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Lesson time: (3min 11sec)
Aamir Yaqub shows how to turn a vocal's Flex Pitch data into MIDI in Logic, so you can trigger a synth line that follows the melody.
This lesson is part of the course Logic Pro: Recording & Audio Editing
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
And then one last thing I might do with Flex Pitch, which tends to be quite interesting as a result, is to take this information, essentially, what's in this region, and turn it into MIDI data.
By converting the data, I could trigger maybe a synth line or something like that, which has the melody contained in this vocal line. Here's how to do it:
Once you do that, you'll notice an instrument comes up. Since Flex Pitch first analyzed the vocal data, it's somewhat treating it as MIDI. It knows what it needs to do.
Now, this is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination because the singer might be singing longer notes and stuff like that. You'll probably have to go in and edit some of that MIDI data.
You might notice that some notes are triggered a few times, and you could interpret that as an expression from the singer. You could take that note and bring it back to find the right start for it.
You can see it would take a little bit of working with, but if you were to change that sound to, say, a synth lead sound, it could enhance the song.
What about something like this? While that might sound quite hard, you'd probably want something a bit softer and more supportive of the melody.
This can be a really nice way to support the melody of a song. If you have a microphone and you want to sing a melody rather than play it, you actually have the functionality to do that with something like Flex Pitch.
So, it's definitely worth exploring. It can help you out with challenging vocal performances, not that I've ever had to deal with one!, and also serve as a tool for creativity.

Aamir Yaqub is a music producer and engineer based in London. He has worked with some of the biggest names in music, including Alicia Keys, David Guetta, Rihanna, Sia and will.i.am, as well as developing independent artists.Across his courses he teaches his complete Logic Pro workflow - from the interface and recording through beat-making, synthesis and MIDI effects to mixing and finishing a track. read more