EDITING CUES IN LOGIC

LOGIC & EDITING CUES OR CUTDOWNS

I am often asked to produce several different lengths for TV series, commercials and production music: 60", 40", 30", 20", 10" and short stings. Hard disk digital recording makes this much easier than it was in the old analogue days, but there are some tricks to making it even easier. When I first started using Logic for this sort of work I would compose and record the full length verrsion, then save it as a different file for each cutdown. The drawback to this method is that if you need to do a remix or further development you either need to apply the changes to each file or start again from scratch. Here is a method that works very well and allows you much more scope for quickly changing all mixes globally:

The Copy & Paste Inline Method

This is a simple way of doing a cutdown which removes just one chunk from the middle. It can easily be adapted to taking out two or more chunks. N.B. This is slightly more complex if tempo changes are involved.

• Create your basic version, this should be the longest version - it’s easier to edit stuff out than edit it in.
• Select everything - [cmd]+[a] - and copy to a later part of the arrange page, about 8 bars after the end of the original. This will be your first cutdown.
• To check your timing you now need to use a SMPTE offset to make the first note or sound show at 00:00:00:00 Simply set the bar to which you have copied the regions to in the box:
  
  You can access the SMPTE offset from the drop down menu when you click on the small triangle at the R.H. end of the floating transport window.
• Move the Song Position Line to work out approximately how many bars your shorter version needs to be. Allow a couple of bars for the ending note and final reverb tail
• Work out how many bars you need to subtract and define a cycle zone in the bar ruler of that length. Move it to a point so that you get at least your opening theme before the cycle area. The bits before and after are going to be what’s left after the edit - you should be able to visualise roughly what you want to keep from the beginning and end of the music.
• At this point SAVE THE FILE. (As if you hadn’t been doing that every 5 seconds all the time)
• Select everything again and Cut Time & Move By Locators (Region menu or [ctrl]+[cmd]+[x])

• If necessary, add or subtract a bar from cycle zone to get closer to the target length. Depending on the content it may be possible to use fractions of bars, but at this stage only aim for accuracy to within a second or two.
• Move the cycle zone to different parts of the music, keep trying the cut until you get the best result.
• Tidy up the cut by checking individual tracks, you may need to adjust start and end of regions if notes have been cut into.
• If you need the length to be absolutely accurate, you may need to make adjustments, e.g.:
  • Add a pickupdrumbeat, roll or sound effect before beat 1
  • Lose a pickup before beat 1
  • Lengthen the final chord. (Create a new audio file from region if doing destructive edit!)
  • Shorten the final chord - you can do this with an automated fade or destructive edit.
  • Lengthenor shorten the final reverb tail - either with automation or a separate reverb plugin.
• Repeat the whole procedure for a shorter cutdown, either by copying and pasting this cutdown or using the original full length again.