Can we please send some AI resources to tempo detection? It’s embarrassingly bad and hasn’t improved in a decade.
Curiously I’ve not had such a bad experience. Perhaps your audio is to sparse, or the arrangement with extraneous articulations off-beat is driving tempo detection off mark?
I wouldn’t call it “embarrassingly bad” but I agree it could use some improvements. 
I separate drum percussion stems ( Spectralayers ) and run the tempo detection on the isolated track. It’s OK … but easily fooled!
Is there a better tool to create a tempo click track? Proper question, I dont know the answer.
Thanks
I just do it manually. First set musical mode of all tracks to OFF, make sure the event(s) (or rather the transients) starts on an actual first beat of a bar (if that is the case), and of course make sure that the meter is set properly, and then go into Warp Mode. Set the grid to 1 bar, and then, while in Warp Mode, move all the following barlines manually while looking at the transients or MIDI notes, to get a correct tempo map. If there are meter changes along the way, I just pencil them into the meter track. Then turn musical mode for all tracks ON again. Dom Sigalas explains this in a (Cubase) video somewhere.
I’ve tried automatic tempo detection sometimes, but I have found that it sort of works for parts of a song or musical sequence, but then some hiccup causes it to stray off the path. So I always end up doing it manually. I have pretty strong opinions on how I want my tempo map to be, so I wouldn’t really trust automatic detection anyway – at least for now.
I do it manually most of the time too. I’m a stickler for details. Still, I would like Steinberg to improve tempo detection, BUT considering the other things that I want them to spend resources on too, I don’t consider it a top priority. Also, how often do I need to construct a tempo map, compared to how often do I need some other feature that I want them to develop?
Just out of curiosity, could you describe in a bit more detail what isn’t working for you? What kind of content are you using the tempo detection on, and what would you expect it to deliver?
I don’ know if your question was aimed at the OP or me, but I can provide some details related to my workflow at least:
Whenever I need tempo detection or tempo mapping, this is often a result of a sketch for a piece of music, recorded in free time with no metronome. This would be a sketch recorded on an acoustic piano (WAV file), or straight into Nuendo on an instrument channel as MIDI. One single audio or MIDI track. I want to keep the slight variations in tempo captured in the freely recorded sketch, but I want to tempo map it so that I can continue working on the arrangement, and so that I also can make small adjustments to the tempo if the performance from the sketch was a bit rough in places.
My memory is failing a bit since it’s been some time since I’ve tried doing this with automatic tempo detection now. But I’ll try to recall what usually happens, as precisely as I can:
I select the event or events where I want to do the tempo detection, and perform the tempo detection from the tempo detection panel. In the resulting tempo track, I find that it often gets it right for the first half of the selected area, then at some place halfway through, there is often a “hiccup” where suddenly the detected tempo is way too high for 1 bar (or maybe only 1 beat?), and then it settles into some random other tempo which is now not in sync with the music anymore (at all).
Maybe this happens when I select multiple events (in a sequence, on a single track) before performing tempo detection? It can be that I’ve split up my (audio) sketch event a couple of places, to correct mistakes in the original performance – before performing the tempo detection. Maybe this confuses the tempo detection? But I’m not sure this is it, since I vaguely recall that it also happens when trying to detect the tempo from a single event (audio or MIDI). It’s usually OK for the first half but then some tempo track “hiccup” typically occurs halfway through.
Sorry for the not-so-precise description, and hope it can be of some help, if this is some kind of bug.
It’s no secret. We’d like to be able to accurately detect the tempo track for content with countless tempo changes, such as piano improvisation, which features expressive accelerations and dramatic decelerations that emphasize the emotion and define the mood of the composition. The current implementation makes it easier to manually detect all the changes.
Thank you for asking, Matthias. What the others have mentioned is great. IMO it needs to detect tempo on free-flowing instrumental music that doesn’t necessarily have strong regular drum/percussive elements, including solo guitar and piano pieces, even live jazz, improvisational performances, etc., and handle complex tempo changes over time, including slight/subtle tempo changes.
Basically I think a really good overhaul of the tempo detection algorithm is worth some effort. Just test more kinds of live recordings with it (from simple to complex) and you’ll see what I mean, and that there is a lot of room for improvement.
Is your source material Midi or audio?
audio
I think this is the area, where AI could be used..
Acoustic guitar performances are at least problematic, especially when there´s more than one with playing offbeats
On Nuendo 15.0.21
Trying to “Set Tempo from Event” and it states “No tempo change necessary!”
This is an audio event, a drum machine. 125.500 is the correct tempo.
Steps:
- Create a new empty project file.
- Create a new Tempo track.
- Import the 8 bar loop into the Pool.
- Drag audio file into the edit window, to the beginning of the project, 1.1.1.0.
- Select audio loop, and perform Audio / Hitpoints / Create Hitpoints.
- See the new Hitpoints in your audio loop.
- With audio loop selected, press P to have the in and out points conform to the loop length.
- Perform Audio / Advanced / Set Tempo From Event.
- Get message that “No tempo change necessary!”
- Go get more coffee, while cursing Wotan (Odin in Polish mythology).
Well, is this a bug?
What is going on?
The function works in the following way:
It compares the length of the selected audio event with the length duration of the locators. If both are the same it outputs the message that you describe.
You have to set the length duration of the locators to the amount of bars and beats you know the audio event has.
This is the inferior variant of what used to be the Beat Calculator in versions up to Nuendo 12. There you would simply enter the amount of beats in the Calculator’s dialog, locator positions were not used.
It seems those are all unnecessary steps. (As Johnny already pointed out)
See in the video:
- Import the file (file in video is 4 bars long)
- set the cycle-length to 4 bars
- Turn the event´s musical-mode off (this one is crucial as otherwise the event would confirm to the existing tempo)
- Then trigger the command Audio–> Advanced–> Set Tempo from Event
Done! Nuendo detected the correct tempo (128bpm)
Aaaaahhhhhh. Thank you so very much for this tip. I also miss Beat Calculator…
I’ll try it later today.
Thanks!
The reason I did extra steps is that eventually I was going to chop up that loop so I figured I should do that then.
I really don’t understand the removal of beat calculator…I really wonder what the reasoning was since it seems like such a simple function.
Ok, understood!