LOGIC PRO X gurus...help with Smart Tempo / Flex with pre-recorded track

sskkmm

Power User
So my uncle - who gave me my first guitar and is a singer/songwriter - is still working on tunes in his 70s.

He sent me an mp3 of a cool new song - just an acoustic guitar and voice. He doesn't have the stems as it was recorded at someone else's place. It obviously wasn't done to a click/metronome. :/

I understand the basics of the smart tempo/flex time editing as I have used it before (and I know there are lots of youtube vids out there) ... and the tools do "pretty good" with this track. I have added bass and some slide guitar, but as things went on, I realized it wasn't going to work.....because there are some pauses/holds in the tune that throw it off...as well as a different feel or time signature in the prechorus that I just cant account for (half time feel? 12/8? not sure).

It is worth working on, or should I just scrap the "must lock it in" idea (for Drummer / loops etc) and just play/record like it's a tape player?

Here's the org track (had to downsample to attach)...It's a cool tune that has a neat story behind it. Would appreciate any advice or help!

Here's a bit of what I added:

 

Attachments

  • In Your Blood 256.mp3.zip
    7.8 MB · Views: 1
I liked this song a lot, thanks for posting it.

You can tempo map this whole thing in 4/4. There does seem to be one measure of 2/4 at the end right after the last vocal, but the whole thing gets a little free at that point anyways. I didn't really map that part or the intro.

If you trim the start of the song to the first transient and place that on the 1, the rest should fall into place. You might want to move some beat markers here and there to tighten it up. I didn't activate a click, just foot tapping and looking at the bars go by, moving the tempo if it seemed to be drifting.

There might be a couple places where a little flex could be used, like the downbeat chord on bar 10 has just a little hesitation, but he's got such a great sense of ebb and flow to the pacing that you don't want flex that out of his performance. It sounds like maybe they did some punch ins or made a couple different take edits here and there.

I thought the slide you added was very tasteful and fit quite well.
 

Attachments

  • In Your Blood mapped.zip
    309 KB · Views: 0
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