User guide

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31 Beat Mapping Regions
You will generally play to a metronome click when recording
in Logic Express. There are, however, instances where you’ll
want to record without a click, playing rubato, or at least not
at a strict tempo throughout.
Another situation may be where you have an existing audio recording—that wasn’t
recorded to a metronome click, and therefore contains slight tempo variations—that
you want to add additional tracks to. In this scenario, the Beat Mapping track helps to
make the display of these free recordings rhythmically meaningful. It does this by
defining the bar positions of existing musical events, without changing their absolute
time position, thereby preserving the audible result with its original timing.
Musical events, in this context, refer to:
 MIDI notes in MIDI regions.
 Transients in audio regions—which correspond to the beginning of strongly
accented notes.
Beat mapping involves two steps: First, you graphically connect musical events to the
desired bar positions in the Beat Mapping track—by drawing lines between them with
the mouse (a more detailed description of this procedure follows). Logic Express will
automatically insert a tempo change event for each of these bar position locations. This
results in the note/event being played at its previous absolute time position, despite its
altered bar position. A beat mapped Logic Express project will contain the same tempo
variations as the original recording.
Presuming accurate beat mapping, everything will be in time with the metronome
tempo, affording you a number of advantages for further project development:
 The metronome click can be used when recording additional regions.
 Quantize functions can be applied to newly recorded regions.
 Loops (both MIDI and Apple Loops) will automatically adjust to the tempo when
used in the arrangement.