Composer Workflow Question - Start Composing Tempo Free

Cubase
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1

What is the best way to start composing tempo free and then find the closest static tempo to the MIDI played, so I could go on with other instruments in sync?

2

I’m sort of exploring this myself right now as well

For MIDI check out
‘Create Groove Quantize Preset’

‘Merge Tempo From MIDI Tapping’

for audio
‘Set Tempo From Event’

note if working with MIDI, you could render it to audio to use ‘Set Tempo From Event’ if you prefer its result.

go to youtube, search ‘Greg Ondo’ with those terms, pretty sure something will come up for you… if not, a Cubase YouTuber probably will.

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3

Unfortunately, after playing a relatively simple rhythm with one drum “Create Groove Quantize Preset” give me a very weird result.
“Create Groove Quantize Preset” is also not quite what I’m looking for.
Rendering it to audio kinda works, but I believe there should be something more time efficient.

Ideally, there could be some option or a plugin which would count the average BPM of the audio event it receives. For now, after an improvisation was recorded, setting the track’s timebase to liner and matching its tempo with a simple tap-tempo works best for me.

But still wondering what the workflow is for others!

4

You might want to strip down the MIDI to single notes of which you consider to be the “beats” or “pulses” of the composition, sometimes less information = better result. ie duplicate the MIDI performance track, strip it down, and then use Merge From MIDI Tapping, or render to audio and Set Tempo From Event.

Create Groove Quantize preset is more for steady performance that has timing variation, people use it for example, old drum machines that have that imperfect timing jitter. it could be used for human performance as well. I would potentially only use it once in a while, like in certain sections or even single bars of the composition if that makes sense, and then turn it off.

Merge Tempo From MIDI Mapping is useful, create a MIDI track not even connected to anything… record you tapping on a drum beat of what you want the compositional pulses and tempo changes to be (or what they already are based off a performance) and then use that feature.

You may want to change the tempo track/nodes to ramp instead of step.

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5

The other way you can do,

Render the audio.

Double click/press enter with that audio selected to open the audio edit. You’ll see Hitpoints in the left zone, open that menu.

create and edit the hitpoints to what you want, there are “AI” controls, get it close to what you want, then manually edit the rest/clean up.

Then you can create ‘Create Groove’ or ‘Create MIDI Notes’

6

Nice tips! Thank you

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7

There’s a way…
71q2dv

It’s never going to come out completely perfect, you’ll likely have to do a bit of clean up and tempo editing. It can’t be toooo easy.

Note, you can mix Ramp and Step by selecting tempo nodes and manually changing them in the info line. Sometimes step is better, ie, in a break just immediately changing to what the next parts tempo is rather than ramping to it.