Logic Pro 8 Removing a Sound in a Multitrack Project

[Nityananda_SCSMath]

I have an 8-track project in Logic Pro 8. There are multiple places where you hear a car horn, a cough, or otherwise unwanted sound in the song. There is always bleed of this unwanted sound to all the tracks. What is the best way to quickly remove the unwanted sound from all the tracks without too much altering the sound of the song?

I want to be able to remove the sound in a way that is relatively quick, because I have to do it many times, and I cannot just export the finished song as a single file into Soundtrack Pro because I may need to make future changes to the mix in Logic. After making these changes I would have to redo the cough edit in Soundtrack Pro. I have 50 songs to work on and may need to change the mix multiple times after getting feedback from the client.

I've thought about making 8 duplicate tracks of the song and sending them to an Aux channel and EQ'ing that, but I would have to make 8 duplicate tracks for each song that need's the cough EQ'd out!! This will not really work. Is it possible to automate EQ data throughout a track?

I'm sure this is a common need, to edit out an unwanted sound from a multitrack project, but I have not been able to research how to do it. If you can post a detailed efficient solution then people all over the internet will be able to make use of it 🙂
Thank you in advance for your kindness and expertise.
-Nityananda SCSMath

 

[zerobeat]

Offering specific advice without actually hearing the project is always difficult.

If you can't alter the timeline of the project (ie.. chopping out that section of time and sliding the next section earlier in time - I use Shuffle Left mode for this), then you'll have to live with some of this annoying sound if it's in every track.

If the sound is loudest in one particular track, then perhaps silencing it there won't affect the entire song bad enough to matter, but will lessen the impact of the annoying sound.

You also might be able to find another point in the song which is identical enough that you could copy/paste that short section into the other section that has the annoying sound. Then crossfade the sections together across all 8 tracks.

Or you can insert many more coughs and horns in a musical and/or rhythmic way so it sounds like they're all there on purpose. Yeah, that's the most sensible thing to do.

 

[sonnykeyes]

I have an 8-track project in Logic Pro 8. There are multiple places where you hear a car horn, a cough, or otherwise unwanted sound in the song. There is always bleed of this unwanted sound to all the tracks. What is the best way to quickly remove the unwanted sound from all the tracks without too much altering the sound of the song?

Please tell us a little about the circumstances under which this was recorded - it sounds like a live outdoor concert, in which case you may be out of luck unless you can use zerobeat's suggestion to cut and paste an identical bar from another part of the song over the car horn or cough. If the projects are not musical, however, (e.g. Logic used to mix a film soundtrack) then the cut-and-paste solution could work nicely, especially since it would mean a permanent solution that wouldn't require rebuilding for future mix adjustments.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Here's a little trick that may or may not work:
Try to isolate that very offending sound from the track it has the loudest volume on. Copy it to a new track and make a physical copy of it (via "turn regions into individual audio files). Then open it in the sample editor and reverse its phase. Fool around with the level on this channel and see whether there's a certain level when it almost cancels out with the original. Even if it works, this will defenitely have an effect on the quality of your tracks (as some other things might be cancelled out, too), but it's probably worth the effort for a bunch of the most offending noises.

- Sascha