hey how's it going I'm Ben Lindell and
today I'm going to be showing you how to
use elastic audio there's a couple of
main uses for elastic audio first I'm
going to show you it's how to change the
tempo of your whole song and have your
audio tracks automatically expand and
compress to match the grid the second
use I'm going to show you is how to
tighten up performances between members
of the band so let's get started okay so
here's my session as you can see I have
some drums percussion bass and acoustic
guitar everything was recorded to the
click at 154 BPM let's take a listen to
see how it sounds
okay so that sounds great but let's say
the producer wants to see what the song
sounds like for BPM slower how am I
going to do that
well what I'm going to do is I'm going
to enable elastic audio on all my tracks
and then change the tempo so let's do
that so for my drums select my drum
tracks and even the percussion and I'm
going to select a lasso audio but wait
there's four different algorithms here
what do these mean
well polyphonic works best on polyphonic
material like guitars keyboards anything
that has more than one note having at
the same time rhythmic works best on
drums and percussion in monophonic which
works best on instruments that are only
playing one note at a time such as base
or vocals the last one is various speed
which not only changes the timing but
also changes the pitch just like a tape
machine would if you speed it up the
pitch will go up if you slow down the
pitch will also go down the next step is
where most people get hung up now in Pro
Tools tracks going to be sample based or
tick based now sample based tracks mean
that all the regions and information are
tied to the mins and seconds of the
session and tick based means that all
the regions and information are tied to
the bars and beats so since I want to
change the tempo of my audio tracks I'm
going to need to change them from being
sampled based to being tick based so
let's do that by default Pro Tools makes
all audio tracks sample based and makes
all MIDI and instrument tracks tick
based they change all of my tracks to
being tick based I'm going to press
option and then click on this blue dot
down here and select ticks and that
converts all my tracks to being tick
based so let's see how the song sounds
slowed down for bpm to do so I'm just
going to come up here and change my
tempo to 150 bpm let's take a listen
now Alaska audio can also be used to do
extreme changes let's see what the song
sounds like at 180 bpm
alright sounds the same just much faster
totally changes the vibe of the track as
you can see elastic audio can be used to
make both subtle and extreme tempo
changes all while still sounding pretty
good but a word of warning when you're
using it with multi miked instruments
such as drums
whenever there's bleed from one
microphone to another and you use
elastic audio on it you're going to
create some phase issues which sometimes
can become very audible so now let's
move on and tighten up some performances
so since this song was played by humans
and not computers the timing isn't a
hundred percent perfect which is fine
because that gives it its groove but I
want to see if there's any timing areas
that need to get corrected so let's
listen to the guitar and drums and see
how they lock together
so that's on most of the time but you
can hear every once in a while the
guitar pushes a little too much let's
start with I'm going to move my acoustic
guitar up into the middle of my drums so
I can easily see how they line up
together all right so let's zoom in and
take a look at this okay so as you can
see the level of the acoustic guitar is
a little bit lower than the kick drum
that's easy I can just zoom in on the
wave form by pressing option command
bracket there and see right here my
acoustic guitar is just a little ahead
of my kick drum let's scroll along and
kind of take a look at this yeah you can
see the same thing right here right here
it looks like they're pretty well
together a little more together right
here I can see that they're a little bit
off that's probably one of the obvious
ones that we heard while very listening
back okay so there's a little bit of
timing to be done here but not a lot so
now when we do is we're going to change
my track view from waveform to warp
markers to do that I could come over
here and click on waveform and select
warp or since you know how much I love
keyboard shortcuts I'm just going to
press ctrl command and then left arrow
that brings me to my warp view so how do
we add a warp marker there are two ways
to add a warp marker do a track the most
common way is to double click on these
dark gray analysis lines which as you
can see line to the transients which is
generally what we want to be moving
around the other way to add a warp
marker is to press ctrl and click
anywhere on the track and it'll drop a
warp marker if you're not happy with
where a warp marker is placed you can
easily remove it by pressing option and
clicking in the work marker so the way
that I like to tighten up performances
is actually by doing as little work as
possible and by that I mean just moving
around the main hits generally the down
beats and back beats make sure that the
guitar and drums are locked together
whenever there's a kick or a snare by
leaving everything in-between untouched
I maintain a lot of my groove and feel
that the player played so let me show
you what happens when you move around a
single warp marker Pro totus actually
going to slide the entire region along
with it that's because it doesn't have
any other points of reference as far as
warps go so to fix this I'm going to add
a warp marker before the spot I want to
move and one after it
now when I move my work marker nothing
else moves except for the one I want to
move around so now since I've locked
down these other two points of reference
when I move the one in the middle the
rest of my region doesn't change just
the area surrounding this transient so
now let's move on and add some more warp
markers and start tightening this
performance up so as you can see I'm
adding a warp marker to the spot after a
part that I want to move and then going
back and moving the part that's off here
we go same thing I want to move this
transient we got one more marker behind
where I want to move and then drag this
into place okay here's another example
let me just touch this one up a little
bit okay so let's double check our work
and take a listen
as you can hear drums and guitar are
definitely getting a lot tighter now you
saw how I was doing it I'm just adding a
wart marker here and there wherever I
see something that's off but the
important part is to go back and listen
to your work because sometimes something
may look like it's on but still sound
off so moving forward I'm going to show
you a couple of tricks to speed up the
process of adding warp markers now I've
placed my shaker track in between my
kick and snare so I can start tightening
it up so let's zoom in and switch to
warp view so the first tricks that I
have is while adding a warp marker if
you press shift Pro Tools will
automatically add warp markers on either
side of it looking at the analysis
points and then I can easily move the
one in the middle the other trick is
when I know I'm going to have to do a
lot of warping I'll select the whole
region and bring up my quantize window
by pressing option 0 now if I were to
just press apply right now Pro Tools
would quantize every analysis marker to
the grid being sixteenth note eighth
note etcetera but I don't want that
because my drums aren't perfectly to the
grid but what I do want is I do want a
warp marker everywhere that there's an
analysis marker so how do I do that when
you come down to options I'm going to
set my strength to 1% what this will do
is it will add a warp marker everywhere
there's an analysis marker but it won't
move them at all and I'll be able to
adjust them all manually let me close my
quantize window and now once again to
preserve the groove I'm actually going
to go through and be deleting markers
that I don't want and moving the markers
that I want to tighten so I'm going to
delete all these in-between markers
otherwise known as groove and move my
strong beat delete all these markers
move my strong beat
as you can see this actually is a lot
quicker than going through and
double-clicking and adding markers
before and after just like that all
right let's zoom out and take a listen
to these first couple bars you can hear
that the shaker is now perfectly locked
to the kick drum but in between there's
still some push and pull now in some
spots it sounds good
in other spots I'd probably want to go
back in there and fix it up so once
you're happy with how your elastic audio
sounds it's actually a good idea to go
ahead and render it what this does is it
saves your computer from having to think
about it real time every time you press
play to do so click on where you
selected your elastic audio algorithm
and select rendered process in Pro Tools
will think for a second and now your
elastic audio is no longer being
processed in real time saving you some
CPU power once I'm done I personally
like to take a one step farther and
commit to my elastic audio to do that
I'm going to come over to where I
selected my elastic audio algorithm
again and select none disable elastic
audio doing so will bring up a dialog
box that says revert cancel or commit if
I press revert Pro Tools will remove all
my warp markers and return the region to
how it was before I started and if you
press commit Pro Tools will actually
render a new audio file turn off elastic
audio and make your editing permanent
today I showed you a couple of great
uses for elastic audio whether you want
to change the tempo for your entire song
or you just want to tighten up
individual performances and create a
more cohesive sound elastic audio is a
pretty versatile tool so till next time
you