Recording - November 2013 - 21

Pro X runs fine with 4 GB RAM, I’d recommend a minimum of 8 GB for any serious work, especially when using the new
Producer Kits (see below).
Logical makeover
When you open Logic Pro X, the first
thing that hits you is the cosmetic
makeover—Logic seems to sport a new
look with every point-0 version, and X is
no exception. The new look is dark (backgrounds, mixer), with bold primary colors
(regions, notes) replacing the pastels of
the older color palette. It looks good, but
it does take some getting used to.
There are a couple of gotchas, though. If
you did any color-coding in your arrangements, the new color palette doesn’t translate, making hash of any meaning ascribed
to colors. Larger graphics and fonts look
great on a 27” monitor, but somewhat big
and clunky on smaller screens. However,
it’s still early days—perhaps Apple will
offer some tweaks or options. They are,
after all, a company known for visual elegance in their software.

More importantly, a lot of small changes
have been made to enhance workflow.
These changes are mostly logical (like reorganized menus) and, in many cases, they
come in response to long-time user requests.
Overall, the small changes do seem to add
up to a somewhat more efficient workflow,
with less mousing around, and I didn’t feel I
had to struggle to adapt to them.
There are also several new file management options, including Packages (Project
elements in Project File itself), Alternatives
(like Save As, but self-contained), and a
much more elegant and effective Autosave
function than Logic 9 had.
But of course, Logic Pro X is more than
just workflow enhancements; there are a
number of significant additions to the feature set. So let’s take a look at the new
toys, keeping in mind that many of the
features we’ll be looking at are only available with the Advanced Tools enabled.
In tune with Flex Pitch
For some time now, Logic users have
enjoyed Flex Time, Logic’s non-destructive
audio time-shifting feature. The big news

in X is the addition of Flex Pitch, which
extends Flexing capability to pitch editing—now the individual pitches in an
audio file can be altered as well, on a
note-by-note basis, without affecting the
timing, either for corrective purposes (tuning) or creative ones (changing a melody
or creating harmonies). Logic’s Flex Pitch
integrates directly into the Main (Arrange)
window, and promises to be much more
straightforward in operation than 3rdparty pitch processing plug-ins like AutoTune or Melodyne. But how does it stack
up, in terms of features and sound quality?
There are two ways to access Flex
Pitch: directly in the track lane, for simple
note-by-note pitch correction (or for all
pitches in a region at once), or more comprehensively in the Audio Track Editor
pane. There, you’ll see the audio waveform under a series of rectangular boxes
for each note pitch. On the left side of the
pane are quick controls for automatic
pitch correction and scale-based pitch
adjustments. On the right side, naturally,
you can edit selected notes by hand.

even better quality, even when heard in isolation. Overall, I felt Flex Pitch more than
held its own against other pitch-editing software—couple that with the convenience of
its integration in the program, and it will
undoubtedly be my new go-to option for
pitch tweaks when needed.
In addition to pitch editing, Flex Pitch
can also convert an audio recording to a
MIDI sequence (though without velocity
sensitivity)—this apparently replaces the
previous method, Audio-to-Score, which
is MIA. One final note about Flex Pitch—
currently it only works on monophonic
melodies, but shortly before the release of
Logic Pro X, Apple was granted a patent
for Polyphonic Pitch Detection, the underlying technology behind any polyphonic
pitch editing algorithm. So I wouldn’t be
surprised to see some new capabilities for
Flex Pitch sometime in the future.

Grabbing & dragging the center of the
note adjusts pitch by semitones.
Additionally, there are 6 dots around
each note (3 above, 3 below), which
Apple calls “hotspots”, that function as
handles for different pitch adjustments.
You can adjust Fine Pitch (in cents), Pitch
Drift (sliding in/out of notes), Vibrato, Gain
(individual note volume), and Formant.
Formants are fixed resonances in a sound,
that define the tonal quality of that sound—
for a vocal, they’re what make you sound
like you. When flexing pitch (with any software) , if the formants are transposed with
the pitch too much, you get the familiar
Mickey-Mouse effect. Flex Pitch automatically compensates for this, and this handle
gives you a further option for fine-tuning, to
insure natural sound quality.
So how does Flex Pitch stand up to the
competition? Well, for the most part, quite
well. With some vocal tracks I experimented
with, I typically got good-sounding transpositions, but when I tweaked the Formants by
hand, I was able to achieve more considerable transpositions (several semitones, a torture test for any pitch-shifting algorithm) with

in the mode of Toontrack Superior
Drummer, FXpansion BFD, or XLN Audio’s
Addictive Drums. Like those instruments, it
offers multiple kits of natural-sounding real
drums, with the ability to create custom
kits, and full access to all mixing options.
It can be used on its own, but it’s optimized for use with Drummer, an intelligent
drum programmer. Let’s start there.
Drummer is an algorithmic drum programmer with a new Track type, one per
Project. Unlike regular Instrument tracks,
however, you don’t see regions with MIDI
notes, instead you see a region display
that looks like audio, reflecting the current
pattern playing. It’s still really MIDI under
the hood, though—see below.
Drummer uses intelligent algorithms to
generate drum patterns based on adjustments you make region-by-region. In the
Drummer editor pane, you can choose
the overall style (Rock, Alternative,
Songwriter, R&B) and your virtual drummer (complete with name, bio and
résumé—kind of cutesy, but it gets the
idea across). After selecting a starting
preset, you can change it by accessing

Drummers’ delight
Another major addition to Logic Pro X is
Drummer and Drum Kit Designer. Drum Kit
Designer is a new virtual drum instrument

RECORDING November 2013

Recording - November 2013

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