Detect tempo - needing help please?

Cubase
1

I’ve scoured through the manual but can’t seem to get this right, here is my problem…

I have an acoustic guitar part recorded very well, tight but obviously with expected human tempo fluctuations.

I click on detect tempo which it does, then I must divide by 2. OK so far. Now I want to import drum midi part from superior drummer. But when I bring these theyre just out of time. Is there something I’m missing? Do i need to put the tracks in musical mode so they follow the tempo? Doesnt seem to help

Hope to hear thanks
Al

p.s. if there is a good video demo of how to achieve this I’d love to see it?

2

I click on detect tempo which it does, then I must divide by 2. OK so far.

Just to clarify the OK so far. If you switch on the metronome click it is in time with your track & counting a 4/4 beat as you’d expect?
& if you look at your waveforms as you play do they start on the first beat of a bar & each bar line falls where you would expect?


Putting the tracks in musical mode is not necessary if you want the midi to follow the audio…once the tempo is mapped & tempo track switched on you should be able to import midi to line up with the recording.

3

Look up “Merge Tempo From Tapping”. You tap along on a new midi track which will establish the tempo (and fluctuations if they’re not too extreme) track once “Merge Tempo…” has been activated. It is important to then delete this midi track once it has done it’s job and you will find that any midi tracks created thereafter will follow the wobbly Audio.
If you like the look of it I’d recommend a couple of goes at it if it doesn’t work straight away. But it is fairly simple to use.

4

This was the way to do it before the Tempo Detection feature. Yes, you can tap along into a midi track to make your tempo map, but Tempo Detection does this for you. If you choose the Merge Tempo feature, don’t worry about Detect Tempo. They achieve the same result: a tempo map.

I think what you need to do is once you’re happy with how the detection took place, that is, each 1/1 bar is a beat of your guitar track, change the time signature to 4/4.

I imagine any imported midi track should line up, but you may have to quantize the parts. And since every single beat is a bit different in timing, you’re going to need to quantize the SD parts as you move them around. Because, each time you move the part, the timing will be different.

Say you were to import a midi part into measures 1 through 4. Now, you want to use it for measures 5-8. Well, measure 1 will certainly be different in timing than measure 5. And, measure 2 will be different than measure 6, and so on. You’ll need to quantize the clip each place you lay it on the timeline.

I would suggest though, that once you have your tempo map complete, you use the Set Definition from Tempo (pg 476) to straighten the guitar part to a fixed tempo. Laying in midi parts and tempo sync’d effects will function more consistently this way. Try using a tempo sync’d delay on a variable tempo part…

I believe though, that if you “Set Definition”, once you are happy with the way the SD midi parts align, you can switch back to the tempo track and you’re variable timing should still be available…I think. I haven’t done this myself.

My use of Tempo Detection is bringing in an existing song, create the tempo map, and “Set Definition”, then turn of the tempo track to align the imported audio to a fixed tempo. Works great! Ok, sometimes you need to do a little jiggery-pokery to get the feature to work…

5

This is all really useful and helpful, especially Egelmett comments.

I’m going to give this a try tomorrow, right now Im in from a gig and zonked! I think it should work though.

Cheers everyone

Al

6

Thanks. I suggested that because I thought the OP would find it quicker and simpler until he found his way around to your method. Tempo detection is quicker in some cases after a little practise with it but you do need sharp transients from the drums, say. I find a couple of minutes of tapping mostly easier because my ears can get the transients in busy material whereas the Tempo Detection may miss a few points.