Importing Extracted Vocals Into Logic Pro X Live Loops

Having extracted Mr Flash’s vocals from The Message with iZotope RX 8, my next step was to import them into Logic Pro X and convert them into Live Loops. I’d never used Live Loops before, but it turned out to be pretty simple.

I started out by cutting the vocals from each verse in the Tracks view into single bar phrases in the with the Scissors tool, like “A child is born with no state of mind” and “Blind to the ways of mankind”, and then dragging them onto the Live Loop grid. This immediately ran into a snag because Logic Pro was slowing all the resulting loops down because the original project tempo was 120 BPM and the song is actually at 100.605 BPM.

I fixed this by analysing the tempo of the original audio track and averaging the resulting Tempo track. The song is hip-hop with an electronic drumbeat, so it was recorded to a grid, which makes this easier. Once I had the project tempo set correctly, dragging the phrases into Live Loops no longer mangled their tempo.

I recoloured the vocal bites so I can tell what verse they’re from. Here’s what it looks like in Logic Pro X:

To me, the most iconic elements of The Message are the trap hip-hop drum beat and the chorus vocals:

Don’t push me cos’ I’m close to the… edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under

The brief for this assignment was to do a remix “in a completely new, surreal, bizarre and/or outrageously unexpected way.”

What could be more bizarre and unexpected than a remix which deliberately doesn’t include any of the iconic elements?

I love to subvert expectations so in this case the original drumbeat is already gone, and I’ve decided not to use the chorus vocals at all.

With the verse vocals cut up into bite sided chunks in Live Loops, it’s now easy to sequence them in whatever order I like just by clicking on whichever loops I choose. Here’s a random sample: