I have a bunch of old 4-track recordings archived into Cubase. None of which were done to a click. They all tend to fluctuate quite a bit when using Tempo Detection.
The artist would like to redo do these songs in the studio. To prep, I thought it would speed things up if I could create song templates and guide tracks for each song with the following information matching the originals:
-Simple Bass Track (using Root notes extracted from original guitar audio tracks)
-Fixed Tempos (Quantize extracted bass to artist’s defined tempo)
-Retain songs structure with markers and # of measures
Any guidance on extracting the root notes from audio files to drop into a midi bass instrument track? This seems to be the step I most struggle with. Maybe I am going about this all wrong? Thx.
My inclination in general (as opposed to this specific question) would be to use the Time Warp tool, as shown in the video embedded above, to create a tempo map, then do “whatever”, for example if you want to smooth out the tempo variations or change the tempo altogether. (The “whatever” will vary depending on your source materials, types of tracks – MIDI versus audio – and so on.)
As for extracting notes from an audio track, if you have a separate bass audio track, you could try using VariAudio to map the notes then the extract MIDI to get the notes into a MIDI track. That may involve a fair bit of editing to cleanup (at least it did when trying to do it with a vocal when I was trying to get MIDI for Omnivocal to use in doubling my background vocals), but maybe it’s a starting point.
If you don’t have the bass track by itself, the VariAudio idea won’t work since it only deals with monophonic audio as far as I know. You could maybe use the high-end version of Melodyne in polyphonic mode to get MIDI out of a mixed recording, then manually edit the MIDI to just get the bass part from that. Probably more work than it’s worth, though, and, if you don’t already have the high-end version of Melodyne, also an expensive proposition…
I tried the “Dom” thing. He makes it look so easy :). For me, it is slow and tedious.
My original thought was if I could get the root notes to midi then quantizing would be easy. Then the artist could play along to it as sort of a better click.
I do have Melodyne Studio. I’ll play with it in the AM. The problem so fair is I am getting tons of midi notes, missing notes, false notes, etc., that editing is nightmarish.
Unless a solution comes along, I’ll end up having the artist play to a click and then tighten it up if needed doing the Dom thing. Would be nice to get the structure and bass from the originals.
The Time Warp tool can be slow and tedious, though, it depends on how much the tempo drifts. For example, if it is reasonably steady within each 8-bar section, you could just have to make an alignment move every 8 bars. For my main use (recording a MIDI piano track without a metronome as I want to capture the natural feel of how I play and sing the song, at least as a starting point), I’m mostly aligning every measure, only going finer than that if there is a notable slowdown or speedup somewhere in between, such as in a transition between sections. It still goes pretty quickly for a 3-4 minute song (at least once I got used to it).
Yeah, I can imagine that. I’ve only tried rendering MIDI from Melodyne Studio once or twice, and it wasn’t very useful. Celemony has lots of Melodyne tutorial videos that can give tips for cleaning up note detection, but I imagine that would be pretty nightmarish to get anything clean/accurate out of it.
Another idea that just came to mind: What about using SpectraLayers Pro to extract the bass, then either using that directly (i.e. as audio) or trying Vari-Audio or Melodyne to extract MIDI from it? I’ve had pretty mixed results in terms of SpectraLayers’ accuracy in terms of part extraction with some instruments, but I think it usually gets pretty close on drums and bass. Or maybe the stems separation component of Cubase Pro 15, for that matter (and if you don’t have the Pro version of SpectraLayers)?
I practiced on a couple songs just doing tempo tightening. I got better and faster as I went a long. (Dom is still a Cubase Wizard). I’ll do this more with real productions in the future but I think I am out of luck with the bass extract.
For this project the artist has a lot of old 4 track songs, mostly just guitars and vocals. He wants to do full productions.
I thought it would be a time saver to chart out the measures, tempos, keys, etc using tools and have a basic bass line to play to. Instead, I’ll leave that on the artist’s plate :).
