Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 16 - Editing Audio in the File Editor (aka Sample Editor)

This video covers:
1. Editing Audio in the File Editor (aka Sample Editor)
2. Normalizing and Adjusting Gain
3. Destructive Fades
4. Reversing Playback and Adjusting the Anchor Point
5. Adding Silence and Trimming Audio
6. Repairing Damaged Audio
7. Remove Pops/Clicks from a Recording
8. Remove DC Offset

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Closed Caption:

yeah
hello this is music tech help guy
welcome to episode 16 of my logic pro 10
video tutorial series
in this episode we'll take a look at the
file editor in logic and some of the
unique editing functions that we can do
down there by the way the file editor in
logic 10 is the same thing as the sample
editor in logic nine they just gave it a
different name
so the way you open up the file editor
is you can you double click on our
region and typically actually what it
will do by default is open you up in the
track editor here and then you just
click on file to get to the file editor
now one thing to keep in mind i think i
mentioned this in one of the previous
editing videos but when you edit in the
arranged area up here
editing is non-destructive there which
means that when you edit a region you're
just editing the it's in and out points
you're not actually changing the files
in your audio files folder on your hard
drive
when you edit in the file editor
it is destructive which means that when
you edit hear you
you're actually changing the source file
so you have to be careful
you can still undo your edits if you
just press command Z but if you get too
many edits a head or a few you know
maybe open up this file three weeks from
now and try to work on it
you eventually will not be able to to
undo them anymore
so one thing you can do to kind of
safeguard against this is if you click
on the region you're working with
press ctrl be you can actually do a
bounce in place which i think i showed
in a previous video we just type in the
new name up there
press ok and it will actually rerender a
copy of that file for you so you've got
one working copy and then one as a
backup
I'm not going to do that because I don't
need to now a quicker way to open up the
file editor is to click on the region
and press command six and if you don't
remember the command six key come
and you can always go just go to window
open audio file editor now when you
doing through the the window menu or you
press command six
it actually opens up a separate window
of for the sampler for them
the file editor I actually like this
better because it's bigger it's easier
to see
alright so after you open the file
editor you'll notice that it has its own
set of six different tools and it also
has its own zoom controls you can serve
Zuma horizontally
you can zoom vertically as well and this
is a trend that will continue on in
other editors that we start working with
like the piano or deter the step editor
each editor and logic has its own unique
set of two tools and also zoom controls
so let's go over the basic way to get
playback going down here and logic nine
you could simply click somewhere with
the the pointer tool and create this
little line for you and all you do is
you press spacebar and start playback
what's different logic 10 is that when
he press spacebar to start playback
it's actually starting playback of from
where the playhead is here in the
arrange window
not necessarily where we selected here
so the way
so when I press a club space bar it's
actually gonna start from the very
beginning even though I've put my
selection here
so it actually started at the beginning
of the file rather than where i had
selected the way to get around them is
you click where you want to start
playback and you can click on this icon
right up here this is pre-listen
essentially pre-listen is essentially
playback without any of the effects on
the on the track
so if I click on that it will start
right well where I selected
- any effects that were on the track and
I don't have any effects on the track so
it's not going to matter and you just
click on the icon icon again to stop it
another one thing you can do this is a
prop
a little faster as you click where you
want to start and then press ctrl space
bar instead of space bar so I want to
start like right here
I said control space bar and then hit
control space bar again to stop it
so now we get the playback controls on
the way let's go over the edit tools
there's six edit tools you have the
pointer tool eraser tool hand tools zoom
tool solo tool and pencil tool the
pointer tool which we have been using a
little bit just now allows you to drag
over an area you can make a selection
and by the way when you make a selection
like this you can actually press ctrl
space bar
it will just play that selection for you
you can also drag over an area and you
can hit delete on your keyboard and it
will warn us hey this is a destructive
operation the selected portion will be
permanently deleted the audio files
stored on your hard drive will be
overwritten so this is just warning us
hey this is a destructive edit that
you're doing here
and when you delete it you're you're
actually changing the file on the hard
drive you'll see it actually got rid of
the waveform there and then shuffled the
two halves together
now again if you hit command Z you can
always get it back
but you can only do that so many times
another thing that changes when you
change the the way for up here is this
little region boundary here basically
the region boundary this green bar it'll
be different colors based on what the
color of your region is that determines
how much of the waveform in the sample
editor is being shown in the arrange
window
so what happened there as we lost a
little bit of it so if we pull this out
all the way you'll see that up here now
the region is back to where it was
before
ok so that's the that's the pointer tool
in a nutshell
the next tool is the let's actually go
to the hand tool first the hand tool is
I hate to say it but basically a useless
tool and here's why
the only thing that the hand tool does
is when you are in transients mode over
here transient editing mode
what you can do is you can double-click
between to transients with your hand
tool and it will select that little
slice
so find a little slice of you know snare
drummer kicked or whatever
maybe here this is a just a little piece
of a snare drum
if you use the pointer tool for this you
can actually do the exact same thing and
you can make selections so the hand tool
basically just just used for selecting
something in between to transients but
you cannot make a selection with it
now the cool thing about using this
transient editing mode or transient edit
mode is you can find like maybe one
little sample of a drum loop or one
little note or a court or something from
a song and then you can drop it into a
sampler maybe reuse it as part of your
song and the way you do that is you
double click on it in between the two
transients there you go two functions
trim and what this is going to do is
it's going to trim everything around
that little selection that we made there
and so now we've got just this little
slice of the original recording
it's just a snare drum and now i can
maybe use this snare drum in a sampler
or maybe use it and copy and paste it to
use it musically in my own song
I'm not going to do that for now though
I'm just going to hit undo their and
again I have to go back and set my
region boundaries to be to show the
entire the entire waveform here
ok so that's the the hand tool in the
pointer tool next tools the eraser tool
the eraser tool is really only also only
useful when you're editing in transient
mode here
what the eraser tool does that lets you
delete those transient markers will come
back to how this is useful in a very
soon and that within a couple episodes
here when we start working with flex
time and flex pitch because sometimes
you may want to ignore a transient and
sometimes you may want logic to
recognize that transient and so that's
what the eraser tool does it
I allows you to delete transient markers
I'm going to get out of transient
editing mode here and we're going to go
to the next tool which is the zoom tool
and the zoom tool works just like the
zoom tool worked back in the arrange
window if you
drag over an area zooms in and if you
click again with it zooms back out
simple enough next tools the solo tool
essentially the solo tool is a scrub
tool
what you can do is you can click and
drag to the right to start playback and
you can also drag left to play in
Reverse
so this is useful if you're trying to
pinpoint a specific part of the waveform
and you don't have to keep pressing ctrl
space bar over and over again
so if you just click and drag to the
right and you'll see if i stop there
it does the playback will just stop and
if I dragged backwards is actually play
in Reverse
so again this is useful if you're trying
to maybe pin for pinpoint an individual
node or drum head or a quarter or
something like that
within a recording and the last tool is
the pencil tool and the pencil tool is
actually very useful because what it
does is it allows you to draw in your
waveform and modify the waveform and one
of the things that we said when we were
talking about think it was when we were
talking about a sample rate and bit
depth is that essentially your waveforms
are just in a digital reproduction of a
voltage voltage that fluctuates above
and below a zero line here at DC .
whatever you want to call it once you
can actually do with the pencil tool is
you can modify a waveform to be drawn
differently and actually what would you
just saw there was i tried to use the
pencil tool and when you try to use the
pencil tool and you're not zoomed in far
enough it'll actually defaulted to the
the zoom tool and then once you're
zoomed in far enough then you can start
drawing with a pencil tool so you have
to be zoomed in far enough for it to
work but basically what you can do is
you can draw in your own waveform here
and honestly for that function
it's not very useful because it's
probably not going to sound too good if
I just you know randomly draw in some
shapes then press play and see you know
see what I made
it's actually more useful when you're
trying to fix a damaged recording so let
me get out of this view here i'm
actually going to just delete my drum
track here I no longer need it and I'm
gonna pull up this vocal recording i
have here and just a singer just a male
singer and what you'll see here but you
can probably see here in the way for
mrs. big peak here and that peak is a
pop and what happened was we had a bad
input on our board that was causing the
signal to crackle and pop and so you'll
be able to hear that there's a pop in
the recording there
now normally you just have to go back
and re-record it but the file editor in
the pencil tool you can actually
draw that part of the waveform to
correct it and get rid of that pop so
let's just stop let me just press play
here so you can hear this feeling that
you've lost in music so you can hear
that pop in the recording is very
noticeable
so what we're going to do is we are
going to open this up in the file editor
find that pop in the recording
there it is let's just listen to a more
times drag over it and hit control space
bar you you
they definitely can hear that so we
don't want that in the recording but
maybe we don't have the means to go back
and you know hire this guy it back bring
back in the studio paying more to sing
this again so what I'm going to do is
I'm going to zoom in here and you'll see
that essentially his voice is just a
fluctuating repeating voltage what you
can do with the pencil tool as you can
try to just round off that that pop in
the recording and so let's see if we can
if we can tell that we edited that and
II now it's not a perfect process will
probably still be able to hear a little
bit of a little bit of a noise in there
not quite as hard of a pop as we had
before but you'll probably still be able
to hear a little bit
dan news yeah let's try it one more time
dan news I don't know if you can hear
that but it's it's very subtle
so this is something that's you know
this is this is doable you know I could
hide this in a mix pretty easily and we
don't have to completely trashed this
recording now there's actually another
way that we can do this
so I'm going to undo that a couple times
let's zoom in on that little . their
little pop there and one what one thing
that we can do with the pointer tool is
you can actually just drag over that pop
and then hit delete and what it will do
is it will shuffle the two sides of the
recording together now you might be
singled
well this is going to you know maybe
this is going to short our record
shorten our recording is going to offset
the rhythm might offset phase issues
the thing is that in the grand scheme of
things you look up here on the ruler
we are working at a sample level now the
rulers you know showing between these
two different notches here
473 thousand and four hundred and
seventy four thousand samples now this
recording was recorded at 96 k which
means that there's 96,000 samples per
second so in the grand scheme of things
that go saying if we delete five or six
hundred samples
you know five or six hundred sample
deletion is not really going to be
noticed
however if you're working with audio
that needs to be phase-locked like live
drums
you'll want to use the pencil tool
instead because if you delete a section
from one track it's going to cause that
track to go out of phase from the rest
of the track
one more thing you want to double check
here before you hit delete is right
click and make sure that this snap edits
to zero crossings is on what this will
do is it will guarantee that when you
drag over this little wave form here
it'll automatically snap the beginning
and end point to the nearest most
logical 0 crossing and what that does is
it keeps us from having pops and clicks
in the recording
so that's one more thing you want to
make sure that you do so i'm just going
to hit delete press Delete again
it's essentially shifted the two
waveforms together and deleted what
gotten rid of what I just deleted there
and so let's see what this sounds like
this is probably going to be very clear
you're not going to be able to hear that
there was an edit their just drag over
it
press ctrl space bar dan news dan news
yeah you can't even tell that there was
ever a pop there so the pencil tool and
then also being able to zoom into the
sample level and delete little tiny
little slices out of the recording can
really help to help to reconstruct a
recording the otherwise you have to just
try
- all right now that we're done with the
edit tools
let's take a look at some of the edit
functions all of the edit functions here
are under the functions tab up here
you got functions like normalize change
gain fades silence invert reverse trim
which we talked about earlier and remove
DC offset we're going to go over all of
these so the very first one there
normalize what normalize does is you
make a selection or you just hit you can
hit command a to do it all but you
whatever you select it will analyze that
material find with the peak value and
that recording is and then bump that
peak value up to its maximum volume so
I'm going to have dragged her that I've
selected this i'm going to go up two
functions normalize or control n and
what it does is it finds the peak . the
peak volume in that waveform and then
pushes it up to basically zero point
zero DB so it can't go any further
without clipping and so it's a way to
get the most out of your recording
volume wise
so that's what normalize does if you
want to change gain but you don't want
it to be
max volume you can actually use the
change gain function or you can press
the ctrl G and what change game lets you
do is it allows you to manually adjust
the gain what my window showed up on the
other screen over here
here we go but it allows you to search
for the maximum gain in that selection
and it tells you what it is
so right now this is currently at max
volume at negative four point oh four
decimals
you can change that maximum volume in a
percentage or in decibels and so let's
say I want to increase this by seven
percent which is going to result in a
point six
decibel increase and you can see the
results of your game change at the
bottom here and we've boosted that
recording just a little bit
so this is a great way you know if
you've got a recording or maybe one
phrase is recorded too quiet and you
don't have to go in with automation and
bump it up you can actually just select
that area that you want to bump up do
the change gain function
bump it up or bump it down to meet the
volume of everything else
okay um the next the next tool i'm going
to show you our destructive fades
now these to fade in and fade out
options are destructive fades they're
not like the fades that we add in the
range area
basically it's pretty simple
basically what you do is you select what
you want to fade in and fade out you go
up two functions fade out and it fades
it or you can do a fade in as well
functions fade in
it's a destructive face is actually
changing the source file if you want to
change the shape of your fades
what you do is you go to functions
settings and from here what you can do
is you can alter what type of fade in or
what type of fade out you want
and so you can adjust the curve maybe I
want my fade into be more of like an
exponential curve and then the next fade
that I create that's a fade-in functions
fade-in will be more of an exponential
fade
that's just how you can create
destructive fades in the file editor
alright the next function is reverse
reverse is really cool because what you
can do is you can reverse the playback
of your audio now actually well I guess
I shouldn't have deleted that track that
drum track i had let me get that back
there
here we go and what I do with my drum
track here is I'm just going to isolate
that very last
crash cymbal the very end there
and so this is what it sounds like
just to kick in a crash cymbal and after
i dragged over i'm going to go to
functions trim is going to trim out
everything except for that selection and
what we can do now is we can apply the
reverse function to it and it's actually
going to play back in Reverse now
so now we're going to have this cool
kind of sweeping sweeping in swell
effect
so if you want to use that musically is
like a special effect or like a build-up
or something while you can
the problem is going to be that when you
tried to let me get back in there
yeah the problem is going to be that
when you try to use this up here and for
some reason my file disappeared
there we go i just had to go find my in
my project folder here i had to go find
my my drums region for some reason it
disappeared from up here
but anyway what I was saying is that the
problem now is that what if you you know
what if we shorten this a little bit and
then what if we want the short with tix
actually what if we want the end of this
region two matchups a with the bar line
or a beat line instead of the beginning
of the region one of the things we
talked about in a previous episode was
that you know if i use bar mode set it
to absolute and then maybe set my drag
mode to actually the drag mode doesn't
matter but basically the at the front
end of the file the front end of the
region is going to match up with the the
grid line
so what if i want the tail end of this
to match up with the grid line
what you have to do to make this work is
in your file editor you have to change
your anchor point and with the anchor
point is the anchor point is where the
region is going to snap to the grid
so if i drag this anchor all the way
over here
for the end of the region here not right
at the end of the region but toward the
end of the region
try that again there we go now the
anchor is there we go back to the
arrange window and I'll zoom in a little
bit you'll see that the anchor is
denoted by a little . there and
basically what that means is that little
. is going to snap to grid lines now
so if i set my snap mode to beat mode
that . will snap to the beats rather
than the beginning of the region
so if i want this kind of swell up to
snap to the grid now you can see that
the . there the anchor point now snaps
to the grid line
that's just the anchor it's another
thing that you can go and adjust in the
in the file editor
all right let's go back to the vocals
here
ok the next function i want to show you
is silence and all silence does is it
inserts silence wherever you select so
maybe there's like a point where we may
be we want to cut something out here
you dragged over with the pointer tool
go to functions
silence and instead of deleting and
shuffling it it just inserts silence at
that point so if you want to keep the
position of these two waveforms where
they were before without being shifted
and shuffled together instead of
deleting you just use silence alright um
the next function i want to show you is
removed DC offset we actually already
talked about trim before I showed that
so i'm not going to go over it and
invert
I'm going to come back to in the next
video because it's going to take far too
long for me to go over inverting in in
converting techniques and things we can
do with that
in this video i'm already up to like 25
minutes already so so i'll actually make
a separate video for the inverse
function
so what removed DC offset does is it
room while he removes DC offset but
occasionally you'll end up with the
recording
i'm going to delete these delete this
vocal recording here occasionally on the
end up with the recording as a waveform
that kind of looks like this and you're
like what's going on here
and if you open up in the sample editor
you'll actually see that the waveform is
not oscillating not fluctuating above
and below the zero line of the DC line
and this is what's called DC offset and
it's usually caused by some voltage
inconsistency in your mic preamps or
your converters or maybe the preamps
important converters are not getting
enough power or too much power and the
problem with it is the problem of DC
offset is it doesn't allow the way for
it to be as loud as it possibly could be
because the wave form has been shifted
upward or downward so what you can do is
you just hit command a to select
everything go to functions
d remove DC offset it will analyze it
will tell you how much DC offset you
have a 43-point 007 percent DC opposite
which is a lot i mean it will never be
that much in a practical situation i had
to artificially make this have DC offset
but what it'll do is it'll tell you how
much you have any say remove it will
Center the waveform on the zero line
like it should be so so now that now
that we've corrected the DC offset we
will have we have equal head room above
and below the zero line to amplify
compress add gain to the signal so we
have more room to make the signal louder
if we need to
alright so that's the file editor in a
nutshell
in the next episode I'll get promised
i'll show you how to work with the
inverse function and i'll show you how
you can use phase cancellation
techniques to isolate vocals from a song
and also remove vocals from a song