How well is tempo detection working for you?

Cubase
1

I’ve had occasion to need it the past few weeks. I’ve tried drum parts, also acoustic guitar (both picking and chord strumming) and even bass.

I usually write in 4/4. Typically what happens is that I get a ton of fine grained tempo changes but the time signature set to 1/4. I then often need to divide or multiply, although if memory serves I can only divide by 2 once and then the option is grayed out. More often than not, I don’t end up with a usable tempo track.

I think the concept is very cool, and I’d love to try some free form acoustic songs and map the tempo to them so I can let the feel of the song dictate rather than be a slave to the click track (or have to write out tempo changes beforehand). I was wondering if others have had better luck, and what suggestions you have that might improve my results.

2

You can ad a 4/4 signature with the pecil tool. Also if you have recorded multiple tracks already, you could render a mix and analize that. You could create an audio countof at the start of the song and include that in the render. What works for me sometimes: recording a fake click (midi cowbell) in parts where the tempo gets lost or is unclear.

3

I second the use of the fake click. in a recent particularly project, Cubase struggled to detect the tempo as there were indistinct rhythmic elements (muddiness and many anticipated beats). I freeform recorded a cowbell for the whole piece, which improved the tempo detection.

4

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the thoughts. Adding a 4/4 afterwards is what I’ve been doing, so glad to see I’m thinking in the right direction there.

That said, when you have to resort to manual cowbells it’s probably a good indication that the feature is not terribly reliable, which is what I was trying to get a feel for.

5

cubases tempo detections struggles in many occasions, 2 years ago i demoed other DAW and it detected much better and accurately.cubendo needs updated algorithm for this.
some times when it detects a part of the audio, i will cut the event where it left’ run detect tempo again on that cut event and do it until it is accomplished on the all event.
anyway,when it cant do the job i do it manually, with the time warp tool,or the"merge tempo from tapping" function from the midi menu.

it possible to use the tools that comes with the tempo detection also to help it when it can’t detect correctly the beat,like at this video,where he moves the warp grid to the beat