You will generally play to a metronome click when recording in Logic Pro. There are, however, instances when you’ll want to record without a click, playing rubato, or at least not at a strict same tempo throughout. Another situation may be when you have an existing audio recording—that wasn’t recorded to a metronome click, and therefore contains slight tempo variations—that you want to add additional tracks to. In this scenario, the Beat Mapping track helps to make the display of these free recordings rhythmically meaningful. It does this by defining the bar positions of existing musical events, without changing their absolute time position, thereby preserving the audible result with its original timing.

Note: Musical events, in this context, refer to MIDI notes in MIDI regions or transients in audio regions—which correspond to the beginning of strongly accented notes.