Logic Tips – Matching Tempo And Loops

Over the next year I plan to devote much more attention on this blog to studio recording and photography. The simple fact is that there’s less theology and church stuff on my physical desk at any given time of the week and lots of music and images. One aspect of this will be occasional tips on using programmes like Logic Pro, Reason and Sibelius; something that has occupied a fair bit of email time this year.

But, I’d like some feedback here on what format you might find helpful and any topics you would like to see covered.

Match song tempo to a (non-Apple) loop – Let’s say you have a cool non-Apple loop, like a .wav and you want to match the song tempo to it. First, work out how bars the loop goes for. Next, click the loop to highlight it in the arrange window. Then, create a green cycle bar the same number of bars as the loop (they won’t match in screen length yet). In the options menu, select Options > Tempo > Adjust Tempo using Region Length and Locators. Finally, you will get a dialogue box asking if you would like to make the tempo change global or create a tempo change – click globally. Now look down in the transport window and you should see the new song tempo.

Match a (non-Apple) loop’s tempo to the song – To match a non-apple loop, like a .wav, to a song tempo, you’ll need a slightly different process. You still start by working out how many bars in the loop, click to highlight the loop in arrange, then make a green cycle bar to match the number of bars for the loop (not the loop length). But, at this stage you need to look in the arrange window pull down menus for the Audio menu and select, Audio > Adjust Region Length to Locators. The song tempo remains the same and the loop’s length has been changed. Remember, if you tweak the song tempo, you will need to repeat this process (or convert the loop into an apple loop).

[tags] Logic Pro [/tags]