Closest thing to Logics "Flex Pitch" in Pro Tools

[propower]

After messing around with Logic I am super impressed with Flex Pitch. Brilliant - and exactly how I would like pitch correcting to be. Super quick analysis of the track, piano roll view with melodyne like lines, 6 simple edit points on the notes - just change what you need to.

What is the closest thing to this available in Protools??

[nigelpry]

Elastic pitch, I guess, but I don't use either.

I generally fire up Melodyne when I need to play with pitch.

[propower]

Thanks Nigel -

I already own Melodyne Editor. Clearly the best editor out there. Also - one of the clumsiest ProTools workflows there is.

-Instantiate
-Let it learn the whole passage (real time)
-Edit (yay)
-Duplicate track
-Print result
-Import
Rinse and repeat

For the last projects I have just used Waves in Audiosuite. Still real time learn. nowhere near as malleable.

-- You need to either look at Flex Pitch video or try it. Brilliant. Turn flex pitch on and within a few seconds the whole track has a melodyne like pitch render. Tweak a note or all of them. just keep working. 10 vocal tracks - no problem. Bounce in place if needed.

Is there anything that even approaches this workflow on PT??

[groundcontrol]

PT13 in 3 support plan cycles...

[propower]

Originally Posted by groundcontrol

PT13 in 3 support plan cycles...

Yes - after working a bit in Logic I can see-

Track stacks - so much easier than managing Bus sends and returns manually
Flex Pitch - Brilliant
Drummer - crazy - but also Brilliant
Send Safe for Low Latency !!! Keep latency low and let a reverb send be un delay compensated whilst in Record... - Brilliant

Now for day three...

And back to pitch in specific....
Have Waves, Melodyne - nowhere close
Autotune isn;t going to work like Flex
Any others that come close??

[Shifted Music]

Originally Posted by groundcontrol

PT13 in 3 support plan cycles...

and $1800 later cause that a HD feature.

But no there is NOTHING as elegant as that in Pro Tools..

At various time there will always be enviable feature in other software. they are all on different dev schedules. but fact remains MOST often the cool features lie elsewhere (Most) Disc Cache is a GREAT feature, not sure if its in others...

Eventually, PT will have something really cool others want.

Elastic audio came first in Pro Tools back in 7.4 days... before Logic. Not Ableton live but.

There are some really cool features in Logic though... enough to help relieve the worry about the workflows that are in PT (or the way of thinking)

the technology about the drum library is kinda revolutionary. they have it intricately respond to the track as a whole..

regardless of the programming, sounds, layers, amount of fills and variations... theres a whole AI element that "listens" to add another layer of variation...

Its Nutz ... the technology. I have not used it in practice but the programming is kinda insane. And they used some VERY top level high end Studios, Drum kits, Mics and Players, some of the best.

BUT they DO NOT market it like that. the core group of people who BUY the program IN DROVES... far outweigh the ones who would be able to appreciate the intricacies of the programming in that drummer, or know the names, studios and mice used.... so they just explain what it does in layman's terms.. but REAL studio rats would be impressed just as well..

And the sound designers as well.. Several of the TOP libraries were and are consulted to create content... guys who are constantly winning awards. and again. No marketing hype beyond we are "apple".

jus saying

Ive been 10 years of Daily use with Pro Tools..... but its big world out there.

[propower]

^^^^^^^
Yes - the Drummer is fairly amazing. I have not tried to "finish" a song with it (thats what real drums are for) but for laying down basic tracks and writing it is killer so far. Simple controls for "more or less" complicated - Pushed or behind the beat !!!! Easy damping/tuning of kit pieces - yes - I own BFD3, Stylus, SD2 and a ton of loops - Drummer - Brilliant!!!! I'd pay another $200 for 4 more styles!

I am 16 years in ProTools - but maybe not too late for an old dog to learn new tricks. Ask me in a couple of weeks what I think...

Though before things get too rosey
Logic Woes ---
- Reported latency is wrong. Lowest latency (96kHz/64) with AVID i/o and Native TB is 2.67ms (logic "reports" 1.3ms - NOT). Much higher than using ProTools (1.76ms) - all measured scope and Function generator
- Who knows if audio is really placed accurate with AVID i/o
- Output phase are all inverted - I know - crazy - but thats what my measurements say. Through PT all is well - Logic - 180 degrees out.

[nigelpry]

I wish the Melodyne workflow was only as clumsy as you describe .... for me it's often worse.

A fair proportion of what I do involves recording a guide live, just to produce a tempo map that everything subsequently will align to.

In both Pro Tools and Logic, with songs that have tempo changes defined every bar to maintain a 'natural' feel, Melodyne regularly loses where it is in the song. If you have a few Melodynes instantiated while working on BV harmonies for example, an older instance you've already worked on but not printed (because it may need further edits) will start to go out of time.

This is particularly a problem if you skip around in the song to jump to the places where you actually need to edit, after transfering it all in. The only solution is to open all Melodyne instances, click on the broken link buttons, and play the song from start to finish so Melodyne can relearn the tempo changes.

Then, you carry on editing until the next time it happens, which could be an hour away, or three minutes away! Not fun, especially if the client demands to be present during the process.

Logic's drummer is impressive, especially if you cut the 'clips' up, as you can then set the x/y complexity/volume controls differently for each clip. Also, the ability to have it 'listen' to another track (a sort of side-chain) from which it will derive clues as to where to accent/emphasise things, really works well. I often use acoustic guitar tracks for this, whether picking or strumming, as it seems to 'tune in' to the playing dynamics really well.

Probably the thing I hate most about Logic though is this ..... audio file modification dates/times and sizes change as editing takes place in the 'edit' window! That worries me immensely, as I can't help feeling that, one day, some damage will be done and I won't be able to get back to the orignally recorded audio.

If the file size has changed, and I need to go back to the initial recording session to reimport a track from that session into the current iteraction after lots of edits, how well is that old session going to handle the fact that the file modification date and time, and the file size, has changed?

This changing of the original audio file seems to happen most when tempo changes have been added into the project using beat mapping, and flex time is then being used to bring specific transients into time.

It undermines my confidence in Logic totally. It makes me very nervous!

You know there is a checkbox setting in the preferences about the project playing to a musical grid or not. At face value you might think it is like whether you choose 'bars/beats' or 'seconds' as your main ruler in Pro Tools.

It is actually more complex than that, and it can easily cause BIG problems. If it is switched on, then any audio file that is recorded is time stamped with a marker at the beginning of every bar. If you then turn flex time on and look at the audio, you'll see a thickish blue marker dead on beat one of every bar.

Logic does this so that if you decide you'd quite like to change the tempo of the song, it can easily speed up/slow down the audio, because it already has a reference point defining the start of every bar.

Of course the problem is, if you are recording a track in free time, then these markers are not actually at beat one of every bar, because the actual playing is not aligned with the grid.

When you start putting in manual tempo changes using beat mapping to reflect where the start of every bar actually is this causes what can only be descrbed as chaos and havoc!

There are two solutions.
1) Switch off that musical grid setting ... easy. However if you later want to record some MIDI, for example, you then need to turn it on, otherwise the MIDI will be incorrectly referenced, and if you later have to alter the tempo map, the MIDI will drift away from the audio.

Subsequently though, if you have turned the switch back on, and then record more audio, the new audio will get time stamped at the start of every bar, and flex time will again cause chaos and havoc.

You can't switch it off again, before recording the audio, because you'll find the flex time edits you've made since turning it on will be thrown off by it. Your project will become one wholly mess. Locking the track is a partial solution, but even that seems to get thwarted by this process, especially as you have to unlock it to make any further edits you might need.

The only way to avoid the problem is to bounce in place to create a new audio file incorporating all the flex time changes. But what if you then want to make further changes subsequent to more recording? It can become a mess, very quickly.

2) There is an option to remove tempo information from audio fles already recorded. So if you've recorded audio with musical grid switched on, this should remove all those markers at the start of each bar, so you can work with the track freely.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. Sometimes several passes of doing this are required. Sometimes you only realise after a fair amount of flex timing the track, say as you get towards the end, that there are still some of these markers hanging around.

Worse still, they seem to be given a higher priority than normal flex time markers. If you start deleting those bar markers after you've done some flex timing, then the flex markers start moving in time, taking the audio with them. It's as if the flex marker position in time is relative to the bar marker.

What's even worse is if you've started cutting up clips, say to cut out periods of silence. Then as you start making tempo changes, or flex marker changes, or start manually removing bar markers, or use the remove tempo menu option, which works on the file not the clip, even worse chaos and havoc ensues as all the individual clips start moving around.

Locking the track is no good, as you need to unlock it to edit it, and as soon as you do that, everything in the timeline may well move.

In short .... I hate it, with a vengence! But I still use it, despite this, because lots of clients want to use it, and they are a) blissfully unaware of these issues, and b) just expect me to sort it out when the problems inevitably arise.

In Pro Tools the original audio file is never altered, it is truly non-destructive, unless you choose to destructively edit. In Logic, as I say, I have this nagging fear that, one day, this issue will bite me, big time.

One of the big things Pro Tools has going for it is the simplicity of the playlists concept. I record a track. I duplicate it onto a new playlist. I edit that playlist. I create a duplicate of that edited playlist. I print that to a new file, which replaces the previously edited clip on the playlist.

It is as simple as switching playlists to move between original recording, edited recording and rendered version of edited recording. In more complex cases, there may be multiple iterations of that ... say time correction first, then pitch correction, etc. etc.

I love being able to switch between stages of editing like that. Of course I also save multiple iterations of the project file itself too.

[propower]

Sometimes this forum is just "pure gold"

Hey Nigel - Thanks a ton for taking the time to write all that. I had no idea!! And for all the love I have for flex pitch and drummer - the kind of stuff above just scares the crap out of me! Also see above for Latency inaccuracies and Phase reversal in Logic!

I am a "recovering" Design Engineer and what I demand is technical accuracy. ProTools for and of its limits pretty much is a simple thing that tells the truth.

Now how about that "Digital Performer"... LOL

[propower]

A year and a half later I find myself in the same quandary! Am using PT12HD with HDX and wonder if there is any new developments in easy pitch correction for PT? I have Melodyne Editor V2 but V4 looks to work the same way... anything else new?

PS - The Studio One integration is fantastic! How hard is this to do for PT?? Isn't Melodyne all set to do it (ARA SDK...) and AVID just needs to add the support? This would be amazing.