Solved Tempo mapping question/dilemma

[woodrow swillson]

I drug in midi drum file for Orion from Metallica. I then drug in the actual song. Im trying to tempo map the song to sync with the midi file. It worked flawlessly until the slowdown/tempo change mid song. The tempo for the midi is 79, but the tempo mapping for the real song comes out about double that. Is there a way to get the tempo to go halfsies? Alternatively, is there an easy way to take the midi file, and make that part of it read 158 without doubling the speed? That would work too.

For clarification, I know all the manual workarounds for this, and Ive done them, so they are damn close. Im just trying to see if this can be done. I discovered Drumscrib yesterday, and Its a gamechanger, if you like to record covers. I dropped $10 uploaded a track, and it spit out the drum sheet music, and midi file. I put it in S1, and tempo mapped the real song file to the midi and it was perfectly synced. It made it WAY easier to lay down the initial guitar and bass tracks playing along to the actual song than to just a drumline. (im gonna do final tracking without the real song FYI) So, Im trying to figure this out with Orion, cuz it was a free download, and Ive always wanted to record it anyway.

 

[apessino]

Perhaps you could just change the time signature so that a beat is mapped to half the time. If the piece is in 4/4, for example, enter 4/8 in the signature track where you want the tempo doubled, then enter a 4/4 to go back to the previous beat length.

Either way, isn't S1 extraordinary in its workflow to tempo map a performance (audio or MIDI) using the warp tool in combination with beat/seconds time base for tracks? I almost never play to a click - I play a guide part in, change the track time base to "seconds" then warp the beats as desired, and in minutes I have a perfect tempo map to quantize/snap to. It's amazing - no other DAW that I worked with comes even close to the speed and elegance of S1 for this kind of work.

 

[SwitchBack]

That's only to some extent true.

Yes, the track has a tempo, but tempo doesn't convey time signatures. That's something you have to add yourself, on the Signature track.

A track (with tempo or tempo map known to Studio One) set to Follow or Don't follow will play at its own tempo. But if such a track is set to Timestretch then it will play to the tempo of the Tempo track, not the other way around.

To make tracks (with tempo or tempo map known to Studio One) play to the tempo of a lead track (with tempo or tempo map known to Studio One) you have to set them to Timestretch. Then drag the lead track to the Tempo track to set the Tempo track to the tempo (map) of the lead track. But that won't remove any time signatures you set earlier.

So the Tempo track is pivotal in making tracks with different tempi play together in time.

 

[Gary Shepherd]

I often manually change the tempo by decimal points to try and match the exact tempo of an audio file or performance (say transferring tracks from an old portastudio cassette where the tempo fluctuates). And then I match it section by section with another tempo change point in the tempo map. So I build up laboriously on the tempo map till the tempo map fits the audio. It is the only way to get it accurate in my experience - worth doing if the performance is good. When you get into timestretching it can alter things - whereas a change in tempo points on the tempo map always keeps the midi in sync with the track. But I am old school (if such a thing exists in the world of midi).

 

[SwitchBack]

The way you map your tracks is between convenience and personal preference. Once you're done you can bounce so the points get saved with the audio file. Timestretch uses those same points so that doesn't change. But what you do get to change/choose is the timestretch algorithm (drums/sound/solo/tape), which changes the way the 'rubber band' stretches the audio between points. Makes a big difference! The portastudio is a perfect example, as cassette tempo fluctuation also fluctuates the audio frequencies. 'Tape' should be the Timestretch setting, to kill both birds with one stone.

 

[woodrow swillson]

Perhaps you could just change the time signature so that a beat is mapped to half the time. If the piece is in 4/4, for example, enter 4/8 in the signature track where you want the tempo doubled, then enter a 4/4 to go back to the previous beat length.

Either way, isn't S1 extraordinary in its workflow to tempo map a performance (audio or MIDI) using the warp tool in combination with beat/seconds time base for tracks? I almost never play to a click - I play a guide part in, change the track time base to "seconds" then warp the beats as desired, and in minutes I have a perfect tempo map to quantize/snap to. It's amazing - no other DAW that I worked with comes even close to the speed and elegance of S1 for this kind of work.

Ok. I read that wrong about changing the time signature the first time. thats worth looking into. thank you. IDK if that would work or not, but it gave me an idea of how to change the midi tempo. This may work in the midi editor as well, but I do know that in the pattern editor, if you change the resolution, you can double or half speed the tempo without changing the BPM. I may be able to play around with that.

 

[woodrow swillson]

I often manually change the tempo by decimal points to try and match the exact tempo of an audio file or performance (say transferring tracks from an old portastudio cassette where the tempo fluctuates). And then I match it section by section with another tempo change point in the tempo map. So I build up laboriously on the tempo map till the tempo map fits the audio. It is the only way to get it accurate in my experience - worth doing if the performance is good. When you get into timestretching it can alter things - whereas a change in tempo points on the tempo map always keeps the midi in sync with the track. But I am old school (if such a thing exists in the world of midi).

A: Im not time stretching any audio. B. If I were, its only a reference track. so it doesnt matter anyway.

Also, studioone does that perfectly on its own, in a half a second. I dont know why you would do that by hand when the technology is there.

 

[woodrow swillson]

Ok, I got it figured it out! Created a test song. Dragged the Orion midi file in. cut the part with the slow tempo and dragged it to a new track. Under Musical Functions/stretch/ half tempo. resized the event, exported it. drug it into the song, and just aligned it to the part. Perfectly synced now. Well, as perfect as you can sync anything to Lars timing, anyway. It almost seems to learn. My first listen, I heard a few off beats, they seemed to have gone away...

Thanks.