | 05:43 | very small amounts, really getting the
timing by phrase exactly how I want it in
| | 05:48 | the context of the groove and feel of the tune.
| | 05:50 | This saves me tons of time during
tracking because I don't have to beat myself
| | 05:54 | up trying to get perfect timing.
| | 05:56 | I can focus on the tone and the
emotion of the performance knowing that I can
| | 06:00 | clean up minor timing errors
easily with Elastic Audio warp markers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Getting inside the Elastic Properties window| 00:00 | When processing regions with Elastic
Audio, each region has a group of settings
| | 00:05 | that can be altered within
the Elastic Properties window.
| | 00:08 | We have already discussed the use of
the Analysis Sensitivity setting when
| | 00:12 | determining the threshold for event markers.
| | 00:15 | But I wanted to examine some of the
other parameters of the Event Properties
| | 00:18 | window in a bit more detail.
| | 00:21 | On any Elastic enabled track you
can right-click on a region and choose
| | 00:25 | Elastic Properties.
| | 00:27 | Now, depending on whether or not that
track is set to Ticks or Samples--
| | 00:32 | Ticks will reconfirm the new
Tempo changes. Samples will not.
| | 00:36 | In the case of tick based tracks, you
see the Source Length and the Source Tempo.
| | 00:42 | When Pro Tools brings in a file, a
loop, or an audio region, it tries to guess
| | 00:47 | the length and the tempo based on the
relative location of each beat within that region.
| | 00:53 | Now usually it guesses
correctly; sometimes it gets it wrong.
| | 00:57 | So what you can do is in the case
where it gets it wrong and you are finding
| | 01:00 | that you have trouble with auto
conforming, you can go in and manually change
| | 01:05 | the Source Length to the correct length.
| | 01:08 | Simply listen to the audio region,
count the bars, and set the Source Length.
| | 01:13 | Now if you have a meter other than 4/4
like 3/4 or 6/8, you are going to have to
| | 01:18 | come in here and manually set it.
| | 01:20 | The Elastic engine always assumes 4/4.
| | 01:23 | So if you have an alternate meter,
just come in here and type that in.
| | 01:27 | Now like I said Event Sensitivity has to do
with the event markers in the analysis view.
| | 01:33 | It's like a Threshold setting.
| | 01:35 | If I lower that, I get fewer event
markers. If I raise that all the way to 100,
| | 01:39 | I get as many as it detects.
| | 01:42 | Now at any point, I can choose to
reset back to the original event analysis.
| | 01:48 | In the case of adding my own event
markers by hand, this would reset those.
| | 01:55 | Now the Input Gain parameter
generally doesn't have to be tweaked.
| | 01:59 | But with certain plug-ins, especially
Varispeed, and certain types of audio
| | 02:05 | material, many loops that have been
maximized or limited to the point where
| | 02:10 | they are almost clipping,
| | 02:12 | what you'll see is that the plug-
in will light up in red or clip.
| | 02:17 | That means that the change that's being
created through Elastic Audio is causing
| | 02:23 | that plug-in to clip.
| | 02:24 | It's exceeding 0 dBFS.
| | 02:26 | So what we can do is we can pull
the gain down of the original file.
| | 02:30 | You can see that's actually affecting
the original gain there, so that as it's
| | 02:35 | altered by the Elastic Engine,
and it comes out the other end,
| | 02:40 | what's coming out the other
end isn't clipping the plug-in.
| | 02:43 | Now again, you may never see this clip
depending on the material you work with.
| | 02:47 | You might never have to adjust Input Gain.
| | 02:50 | But if you do ever see the red light
up right next to the plug-in just lower
| | 02:53 | that down until it turns
green again. It's that simple.
| | 02:57 | Now some plug-ins feature a Pitch
Shift control, specifically Polyphonic and
| | 03:04 | Rhythmic, as well as X-Form, and you can
change the pitch in semitones or cents.
| | 03:11 | While you may never have to enter the
Properties window, it's important to
| | 03:14 | understand its function when fine-
tuning Elastic Audio performances within a
| | 03:18 | region, especially in the case of audio
that doesn't have a consistent rhythm.
| | 03:23 | Pro Tools may have a hard time auto
conforming it to the session's tempo, and
| | 03:27 | some manual adjustment with the Source
Length or TCE Factor could be necessary.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Quantizing audio| 00:00 | You may already be familiar with the
term quantize as it relates to MIDI, but
| | 00:05 | essentially quantization is a tool
that allows you to automatically snap or
| | 00:09 | quantize notes to a predefined grid or
groove effectively tightening or altering
| | 00:15 | the field of the performance.
| | 00:15 | We learned earlier how warp markers
can be used to manually adjust a region's
| | 00:20 | events to reconform to a
new timing position and feel.
| | 00:24 | However, sometimes you just want to
correct the performance's timing in a
| | 00:28 | more automated way.
| | 00:30 | Using the same quantize window as you
would for MIDI you can quantize Elastic
| | 00:35 | Audio Events to a user-
defined grid or groove setting.
| | 00:38 | To do this Pro Tools automatically
inserts the warp markers at the appropriate
| | 00:43 | event marker or transient and warps
each marker to the nearest grid value.
| | 00:48 | So if I listen to this bass,
it's a little bit out of time.
| | 00:51 | (Music playing)
| | 01:01 | Now if I go and examine some of these
notes, I'll see a lot of them are ahead of
| | 01:06 | the beat and bass sounds
horrible when it's ahead of the beat.
| | 01:10 | What I can do instead of warping these
manually by hand, I can go in and in this
| | 01:15 | case they are not so far off the grid
that I'm going to be able to use the Event >
| | 01:20 | Event Operations > Quantize menu.
| | 01:23 | Now here when I am working with Elastic
Audio, it automatically recognizes that
| | 01:27 | I have an Elastic Audio event selected.
| | 01:29 | Now there are two options here,
Audio Regions or Elastic Audio Events.
| | 01:34 | Audio Regions would refer to individual
region blocks, so if the region was cut
| | 01:39 | up into individual notes, that might work.
| | 01:42 | In this case I want to actually place
warp markers at the event markers and warp
| | 01:49 | this to the grid automatically.
| | 01:51 | So what I can do is simply by selecting
this I can choose a Quantize Grid.
| | 01:56 | This is the resolution of my quantize.
| | 01:58 | So in this case if I'm using a 16th
note grid, it's going to quantize each one
| | 02:02 | of these notes to the nearest
16th note and I'll hit Apply.
| | 02:08 | And if I examine this in the Warp view,
I can see that it's applied a warp
| | 02:13 | marker here to the beginning to
each bass note and it's warped that to
| | 02:20 | the nearest 16th note.
| | 02:21 | So if we listen again.
| | 02:23 | (Music playing)
| | 02:39 | It sounds significantly better.
| | 02:42 | The bass isn't ahead of the beat, it's
sitting right there in line with the kick,
| | 02:46 | drum and this didn't take any time.
| | 02:49 | I didn't have to do any manual warping.
| | 02:51 | All I did was open the Event >
Quantize window and click Apply.
| | 02:55 | Now if you're used to using this
window with MIDI, there are going to be
| | 02:59 | some differences here.
| | 03:00 | So when you set something like
let's say a quarter note and you are
| | 03:04 | working with MIDI, what it does is it
just quantizes all those MIDI notes to the
| | 03:09 | nearest quarter note position.
| | 03:11 | Now this isn't the case with Elastic Audio.
| | 03:14 | It's not going to take something
that's a few 16th notes away and quantize
| | 03:18 | and stretch it all the way
to the nearest quarter note.
| | 03:21 | What it's going to do it take the
notes closest to the quarter note boundary,
| | 03:25 | apply a warp marker on that note to
snap to that nearest quarter note.
| | 03:29 | So you want to play with this, kind of
compare and contrast this with your MIDI
| | 03:33 | quantize, because it works
a little bit differently.
| | 03:35 | It doesn't do as radical as a quantize
as you are probably used to doing with
| | 03:41 | MIDI, and it's really vital that you
have all your analysis points intact,
| | 03:47 | because you are doing so much warping.
| | 03:49 | Now in this case we can probably
improve this sound here by removing one of
| | 03:53 | these analysis points.
| | 03:55 | So I can see this note
gets an extra analysis point.
| | 03:58 | By removing that I can help improve
the sound quality of the quantization,
| | 04:04 | because quantization is done via
warping and warping sounds better if you
| | 04:10 | have accurate analysis.
| | 04:12 | Now sometimes, you can get away with
switching to something like Rhythmic in the
| | 04:17 | case of bass and it will sound even
better than Monophonic, because it's not
| | 04:21 | attempting to add or
subtract anything for the note.
| | 04:24 | It's just moving the note as
is in the context of the grid.
| | 04:29 | So you might try switching between those
two to see which one works better for you.
| | 04:34 | Now, I can go through and
use any method of quantize.
| | 04:38 | I can go in and choose a
16th note and I can add Swing.
| | 04:42 | Swing pushes the offbeats later
in time. So I will add an 82% Swing.
| | 04:47 | (Music playing)
| | 04:55 | So I can hear the swing on the bass.
| | 04:57 | Let's apply it to the drums.
| | 04:58 | So I'll select that drum track. Since
it's elasticized, I can just hit Apply and
| | 05:04 | get a swing there on the drum track.
| | 05:05 | (Music playing)
| | 05:14 | So you really hear that kick drum
right there when it goes da dah!
| | 05:17 | (Music playing)
| | 05:20 | That's a 16th note swung.
| | 05:23 | So if you really want to take your
Elastic Audio quantizing into the next level,
| | 05:27 | you can use Beat Detective to extract
digi-grooves or groove templates and apply
| | 05:35 | them to audio regions.
| | 05:36 | So effectively you could extract the
groove from one region and apply it to
| | 05:41 | another using Elastic Audio.
| | 05:44 | Now you want to be aware that this
doesn't always perform how you'd like it to.
| | 05:49 | So I find that working in smaller
sections when I'm quantizing Audio Regions
| | 05:54 | works best, and a lot of times I will
go in and manually move some of the warp
| | 05:59 | markers or adjust some of the
analysis to get to sound better.
| | 06:04 | Once you play around a bit and get a
sense of how Elastic Audio events react to
| | 06:08 | quantization commands, you'll be
streamlining your editing workflow and timing
| | 06:13 | up audio recordings in no time.
| | 06:15 | I always end up using a combination of
automated quantize and manual quantizing
| | 06:20 | of warp markers by hand to
achieve the desired result.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing tempo| 00:00 | By far one of the coolest features
of Elastic Audio is the ability to
| | 00:04 | dynamically change the tempo of
existing audio recordings. Simply by enabling
| | 00:09 | Elastic Audio on an audio track and
setting its timebase to Ticks one can
| | 00:14 | easily adapt tempo changes to Audio Regions
much like they would apply to MIDI sequences.
| | 00:19 | (Music playing)
| | 00:39 | So what is this whole sample
versus ticks thing anyways?
| | 00:42 | Well, every track has a timebase
selector right here at the bottom left-hand
| | 00:47 | corner and you can choose Samples or Ticks.
| | 00:50 | Audio tracks default to Samples and MIDI
and instrument tracks default to Ticks.
| | 00:55 | Audio is by default sample-based
because it is a digital representation of an
| | 01:00 | amplitude value measured by
the analog-to-digital converter.
| | 01:04 | This is measured at a predetermined sample
rate unrelated to musical tempo or meter.
| | 01:09 | For example, audio recorded to a tempo
of 100 BPM at a sample rate of 44,100
| | 01:16 | times per second for 10 seconds
doesn't have any fewer samples than audio
| | 01:21 | recorded to a tempo over 120
BPM over the same 10 seconds.
| | 01:26 | Because the converter is measuring an
absolute 44,100 samples of amplitude
| | 01:31 | values every second, regardless of
tempo, changing the tempo doesn't alter the
| | 01:36 | number of samples that the system records in.
| | 01:39 | Now MIDI on the other hand is captured using
a slightly different form of input sampling.
| | 01:45 | Referenced by a measurement
interval known as tick, when a note event is
| | 01:49 | triggered on or off, the sequencer
records the tick position relative to the bar
| | 01:54 | and beat that the event occurred.
Because ticks are measured relative to the
| | 01:59 | tempo, MIDI events can be
easily shifted as tempo changes.
| | 02:04 | It's easy to do this
because MIDI data is not audio.
| | 02:07 | It is not a waveform or sound at all.
| | 02:10 | It is merely a representation of a
note or a controller event happening at a
| | 02:15 | point in the Timeline.
| | 02:17 | Much like musical notation on a page
of staff paper is not sound itself, or
| | 02:22 | written word on a page is not speech.
| | 02:25 | So how does audio become tick
based if it's recorded in samples?
| | 02:29 | Well, it's not just a function of
changing the track's Timebase to Ticks,
| | 02:34 | because all that's going to do is tie
the region boundary to the tick grid.
| | 02:39 | So if the track wasn't elasticized,
the head of the region would move right
| | 02:44 | along with the bar/beat markers as
the tempo changed, but the contents of
| | 02:48 | the region would not.
| | 02:50 | Elastic Audio allows audio regions to
react more like MIDI in the sense that
| | 02:55 | event markers and subsequently warp
markers can be to tied to tick based
| | 03:00 | positions or bar/beat positions on
the Timeline and when the tempo changes,
| | 03:05 | those warp markers follow the moving bar
/beat grid stretching or shrinking the
| | 03:10 | notes within a region to
adapt to a new or changing tempo.
| | 03:15 | Again, the key to get in Elastic tracks
to change tempo with any tempo changes
| | 03:21 | you add in your Tempo ruler or manual
tempo changes here is that they need to be
| | 03:26 | switched to tick based
before you apply the tempo change.
| | 03:30 | So again it's a function of having both
Elastic Audio enabled and switching the
| | 03:35 | Timebase to Ticks before
you make any tempo changes.
| | 03:39 | Now in Conductor mode, clicking the
Conductor on the Transport, Pro Tools will
| | 03:45 | follow the tempo as defined by the Tempo ruler.
| | 03:49 | In manual mode, unclicking the Conductor,
I can type in the tempo manually and
| | 03:55 | because all of these tracks are tick
based time references and elasticized,
| | 04:00 | everything will conform to my new
tempo as the bar/beat grid changes.
| | 04:05 | Now if I want to add tempo changes, I
need to be in Conductor mode and I'm going
| | 04:12 | to use the Tempo ruler.
| | 04:13 | If I want to apply a single tempo
change what I can do is place my cursor let's
| | 04:18 | say at measure 2 and click on
the plus sign in the Tempo ruler.
| | 04:22 | If you can't see the Tempo ruler,
you'll choose View > Rulers > Tempo.
| | 04:28 | So clicking on the plus sign gives me a Tempo
Change dialog and I can type in a new tempo.
| | 04:34 | So starting at measure 2 I am going to
go 120 BPM and now I get a tempo event.
| | 04:40 | If I want to get rid of that I can
hold down Option or Alt on the PC, click on that,
| | 04:45 | and the session is
returned back to 100 BPM.
| | 04:48 | I can add as many tempo changes as I
want and this session is going to follow
| | 04:57 | these as it plays back.
| | 04:58 | (Music playing)
| | 05:08 | Now these tempo changes are pretty abrupt.
| | 05:10 | It changes from 100 to 120 right at measure 2.
| | 05:13 | If I want to do a gradual tempo change
what I can do is using the Event > Tempo
| | 05:20 | Operations menu, I can do a Linear,
Parabolic, or S-Curve tempo change.
| | 05:25 | So I'll choose Linear and I'll say
starting at measure 1 and ending at measure 5
| | 05:30 | change to the tempo from 100 to 200 BPM.
| | 05:34 | Now in the Advanced tab I can actually
change the density of the tempo event.
| | 05:39 | So I'll say let's place
an event every 16th note.
| | 05:42 | (Music playing)
| | 05:51 | So that's pretty extreme, but that's how
you would achieve gradual tempo changes.
| | 05:56 | Now if you want to see this visually,
you can open up the tempo editor by
| | 06:00 | clicking the little disclosure
triangle next to the Tempo ruler and you can
| | 06:03 | actually see the tempo events as
breakpoints sort of like you would see
| | 06:09 | automation and you can actually go in
here and manipulate these breakpoints a
| | 06:12 | lot like you can manipulate automations.
| | 06:15 | So I can go and select a group of them,
I could cut, copy, paste, duplicate them,
| | 06:20 | I could delete all of them in
one go, I could add them with the Pencil
| | 06:25 | tool so I could paint them in.
| | 06:28 | Here I would control the
density. 1/8th note, 1/4 note.
| | 06:33 | Again, that's the distance between each
tempo change when I draw them in here.
| | 06:37 | So I chose a 1/4 note.
| | 06:38 | Now in the case of doing really extreme
tempo changes, which you will see if we
| | 06:46 | back up here is that the Pro Tools'
Edit window will squeeze and expand to
| | 06:54 | accommodate these radical
tempo changes that you have.
| | 06:56 | That's because by default
the display is sample based.
| | 07:00 | It's showing you absolute time.
| | 07:02 | So it's squeezing in time for faster
tempos and expanding it out for slower tempos.
| | 07:08 | If you going to have a lot of tempo
changes in your session, radical tempo
| | 07:12 | changes, it's better if you
use the Linear Tick Display.
| | 07:16 | So what's going to happen in this
case is that the playback marker will
| | 07:20 | actually move faster or slower, but
the time as visually displayed will stay
| | 07:26 | consistent from bar to bar.
| | 07:28 | Much like on music staff you don't
see the notes getting closer together as
| | 07:33 | the tempo increases.
| | 07:35 | A bar is a bar in terms of displaying it on a
page, whether your tempo is 100 BPM or 150 BPM.
| | 07:42 | And this option essentially achieves that.
| | 07:45 | Now you don't really have to worry
about that unless you are doing really
| | 07:47 | radical tempo changes and you should
know that when you set Linear Tick Display
| | 07:52 | on that your waveform display is no
longer accurate down to the sample, because
| | 07:57 | it's kind of shifting that to
accommodate any shifts in the tempo.
| | 08:02 | So some tricks I like to do with tempo
changes is even if I'm not going to have
| | 08:07 | a radical tempo change in my session,
I might slow down the tempo to record a
| | 08:13 | really difficult part and
then speed it back up again.
| | 08:16 | As long as it's not an extreme change
the audio fidelity of the recording won't
| | 08:21 | be affected too much.
| | 08:23 | Now, if you always want to work with
your audio in this tick based way, you can
| | 08:27 | set up a preference under Setup >
Preferences in the Editing tab and you can say
| | 08:33 | New Tracks Default to Tick Timebase.
| | 08:35 | So both MIDI instruments and audio
tracks will all default to ticks instead of
| | 08:40 | audio tracks defaulting to samples.
| | 08:42 | Whether you use Elastic Audio tempo
changes to hit that a hard lick or to add a
| | 08:49 | radical tempo change to your session, it is
definitely a workflow that you want to know.
| | 08:54 | Just remember, understanding the
fundamental differences between tick and sample
| | 08:58 | timebases is the key to
unlocking the Tempo ruler in Pro Tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Transposing with Elastic Pitch| 00:00 | While not designed for dedicated
pitch correction like Auto-Tune or Melodyne,
| | 00:04 | Pro Tools Elastic Pitch gives you some
really neat creative options for tweaking
| | 00:08 | the pitch of audio regions on
Elastic Audio enabled tracks.
| | 00:12 | So first of all choosing the right
plug-in to do pitch shifting is key.
| | 00:18 | Only Polyphonic and Rhythmic for real-
time and X-Form for render allow you to
| | 00:23 | change the pitch. Monophonic and Verify do not.
| | 00:28 | So if I right click in elastized
track and choose Elastic Properties here.
| | 00:35 | If I'm using right algorithm, in
this case Rhythmic, I've the Pitch Shift
| | 00:39 | option, and I can pitch up or down up
to 24 semitones each way and I have a
| | 00:45 | Cents option for fine tuning that change.
| | 00:47 | So I can pitch this up 12,
hit Enter and listen.
| | 00:52 | (Music playing)
| | 01:06 | And let's listen to the
difference here between Polyphonic.
| | 01:09 | (Music playing)
| | 01:12 | Notice how that maintains the sustain
of the note a lot more even Rhythmic.
| | 01:16 | If it gets a little warbly towards the end,
we might try increasing the window to avoid that.
| | 01:22 | (Music playing)
| | 01:26 | So in this case I am affecting the
entire region. If I just want to change the
| | 01:31 | pitch of one note, what I could do is
let me return this to zero and we will go
| | 01:36 | back to Rhythmic here because I
think that sounds better on this bass.
| | 01:40 | I can take and cut this up into
individual notes, so I can actually go in and
| | 01:46 | cut an individual note by using the
Separate command and just change the
| | 01:51 | pitch of that one note.
| | 01:53 | (Music playing)
| | 01:58 | Do even more, one octave.
| | 02:00 | (Music playing)
| | 02:08 | So potentially I could use this
to totally change up the phrase.
| | 02:11 | But I think you are going to find that
really extreme changes kind of tend to
| | 02:15 | sound a little bit weird.
| | 02:17 | You can try switching to X-Form.
That'll sound a little bit better when you are
| | 02:21 | doing extreme pitch changes because it
has formant correction, especially in the
| | 02:25 | case of this bass note, as it sort of
takes on a whole different tonal quality
| | 02:29 | when I start shifting it up or down a lot.
| | 02:32 | So another trick you can use with pitch
shifting is it can be great for really
| | 02:36 | subtle changes in the audio.
| | 02:37 | Try duplicating a track and pitch
shifting it a few cents up or down from the
| | 02:42 | original and blend it in for
a cool double track effect.
| | 02:45 | You can even try some random offsets
in the timing you can warp markers.
| | 02:50 | Pitch shift drums to achieve a wild
effect or to subtly bring a kick or snare into
| | 02:55 | the perfect pitch for your tune.
| | 02:57 | I generally use the pitch shifting
function for more creative tweaks rather than
| | 03:00 | correcting the pitch of performances.
| | 03:02 | Because the pitch shifting is
region based, it's difficult to deal with
| | 03:06 | pitch drift and modulation than
you'd find in a vocal or other expressive
| | 03:10 | melodic instrument.
| | 03:12 | Two things that are common in material
that needs pitch correction. But it can
| | 03:15 | be useful just to bring a single note
that is uniformly out of tune, like a sour
| | 03:20 | guitar or bass note with poor intonation.
| | 03:22 | Experiment with the Pitch Shift function
and don't be afraid to render the audio
| | 03:26 | and keep processing.
| | 03:28 | You can achieve choose some really
cool sound design when you just let go
| | 03:31 | and try wild things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Elastic Audio WorkflowsElastic Audio workflows: Time-correcting bass| 00:00 | Next to a compelling vocal, a solid
rhythm section is one of the single most
| | 00:04 | defining characteristics of
the good arrangement in my mind.
| | 00:08 | That is why I almost always take the
time to address the relationship between my
| | 00:12 | two sources of low end, kick and bass.
| | 00:15 | A great bass player knows how to play
in the pocket, striking notes in that
| | 00:20 | special way that seems to make the
kick take on a pitch, as if the two
| | 00:24 | instruments have become one.
| | 00:26 | The secret to a solid low end in your
mix might not lie on the use of EQ or
| | 00:31 | dynamics or any signal
processing tools for that matter.
| | 00:35 | In fact, the secret often lies in the
time domain and the relationship between
| | 00:40 | the kick and the bass instruments.
| | 00:42 | So let's just listen to this example here.
| | 00:44 | (Music playing)
| | 00:54 | There is a number of different
problems going on and most of them have to do
| | 00:57 | with the bass, which is playing ahead of
or behind the beat, never quite in sync
| | 01:03 | with the kick drum and
so the groove falls apart.
| | 01:06 | The notes are there, the tone is there,
but the song just doesn't find that pocket.
| | 01:12 | So you may have heard this term "in
the pocket" or "finding the pocket."
| | 01:16 | Many bass players and drummers
practice the concept without even knowing the
| | 01:20 | theory behind it, but you see both bass
and kick have significant low end energy
| | 01:25 | and depending on how the bass is
plucked, both have strong transients that
| | 01:30 | compete for space in the mix.
| | 01:32 | If the bass and the kick play at the
exact same time, the low energy may become
| | 01:38 | overpowering and the focus of the kick's
transient can become less defined, even muddy. Worse,
| | 01:45 | you can have a bass that plays ahead of
the beat, like in this case completely
| | 01:48 | blurring the attack of the kick.
| | 01:50 | A good bass player will naturally lay
back against the kick, playing the note
| | 01:55 | just a fraction of a
second after the kick strikes.
| | 01:57 | You were to examine the waveform
relationship of a recording to practice this concept,
| | 02:03 | you would clearly see a separation
between when the kick attacks relative to
| | 02:08 | the bass note, with the bass coming roughly
5-15 milliseconds after the kick's transient.
| | 02:14 | So in this case when I go ahead and
look at a specific bass hit, I can see that
| | 02:21 | it's coming way ahead of the
beat and this just sounds bad.
| | 02:24 | (Music playing)
| | 02:27 | If I go over to a kick drum. So here
we can see that the bass really falls
| | 02:32 | right on top of the kick drum's attack
and what that's going to do is going to
| | 02:37 | blur that attack and you may not hear
it as being out of time, but it just won't
| | 02:42 | sit right. No amount of EQ or
compression or signal processing trickery is going
| | 02:48 | to help that sit and groove right with the mix.
| | 02:52 | So many novices edit the bass to be
exactly in time with the kick and a lot of
| | 02:58 | times I think this is a mistake.
| | 02:59 | It's going to sound better in
playing too far ahead or behind the beat but
| | 03:04 | you're really missing out on that sonic
euphoria of the well played pocket bass line.
| | 03:09 | Now if you are or have access to a
great bass player, you don't really need to
| | 03:14 | know what I'm about to show you, but
if you're like most producers I know it's
| | 03:18 | never as solid as it can be
with a little bit of editing.
| | 03:22 | What I like to do is using warp
markers, I like to by hand manipulate each
| | 03:27 | note of the bass relative to the
kick drum or other drum tracks.
| | 03:32 | So what I'll do is after applying an
Elastic Audio plug-in to the track, I'll
| | 03:36 | switch to Warp view and I'll actually
come in and use Range Warp, so I'll switch
| | 03:42 | to Slip mode, using my Grabber tool, and
I'll Shift+Click the note and drag it to
| | 03:48 | be in better relationship to the drum tracks.
| | 03:51 | Now in some cases you'll find that
you get extra warp markers here at the
| | 03:55 | tail and what this does is it will
preserve the note's length, but it
| | 04:00 | sometimes can sound bad.
| | 04:01 | So you may end up deleting these
analysis points here after you preview the bass.
| | 04:07 | So I'll go through here and I'm going
to kind of take a look at these notes and
| | 04:11 | see how they relate to my drum
tracks, kind of move that back.
| | 04:16 | That was behind the beat,
come in here and adjust this.
| | 04:19 | That looks a little rushed, so
we'll go in here and adjust that.
| | 04:24 | Now see this note? This is going to
sound really bad when I warp that.
| | 04:26 | Let's listen to that.
| | 04:28 | (Music playing)
| | 04:32 | It sounds a little muddled.
That's because the analysis point was
| | 04:36 | placed incorrectly.
| | 04:37 | So what I can do is actually I'm
going to erase that warp marker and I'm
| | 04:41 | going to go into analysis view and I
need to adjust that to represent more of
| | 04:47 | the attack of the note.
| | 04:48 | Now I'll switch back to warp view and
we'll try warping that one more time here
| | 04:55 | and what I'm looking to do is
generally once you get the hang of it you can
| | 04:59 | eyeball this and so what I'll do is
I'll lay the bass right behind the beat.
| | 05:04 | Like I said, about 5 milliseconds to 10
milliseconds depending on how the bass is
| | 05:09 | plucked. If it's picked or plucked,
you might be able to use a longer or a
| | 05:14 | shorter amount of time behind the beat.
| | 05:16 | But generally when there's a kick
drum involved which when it's playing in
| | 05:20 | synchronization with a kick, you want
it to fall slightly behind that beat.
| | 05:25 | So in this case if we really zoom in
here I can see that's falling slightly
| | 05:28 | behind the initial transient of the kick drum.
| | 05:31 | Now this is the real secret to getting
that pocket baseline, one that hardly
| | 05:35 | needs any EQ or group compression.
| | 05:38 | Now you'll see a lot of engineers
use the side-chain compressors which
| | 05:42 | effectively just ducks the bass in time
with the kick drum to kind to get out of
| | 05:48 | the way and this can be effective in
the case where the bass is playing on top
| | 05:52 | of the kick drum, but when it plays
ahead of the beat, it's a disaster, because
| | 05:56 | the side-chain doesn't act on the bass
until after it's started to play and it can
| | 06:01 | sound really muddy and nasty.
| | 06:03 | So I find the best way to approach bass
editing is using these warp markers and
| | 06:08 | going through by hand and tuning this up.
| | 06:11 | So I'm going to go through six of more
of these notes. I'm just eyeballing it
| | 06:15 | here and then we'll go and
listen after a little while.
| | 06:24 | (Music playing)
| | 06:31 | Sounds are little late, so we can
just go ahead and move it over and in the
| | 06:36 | case where my drums have been edited
to the grid, I can use the grid to help
| | 06:40 | me out a little bit.
| | 06:41 | So I'll switch to Grid mode, switch
this to 16th notes, and I'll come in here
| | 06:46 | and I'll actually use the grid to help me.
| | 06:48 | Now you want to be careful because it
does snap it right to the grid, so you
| | 06:52 | want to make sure to maintain that offset.
| | 06:55 | So I've taken the time to place the
additional warp markers to finish correcting
| | 06:59 | this bass against this drum kit and we
have a significantly better relationship
| | 07:05 | between the two now.
| | 07:06 | Let's take a listen.
| | 07:07 | (Music playing)
| | 07:17 | And where we started,
just delete these warp markers, was here.
| | 07:22 | (Music playing)
| | 07:32 | So as you can hear, you can
achieve some pretty significant results.
| | 07:36 | Now if done correctly, and assuming
you have a kick and bass tone setup in a
| | 07:41 | complementary way when recording,
you may get away with little to no EQ
| | 07:46 | carving between your kick and bass.
| | 07:48 | It is not uncommon for me to edit every
note of the bass track to follow exactly
| | 07:53 | where I want it to in the context
of the groove and the kick drum.
| | 07:57 | Some may call it cheating.
| | 07:58 | I call it using the tools
available to make the best sounding
| | 08:01 | recordings possible.
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| Elastic Audio workflows: Working with voice| 00:00 | Voice is, no doubt, one of the trickiest
sources when it comes to Elastic Audio processing.
| | 00:06 | Harmonically complex with little
tolerance for artifacts, the voice tends to not
| | 00:11 | share the same strong transient
information as other instruments and thus can be
| | 00:15 | challenging when trying to
place warp and event markers.
| | 00:19 | With a little extra care, Elastic
Audio is screaming, "use me to get that
| | 00:23 | perfect vocal phrase!"
| | 00:25 | Let me show you some tricks I've
learned for working with the voice.
| | 00:29 | So first off, choosing
the right algorithm is key.
| | 00:32 | Voice is monophonic in the case of
where you've recorded just one vocalist,
| | 00:37 | which is usually the case, and
selecting the Monophonic plug-in, because it is
| | 00:42 | formant corrected and we don't want to
get that kind of chipmunk-y sound or Darth
| | 00:46 | Vader sound when we really shift it.
| | 00:49 | And then shifting to the X-Form with
the formant correction enabled is going
| | 00:54 | to give us the best quality
warping possible in Pro Tools.
| | 00:59 | So for now, I'm going to work in real-
time using the Monophonic plug-in, make
| | 01:04 | sure I have it set to Real-Time so I can shift
stuff. I don't have to wait for any rendering.
| | 01:11 | Now when Pro Tools analysis a vocal,
it tends to sort of pick random parts here.
| | 01:20 | So it's not a very transient-rich
piece of material here, this vocal, and most
| | 01:26 | vocals aren't and so what we can now do
is try to improve some of this analysis
| | 01:32 | just by going into our Elastic
Properties and reducing the Event Sensitivity.
| | 01:37 | So I'll just bring it down here just a
bit, just so that I'm getting the heads
| | 01:42 | of each word and I can always go
in and add additional warp markers.
| | 01:47 | I'm just going to pull it down
just a little bit more, just like that.
| | 01:51 | I just want to get the head of each word
so that when I go into place of my warp
| | 01:56 | markers, it's a lot quicker process and
I don't have to deal with just a mess of
| | 02:00 | event markers going on.
| | 02:03 | Now once I have my analysis intact,
| | 02:06 | I'll switch to warp view and let's go
ahead and listen to this vocal and kind of
| | 02:11 | try to identify some of the problems.
| | 02:14 | (Music playing)
| | 02:18 | (Man singing: Trouble bound, we hit the town.)
| | 02:26 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget that sound.)
| | 02:32 | (Music playing)
| | 02:35 | So it's not bad but there's a few
areas that we could just touch up,
| | 02:39 | specifically this first part here sounds?
| | 02:43 | (Music playing)
(Man singing: Trouble bound?)
| | 02:45 | A little late here, coming into the word bound.
| | 02:51 | So what I want to do is just
kind of tune that up a little bit.
| | 02:57 | So in warp view, I'm going to take and
I'm just going to place these markers
| | 03:02 | manually. I'm not going to rely so
much on doing kind of a Range Warp thing
| | 03:06 | where I use the analysis points.
| | 03:09 | I tend to just place my markers at
different parts in the word so if the word has
| | 03:14 | two different pitches or multiple
syllables, I'll kind of them as necessary as
| | 03:20 | they relate to the rhythm of the track.
| | 03:22 | So I'm going to go in here,
and add a couple of markers.
| | 03:25 | I'm just going to click here, add one
here, and we'll figure out where that
| | 03:32 | bound kind of splits right there.
| | 03:35 | So I'll add one more right there and
then I'll add one here before the breath so
| | 03:42 | I can really just kind of start
manipulating that. I'm in Slip mode.
| | 03:46 | I'm just going to kind of pull
this back. It feels a little rushed.
| | 03:51 | I want to make sure that it hits right
there and we'll go ahead and listen again
| | 03:56 | and see where we're going.
| | 03:57 | (Man singing: Trouble bound? trouble bound?)
| | 04:04 | Let's push this back just a little
bit more, this a little bit more, that
| | 04:10 | a little bit more.
| | 04:11 | Let's see how that sounds.
| | 04:14 | (Man singing: Trouble bound?
trouble bound? trouble bound?)
| | 04:24 | So just looking for that sweet spot
there, and let's listen with some context.
| | 04:28 | (Music playing)
| | 04:31 | (Man singing: Trouble bound?)
| | 04:35 | And that bound still sounds a little rushed.
| | 04:37 | Let's see if we can tune
that up a little bit more.
| | 04:39 | (Man singing: Trouble bound?)
| | 04:41 | So pull that back a little bit.
| | 04:45 | You can get this in just right.
| | 04:48 | (Man singing: Trouble bound?)
(Music playing)
| | 04:51 | That's a lot better.
| | 04:53 | So let's go into the next phrase here.
| | 04:55 | (Man singing: ?we hit the town.)
| | 04:58 | So this first part is okay.
| | 05:00 | It's just this town part I think
we could tune up. So if I go here,
| | 05:04 | I'm just going to place a
warp marker here, here, and here.
| | 05:07 | I want to make sure I anchor this to
these two points so they are not stretching
| | 05:12 | other parts of the audio and I'll just
kind of pull this up a little bit and
| | 05:17 | we'll see how that sounds.
| | 05:19 | (Man singing: ?we hit the town ?we hit the town.)
| | 05:27 | Adjust that. Oh! Make sure I
add an anchor point there.
| | 05:31 | (Man singing: ?we hit the town.)
| | 05:35 | That's hitting a little bit better.
| | 05:38 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget...)
| | 05:40 | So forget feels a little bit rushed.
| | 05:41 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget...)
| | 05:45 | So what we can do is place a warp marker here.
| | 05:50 | I'm going to anchor this change.
| | 05:54 | (Man singing: ?forget?)
| | 05:58 | So we'll move that back a little bit,
see if we can set that a little bit more on the beat.
| | 06:05 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget...
And I'll never forget...)
| | 06:14 | And that's a lot
better and this last phrase here.
| | 06:17 | (Man singing: ?that sound.)
| | 06:20 | So "that" and "sound" we could
probably tighten that up just a little bit.
| | 06:25 | Notice I kind of removed
all the analysis points.
| | 06:27 | I'm just kind of placing these warp
markers by hand here, and let me go ahead
| | 06:32 | and try it up tighten that
up just a little bit.
| | 06:37 | (Man singing: ?that sound.)
| | 06:42 | Cool. So if you want to preview the final
vocal, you can switch to the Lead Vocal
| | 06:50 | Original playlist. There I have the one
from the original session that's been
| | 06:54 | corrected, both pitch corrected and
time corrected, and so here's where we started.
| | 07:01 | (Music playing)
| | 07:02 | (Man singing: Trouble bound, we hit the town.)
| | 07:11 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget that sound.)
| | 07:20 | And here's where we're
ended up after tuning and timing.
| | 07:24 | (Music playing)
| | 07:26 | (Man singing: Trouble bound, we hit the town.)
| | 07:33 | (Man singing: And I'll never forget that sound.)
| | 07:42 | Now you might notice that it's very subtle.
| | 07:44 | I'm not going to be able to get
away with really radical changes.
| | 07:48 | So sometimes you're going to have to
re-record the performance or maybe look back
| | 07:53 | at your takes and see if you
can pull from a better take.
| | 07:56 | Your only going to be able to manipulate
it just a little bit. Like I said the lead
| | 07:59 | vocal really stands out.
| | 08:01 | So if you do a lot of Elastic Audio
processing, it's going to tend grainy or stressed.
| | 08:07 | So once you're finished, you can switch
to the X-Form plug-in, make sure you use
| | 08:12 | the Maximum settings with the Formant
enabled and it's going to take a little
| | 08:17 | while to process an entire vocal track
but the results are usually significantly
| | 08:21 | better than just using the
Real-Time Monophonic plug-in.
| | 08:26 | Now for me, the voice has always been
one of the hardest instruments to edit and
| | 08:30 | process because like I said it's
usually so out in front you really can't put a
| | 08:35 | lot of radical edits onto it.
| | 08:37 | Just remember, be subtle, pay
attention, and be honest with yourself.
| | 08:42 | Sometimes just cutting and moving a
whole word without using warping or Elastic
| | 08:47 | Audio sounds way more natural and
sometimes you really just need to be
| | 08:52 | re-recording the material to
achieve a better timing or performance.
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| Elastic Audio workflows: Getting creative| 00:01 | While Elastic Audio is an excellent utility
for reconfirming tempo and time of audio regions,
| | 00:06 | it can also be used in more
creative and extreme ways to achieve
| | 00:10 | interesting sonic textures.
| | 00:12 | One thing I like to do is play with
the fact that Polyphonic mode uses these
| | 00:18 | little windows or grains to
resynthesize the sound over really long stretches.
| | 00:24 | So one thing you can do that's kind
of cool, something they do a lot in
| | 00:27 | electronic music, is take and
extremely stretch out a portion of a region.
| | 00:32 | So, in this case, let's work with this snare.
| | 00:35 | So right now it sounds like.
| | 00:37 | (Music playing)
| | 00:40 | So, if we took this snare hit here and
I am going to go ahead and move to warp view,
| | 00:45 | and if I were to go in and place a
warp marker here, and warp marker here,
| | 00:52 | and I am going to place one right in
the middle of this snare so I can grab a
| | 00:56 | good portion of where it still has a
nice amount of sustain and really drag
| | 01:00 | that out, totally in the red.
| | 01:02 | I am going to get this really
grainy sound as it stretches that out.
| | 01:06 | (Music playing)
| | 01:09 | So, I can take and reduce the window size.
| | 01:12 | (Music playing)
| | 01:24 | Even really small.
| | 01:24 | (Music playing)
| | 01:28 | You get that really grainy sound.
| | 01:30 | Now, what I could do is I can go back
to let's say waveform view, and then
| | 01:35 | maybe cut this up little
bit to kind of gate that decay.
| | 01:39 | So, I'll go here and
switch my grid to, I don't know.
| | 01:41 | Let's say 1/16 note, triplet.
| | 01:45 | Then I'll go Edit > Separate Region >
On the Grid, and I'll just come in and I'll
| | 01:51 | remove some of these slices.
| | 01:55 | (Music playing)
| | 02:01 | So, that's kind of a cool effect that
you hear in electronic music. They'll
| | 02:04 | kind of a slice it up, get that really
grainy sound and then kind of gate it out.
| | 02:09 | You could also take this hit here,
copy it, and then maybe use an AudioSuite
| | 02:22 | to reverse that to kind of cool sucking effect.
| | 02:26 | (Music playing)
| | 02:28 | Kind of like that weird Matrix style sound.
| | 02:33 | Some other cool stuff you
can do is involving pitch.
| | 02:35 | If I go down to this
guitar and duplicate this track.
| | 02:40 | I am going to switch the duplicate to
Polyphonic mode so I can change the pitch.
| | 02:46 | I'll go and change the Elastic
Properties to be pitched up a whole octave.
| | 02:54 | You can listen to this.
| | 02:57 | (Music playing)
| | 03:09 | And we can get different kinds of
sounds by switching to Rhythmic.
| | 03:12 | Remember, Rhythmic can also use pitch shift.
| | 03:14 | (Music playing)
| | 03:18 | And changing that Decay Rate.
| | 03:20 | (Music playing)
| | 03:30 | I am almost getting a sort of tremolo
sound on that duplicate pitched up.
| | 03:34 | I could go try pitching it down.
| | 03:37 | (Music playing)
| | 03:48 | Now, again because I am using
Rhythmic and all these transients have been
| | 03:52 | identified, the timing of the duplicate
stays the pretty much the same as the original.
| | 03:57 | So, I can kind of process
these two in unison and
| | 04:00 | it doesn't fall out of groove with each other.
| | 04:03 | Some other cool stuff involves
actually rendering what you've done.
| | 04:07 | For example, if I were to go
here and use Varispeed mode.
| | 04:12 | Let's go ahead and remove this warp that
I have here already and switch to warp
| | 04:19 | view and I'll remove that part.
| | 04:20 | So, remember in Varispeed mode,
the pitch changes with the time.
| | 04:26 | So, if I were to go
stretch this out significantly.
| | 04:32 | (Music playing)
| | 04:41 | So, let's match that up, say 8 measures.
| | 04:45 | (Music playing)
| | 04:52 | So we get this really
slow sound out of the drum.
| | 04:54 | I am not really too worried about the
pitch because these drums are not pitched,
| | 04:58 | which is not going to effect
the pitch or the key of my song.
| | 05:01 | Now, what I want to do is I want to
get this back to the original tempo.
| | 05:05 | So what I can do is render this by
turning off Elastic Audio, we'll say Commit,
| | 05:12 | and then what I'll do is I'll
turn Elastic Audio back on again.
| | 05:16 | Turn it back under Rhythmic and I can take
and re-shift that to the original four bars.
| | 05:21 | (Music playing)
| | 05:34 | It kind of leads to a different
quality than just pitch shifting.
| | 05:38 | When you do a radical pitch shifts
it can tend to sound kind of warbly.
| | 05:43 | When you do the Varispeed effect, it's a
different tonal quality in your pitch shift.
| | 05:48 | So, there is a few ideas.
| | 05:50 | You can take those ideas and run with them.
| | 05:51 | Remember, just really getting
creative and using it to the extremes may be
| | 05:56 | exactly what you are looking for.
Stretch something too far, render it and then
| | 06:01 | stretches it some more, render it
again, and then stretch it some more.
| | 06:04 | You can get some really cool harmonic sort
of things like pianos, acoustic guitars.
| | 06:10 | I'll stretch a node out maybe 200 times
its original length, let's say, and then
| | 06:15 | run it through a distortion to kind of
build up all those harmonics and use it as
| | 06:20 | a pitched drone since it's preserving
that pitch as I am stretching it out.
| | 06:25 | So, try out a bunch of stuff, get creative.
| | 06:28 | There is never too much when you
are being creative with Elastic Audio.
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