At first, I thought I would hack the thread about tap tempo Tristis just created, then I thought it could be a useful thread on its own. I’m wondering whether wise fellow Doricians have any advice or clue that could help me on a very similar matter than tap tempo. I’ve been recreating (copying, if you prefer) a whole vocal score (Tosca) so that any singer could have a reliable playback to learn his role — Puccini’s writing is very “easy” to listen to, but quite hard to learn for the singers, as they seldom have the melody, which is at the orchestra. The rhythms are especially tricky to learn — if you listen carefully to the discography, you’ll notice how often the notated rhythms are not respected. Hence the need for such a tool, in my opinion (a vocal score that does not mess with the rhythms written by such a great composer).
Here’s my problem: I find that the tools offered by Dorico to recreate a musical tempi management are really not optimized. I can input immediate tempi (and hide them) and gradual tempi (and hide them too, simply by deleting their text in the properties), but it’s extremely hard to “copy” a tempo from, say, a famous reference recording found on Youtube and attached to the flow. Keeping the Dorico score in sync with that reference is very complicated, and what’s more complicated is if you don’t want to mess with the appearance of the vocal score — sometimes gradual tempi are written with lines, but the real performance does not follow these lines, for instance the “a tempo” movement starts an 8th note before the marking, during the end of the rall. line. I can cope with it, using different appearances in write mode and engrave mode, or using system text to fake a tempo text.
What is not optimized is the way to create the tempo track, in an organic way. A good director can use gestures to make this happen very elegantly, organically, logically. The hands will first divide the bar in beats, and when needed, you see the beats’ subdivisions, they get slower… and you reach a new tempo where the subdivision becomes the new beat, and so on. In such a score, a tempo changes every two or three bars, it’s really flowing. And Dorico, as is, does not seem adapted to such a task.
I have no doubt that the devs will, in due time, provide us with a tempo track with better tools: gradual tempo changes don’t have to be lines, they can be curves, logarithmic, exponential…
I remember having talked about this with John Barron quite some time ago, I thought a good path for this could be to create a tempo track in Cubase (or any DAW) and import it into Dorico, but I have no clue whether it’s feasible and if it’s a good idea. Cubase is great to detect a tempo on a pop/rock track, but certainly not with “classical” music. And identifying every beat of a two-hours-long opera is not an easy task, especially with so many and such dynamic changes (sometimes, in the same bar, you have 400% changes !).
I was genuinely wondering whether there are motion sensors that can be recorded, and with which you can mimic a director’s hands work, so that you can recreate a decent tempo track. Because now, entering numerical values and correcting them by trial and error is nowhere near music and agogica.
If anyone has already done that, and would share his/her feelings, I’ll be happy to learn 
Bonjour,
Mon manque de connaissance en Anglais ne m’a pas permis de tout comprendre, mais
Je pense que le mieux pour le moment car Dorico ne supporte pas le MTC est de créer dans cubase un TapTempo enregisté en temps réel puis d’exporter en midifile.
Ouvrir ce fichier par drag and drop sur l’icône Dorico et ensuite sélectionner tous les points de Play → TIme et ensuite ouvrir votre projet dans lequel vous voulez appliquer ces tapTempo en faisant Ctrl-V sur le premier point, ce qui donne:
- Concernant votre idée de gestuel ( battre une mesure virtuellement), j’ai déjà vu un truc de gestuel qui agit sur des paramètre avec le programme cyclin74 Max/Msp , mais si le plgin n’existe pas, il faut mettre les mains dans la programmation de ce programme. Mais de toute manière dorico ne comprends pas encore le MTC
J’espère que je ne suis pas trop à côté de ce que vous cherchez.
Salutations
Merci ! Je pense que cette piste avec Cubase (ou un autre DAW) est effectivement la plus accessible actuellement. Je tâcherai de m’y essayer sur des passages plus court qu’un acte entier pour voir dans quelle mesure c’est un workflow possible.
En tout cas, ça répond parfaitement à la demande de @tristis aussi 
Bonjour
J’ai encore une autre idée, peut-être plus rapide que j’utilise assez souvent avec Cubase aussi.
Je vous envoie des print-screen en fin de journée car je ne suis pas chez moi
The best way to do this at the moment for me is to record in a scratch piano track into a DAW, then use Melodyne to auto-detect tempo and create a tempo map, which can be exported to Dorico.
This is very clever, Dan. I didn’t realize melodyne even did this. I have the full version but have never messed around with this.
@MarcLarcher
En fait, voici la méthode que j’utilise pour créer des tempo track dans Cubase quand je veux faire un arrangement sur une partie audio jouée librement, ou pédagogiquement pour par exemple aider quelqu’un à compter des mesures en jouant sur un “backing track”. Je le fais manuellement et ajoute des points de tempo seulement quand nécessaire.
J’utilise l’outil wrap Grip ( musical events follow)
Méthode de création des points:
Voici un autre exemple que j’utilise pour des cours d’expression et d’interprétation pour mes élèves de piano et expliquer pour le cas qui nous intéresse la liberté de changer le tempo (ici très libre) pour donner de l’expression: Chopin Mazurka op.67 Nr2 version de Youtube Alexej Gorlatch
Après création de tempo track dans Cubase et import dans Dorico
Voici à l’audition, superposition de l’ original + piano midi joué par Dorico + piste midi triggaunt ma voix échantillonnée …pour vous faire une idée :
L’avantage de cette méthode par rapport au tap tempo en direct est pour de la musique dont les tempis varient beaucoup: c’est vraiment difficile d’anticiper un ralenti, etc… sans écouter plusieurs fois, en temps réel
J’avais envoyé le fichier audio à une personne possédant melodyne pour qu’il me renvoie la piste midi générée par ce soft: mais est-ce que c’était une ancienne version, cela ne m’a pas convaincu du tout?!!
Je ne sais pas exactement comment vous voulez utiliser ensuite le résultat pour donner aux personnes qui veulent apprendre: vidéo,…?
Salutations
Au moins avec un exemple come celui-ci, je crois que c’est un peu trop difficile pour une programme numérique. Cette performance était vraiment “humaine” et variable. Peut être je me trompe, mais je n’y crois pas.
@Romanos
I think we misunderstood: the mp3 above:
- Human audio extract Chopin: Mazurka Op. 67 No. 2 - Alexej Gorlatch found on YouTube
- And Audio from midi track vsti piano
- And midi track with sampled voice count
like in this picture
It was to illustrate a tempo track quickly built (only beat) with Cubase before to export to Dorico: especially for the purpose of visual synchronization had I understood?!
Here only original human piano with visual vsti piano drived with midi and a tempo track:
I’ve been exploring the Cubase solution and actually, I have a very good tempo track in Cubase. And I’ve been wasting sooooo much time trying to import it in Dorico. I tried to export the MIDI file from Cubase and import it back in Dorico, but so far with no luck. I also tried to import the Tempo track (from that same MIDI export), it simply erases every tempo marking I had on my score. Can anyone tell me what the workflow is, I’ve searched the forum for hours with no luck so far…
Hello Marc,
this is how i did it
1.Drag the midifile (A file)exported from Cubase to Dorico icon to open it and open go to Play → TIme to see the point
2. Open your dorico file(B file) where you want to put the new tempo and go to play → time to see the points
Now you have your two files open A and B
3.fall over (basculer dans le fichier A) in file A and select the points you want to copy : Ctrl C
4.Fall (basculer dans le fichier B) in file B and place the cursor (ligne verte verticale) where you want to copy the points and paste them ctrl V
Hope it works for you ( you really have to place the cursor to the right position to paste at the right place) sinon ils vont ailleurs
Un gif:
The problem I run into is that I cannot export anything useful out of Cubase… While the midi I imported from Dorico was perfect! I can’t understand why it just does not work. I do File>Export>MIDI file. Everything is ticked (in Preferences>MIDI>Export)
That file in Dorico has one bar. The original file has 542 bars.
What kind of track do you have in cubase? Only the audio track?
Create an midi track
I remember that the first time I created the tempo track with only audio and save it as midi , the file was 1ko
I have imported my Dorico file as a midi file, added an audio track as the reference to create the tempo track, and a tempo track.
And I export a MIDI file, so I expected everything that’s MIDI to be exported. But… no.
Bizarre!
1.Vous avez exporter en midi depuis Dorico
2 importé ce fichier midi dans cubase, ajouté la piste audio, créé une tempo track et sauvegardé le tout en midi file
3. Draggué ce nouveau fichier midi sur l’icône Dorico et une fois ouvert il n’y a rien?
Vraiment bizarre et énervant!
Si c’est bien ça, je vous envoie demain une autre question… mais ça va marcher!!
Wow, really informative thread! It hadn’t occurred to me to do this before. I’ve been trying to follow along, but have been pretty unsuccessful with attempts to do this so far, LOL. @dan_kreider, which version of Melodyne are you using for this? I just have Melodyne Essential 5 (I think it came free with something) so am curious if it’s worth upgrading. I was at a record date a week ago where the pianist kept messing up a really hard exposed part and the engineer just miraculously fixed it in Pro Tools by changing some notes with Melodyne. I haven’t experimented with any level of Melodyne much, but was amazed with its capability in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing with it. I’m also using Pro Tools for a DAW. Has anyone tried doing this with Pro Tools using Beat Detective (or Melodyne) instead of Cubase? Just curious about other workflows.
I have Melodyne Editor. Melodyne is basically magic, wizardry, alchemy, etc. Really incredible stuff.
I worked my way all the way up to ‘studio’ because I’ve found it so useful in my mock-up work. It is amazing.
Success! Many user mistakes in Cubase (and I was just thinking about all these people that find Dorico not intuitive…ahem… — I have a lot of work to be fluent with THAT huge software), but I ended up importing my MIDI tempo track in Dorico. This whole experience makes me realize things are bound to be much better once the play mode is finished in Dorico, especially with the edition of tempo track directly in Dorico. Importing a tempo track involves deleting all prior tempi markings, which is not really what I want to do.
Great: you have finally succeeded!
But you say:
If you look closely at my gif, my tempo marks are inserted and everything before and after is maintained