Another Use for Logic's Quick Swipe Comping

When it first appeared in Logic 8, Apple's Quick Swipe Comping feature represented one of the biggest time savers introduced into the program in - well - forever. (If you're not familiar with what "comping" is, check out this post). It turns out that the feature is also useful for far more than just the traditional uses. A couple weeks back, I showed you how to use Quick Swipe to build "broken beat" type drum loops. Today, I want to show you another way I find this feature useful.

Having just released an album back in October, my band is gearing up for tours in Europe and the U.S. Since we've been around for a while now, there's a pretty noticeable difference in the production and mixing quality of the older material versus the new stuff. So I decided to restore all the old songs and give them a new mix from the ground up using higher quality effects and my improved mixing skills so they'd be more consistent with the sound of the new tracks. Once this was done it was time to master the tracks. I'll be frank, I absolutely hate mastering. I find it incredibly tedious. All the going back and forth to make sure everything sounds consistent and compatible can be especially maddening.

This time around, after I mastered and bounced the tracks, I loaded them all into a Take Folder and used Quick Swipe to cut back and forth in between the different tracks to easily compare the tone, loudness, and dynamics to ensure everything was consistent. I could take notes, make adjustments, and repeat the process until everything was nice and balanced. Just this small change in the way I'd been doing things shaved off a lot of the tedious part of this task and let me concentrate on getting things sounding right. Do you have any less traditional uses for common features that have been big time savers for you?