Fender Studio Pro 8.1 - Discussion Thread

[TimC340]

I've had need this week to create a tempo map for a couple of songs made in free time, to allow me to match midi-generated parts to the recorded audio parts. In Studio One Pro v7, this was trivially easy: the DAW would detect the tempo and adjust the grid to suit. If it made errors, one could insert bend markers and manually manipulate them to make it work. In Studio Pro v8.1, this is no longer possible. Bend markers can only be added via the 'Detect Transients' algorithm, which isn't necessarily great, and they can't be manipulated. The only way that I have found to match the grid to the waveform is to insert tempo nodes and then manually adjust the tempo figure for the preceding region (which may be a sixteenth note, or it may be a bar) until the lines match the waveform. This is incredibly clunky and I'd dearly love to hear that I'm wrong, I've misunderstood the new DAW, and actually there's a very simple way of doing it.... Any offers?

 

[Sebastian Holtzer]

I've had need this week to create a tempo map for a couple of songs made in free time, to allow me to match midi-generated parts to the recorded audio parts. In Studio One Pro v7, this was trivially easy: the DAW would detect the tempo and adjust the grid to suit. If it made errors, one could insert bend markers and manually manipulate them to make it work. In Studio Pro v8.1, this is no longer possible. Bend markers can only be added via the 'Detect Transients' algorithm, which isn't necessarily great, and they can't be manipulated. The only way that I have found to match the grid to the waveform is to insert tempo nodes and then manually adjust the tempo figure for the preceding region (which may be a sixteenth note, or it may be a bar) until the lines match the waveform. This is incredibly clunky and I'd dearly love to hear that I'm wrong, I've misunderstood the new DAW, and actually there's a very simple way of doing it.... Any offers?

Hopefully the new integrated AI-Chat Bot can tell you if he can do it for you...

 

[TimC340]

Hopefully the new integrated AI-Chat Bot can tell you if he can do it for you...

I don’t have the necessary Plus subscription. Copilot tells me that the v7 methodology was removed for v8.

 

[Sebastian Holtzer]

I don’t have the necessary Plus subscription. Copilot tells me that the v7 methodology was removed for v8.

 

[TimC340]

Fortunately I still have access to V7.2.3, so I can compare the methodologies side by side - and Copilot was right (much as it pains me to say so!); v8 has had the tempo mapping abilities effectively removed.

 

[Skijumptoes]

They did run through the recommended method on a NAMM video a few months back, timestamped here:

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I don't know if that helps or not?

 

[TimC340]

They did run through the recommended method on a NAMM video a few months back, timestamped here:

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I don't know if that helps or not?

Thanks for that - I do remember that video. However, this method may work if you've recorded the free-time piece directly into Studio Pro, but if you import it from another program it doesn't work. To Illustrate, I've brought an acoustic guitar track into FSP. The track is roughly at 70bpm, but it varies somewhat around that.

If I leave it on 'Timestretch' and 'Sound - Elastique Pro Formant' and hit 'Detect Tempo', it'll remap the track to the preset tempo of 120. If I undo that and then tell it 'Don't Follow' and hit 'Detect Tempo'... nothing happens. No change to the grid or displayed tempo, either in the info panel or the tempo track.

If I drag the track up to the tempo track, I get the tempo displayed, but the grid doesn't change at all - in fact, the process shifts the start point to just before the 0 point (I always preset my tracks to have a -2 bar buffer at the start), but the bar grid still bears no relation to the detected tempo changes.

If I now drag the audio track down onto an instrument track to automatically extract the midi notes, you can see how little it relates to the grid - and it indeed strays further from the grid as time goes on. This may be because the 'extract notes' algorithm isn't that great for an acoustic guitar, but the transients aren't that difficult to detect...

Indeed, it occurred to me to let the DAW detect the transients. It now puts 'bend markers' in at the detected transients - but you can't manipulate these bend markers as you could in v7 to finesse the alignment of the grid.

I'm not at the computer where I still have v7 installed, but I'll be there later today and I'll do a comparison.

 

[Skijumptoes]

Indeed, it occurred to me to let the DAW detect the transients. It now puts 'bend markers' in at the detected transients - but you can't manipulate these bend markers as you could in v7 to finesse the alignment of the grid.

Oh, i've not had any problems moving or adding new markers manually. I didn't use version 7, but in FSP the bend tool works just fine for me:

Is that a new tool since FSP 8 perhaps?! ..or did the standard tool swap to a bend tool automatically in ver 7 maybe?

 

[TimC340]

Oh, i've not had any problems moving or adding new markers manually. I didn't use version 7, but in FSP the bend tool works just fine for me:
View attachment 3666
Is that a new tool since FSP 8 perhaps?! ..or did the standard tool swap to a bend tool automatically in ver 7 maybe?

No, it's not new - but in a very frustrating session last night I could not get it to move the markers. I've just tried again, and now they move!! However, this really isn't the way to achieve what I need, which is for the grid to adapt to the music, not the other way around! Moving the markers to match the grid essentially 'flattens' the tempo to the fixed grid.

I know that I can move the grid one line at a time to reflect the played piece - I did it recently for a rendition of The Seal Lullaby so that I could import a Synth V vocal to match my played piano part. But it took forever (as in two or three days), and needed a lot of trial and error to get it right*. For this piece, I was hoping I could do what Greg did in the video - but for the life of me I can't work out how!

*It works by using the 'trim' function - put the mouse cursor in the top half of the tempo lane and a bracket appears. Hold the LMB and drag the bracket left or right from the grid line you want to move. The waveform will move to reflect your dragging, and the tempo line will alter to reflect the change you've made. The same thing can be achieved by entering a new tempo node and adjusting the tempo of the segment to that node, but that's even more 'dark arts' and there's no visual feedback during the process.

 

[Skijumptoes]

No, it's not new - but in a very frustrating session last night I could not get it to move the markers. I've just tried again, and now they move!! However, this really isn't the way to achieve what I need, which is for the grid to adapt to the music, not the other way around! Moving the markers to match the grid essentially 'flattens' the tempo to the fixed grid.

Yup, that's what it should be doing via the tempo map. Just remember that the grid won't change visually as it's being controlled via the tempo how long each measure is - which allows you to still plot in and quantise to what appears a fixed grid - but should be in time.

You can qualify this with the metronome of course.

I think in the NAMM demo I linked, the audio clip used is already cropped so the first beat is at the start position of the project already for demonstration purposes.

I can see the tempo mapping has detected movement in the BPM as per your screenshots, so I wonder if the first beat isn't aligned to the start of a bar when you triggered the detection and it's simply just out of sync due to that?

I'll try later with a freely played audio clip created outside of FSP, and see if I get similar problems.