I’m not sure if this something easily done, or possible in Cubase 15 Pro.
Basically, if I record a i.e. Piano MIDI Performance into a track in Cubase 15 Pro. without using a reference click. playing Rubato (fluctuating tempo) as I perform the midi track. Is it possible to create a Midi-Map based on the Midi Performance at a specific TIme Signature, without having to convert the midi performance to Audio ?
If this is not possible in Cubase 15 Pro, It would be great if this can be one of the new features available in Cubase 16 Pro.
Yes, first change the track type to time instead of musical so that the timing of your track will be preserved independent of what you do in moving where measures and beats around. Then set the starting tempo to the best approximation you can get of what the average tempo might be. (This isn’t strictly necessary, but will result in fewer mouse acrobatics needs when you start moving things around.) Then use the time warp tool to move measure boundaries, beat boundaries, finer sub-beat boundaries around as needed to line up with where they should occur to map to the MIDI you’ve played. How much work is needed here will depend heavily on how constant your playing tempo was. It could be anything from every so many measures for a stretch that is pretty constant in tempo to on beats and sub-beats when you have a speedup or slowdown. And, if it is drifting all over the place, but semi-constant within an area, it might be something like every measure with a few beat boundaries here and there.
Once you’ve done all this, you can change the track back to musical mode. Then, if you want to edit the tempo map (e.g. to smoothen it where you really do want a constant tempo), the notes will shift with the tempo map.
I often do something like this in starting my productions that I’ll eventually want to be a constant tempo, maybe with a few variations here and there, for the simple reason that it helps me figure out the tempo, because I can sing and play it where it feels comfortable (I only track the piano part, but being able to do it while singing gets me a comfortable tempo), versus trying to guess at the right tempo when not actually playing and singing at the same time.
I’d be surprised in that, short of some kind of AI that attempts to deduce meaning from what you played, including aspects like if you’re pushing or pulling the beat, time signature changes, when notes don’t hit exactly together (pretty typical for piano playing) which one should be used to define where it lands on the measure (or finer) grid, etc., this really comes down to your interpretation of how you want the grid to line up with what you played.
While it is somewhat tedious to do this, especially if timing varied a lot over the course of playing (which mine often does), it also goes pretty quickly once you get the hang of it. I’ll typically do a measure at a time, only moving points in between measures if the timing varied significantly within that measure. Of course, in my case, the freely played piano part is really just a starting point and won’t end up in the actual recording (I’ll play that later, after having smoothed out the tempo map and added drums and such), so it doesn’t have to be terribly exact.
Musical Mode, Musical Time Base … I have no idea how those two entirely different tools/concepts were allowed to be so confusingly named almost identically before release … but nevertheless, gotta keep them straight when communicating!
