I’ve recently recorded the drum tracks for a project I’m working on. The drummer played them with high-hats on, making it perfect to use some reversed hats in the arrangement. Reversed Audio can be achieved using either Sample editing or Software Instrument Track automation.
Sample Editing involves dragging the regions of your audio file into the Sample editor in the arrangement, selecting them in reverse order and then deleting them. The problem with this method is that you’re forced to use either all of your regions or none – there’s no way to cut up your audio file into individual reversed regions.
how to reverse audio in logic
Step 1: Open Your Audio File
Double click the file you want to reverse, it will open up in the Sample Editor window.
Step 2: Select The Section You Want To Reverse Using your mouse, highlight the section you want to reverse. In this example I want to reverse the intro.
Step 3: Reverse It! Use your mouse, select Edit/Transform/Reverse from the menu bar or use the shortcut Command-Shift-R. You audio section will now have been reversed.
Here I’ll be explaining how to achieve Reverse Audio using Software Instrument Track automation, allowing you to have any number of reversed regions.
Before getting into Reverse Audio, I’ll first explain how to create a MIDI instrument track containing the instrument you want, with roll turned off.
- Create a software instrument track by pressing CMD+2
- Drag an instance of your chosen synthesiser from the Browser onto the newly created track
- Click on the I icon in the top left corner of the synthesiser to open up its parameters. On OS X, this will be resolved automatically via Max for Live.
- Turn off “Roll”
- turn off “MIDI Merge”
- turn on “No Output”
- choose a MIDI channel for your track
You should now have a basic synthesiser. You can create many of these tracks to get the desired result, all with independent Roll settings.
I’ll be using Operator in this tutorial
First let’s get some audio into Logic Pro X. I’ve recorded two drum sections – one with high-hats on, one without. I’ve only used the first half of each audio file, to save space on this page. Audio Files
Open up the arrangement window and drag your music into it. You should see 4 clips – two with hats and two without. Make sure they are in the same order as in the following screen shot
The next thing we want to do is bring all of the clips in our project into one track. There’s a couple of different ways you can go about this, but I’ll be using the Track Stack
- Select all 4 audio tracks by holding down ‘CMD+A’ and then clicking on any drum clip
- Click on the small arrow pointing upwards in the Track Stack to open it’s drop-down menu
- Select ‘Convert Tracks to New Track’
- Rename your new track to something appropriate, such as “Drums Reverse”
- Double click on Drums Reverse to edit its contents. You’ll now have a completely empty track that looks like the following.
- Click on the small arrow in the top left corner of your new track to open up its parameters.
- Select ‘Soft Synth / Generator’ from the drop-down menu beneath Type
- Scroll down to Patch and select “Operator” – this is what we will be using to create Reverse Audio. Operator’s parameters will now be added to your track.
- Click on the small arrow in the top left corner again to open up the drop-down menu. Select your newly created Operator from the list of instrument tracks. You should now see a visual representation of Operator’s waveform in place of a MIDI note region
Conclusion
I’ve explained how to use Software Instrument Track automation to achieve reversed audio. I hope you found this article useful!
