Problem with Dorico importing tempo track from midi file

Dorico
#1

I have almost finished a score of a track I recorded in Studio One 4 (about 5mins long). There is a ritardando at the end with numerous tempo changes (I tend to draw these in to simulate a held pause, followed by an ‘a tempo’ and then another ritardando), so I thought I would try to import the tempo track data to try to copy what we already had.

I exported the midi file from Studio One as .mid(about 650Kb) and have tried importing it into my project (which uses about 10Gb of 64Gb available memory). My computer had a heart attack (CPU at 100%, the memory climbed steadily 60Gb of 64Gb). I closed the project and opened the file as an empty project. Again CPU went 100% with the memory climbing eventually to maximum before coming down and then rising again. I’m not sure what the computer is trying to do. Dorico window is at 60% but it’s been about seven minutes now. Task Manager hasn’t said Dorico has crashed but what is it doing? It could probably crunch BitCoins with the amount of processing that going on. I’m just trying to get a handle on what is possible. I wouldn’t have thought a midi file would have been a problem to a computer these days.

#2

Do you have any Timecode/MIDI markers in the project? We’ve had cases of users who have timecode markers several hours into the score, and Dorico will try to create the thousands of extra bars up to that point.

#3

I have normal Studio One 4 markers, but no timecode markers …I wouldn’t even know where to find them in Studio One 4. I’m going to recap what Dorico itself will do. I remember writing a piece to a film I made when Dorico 2 came out, and I seem to remember altering tempi to fit the film. Can you record tap a tempo map into Dorico? Like a conductor track? That I find is the most intuitive way of entering tempi changes, as if you’re conducting the music. I’ll have to look at the ‘humanise’ or feel as well that it may offer as I’ve forgotten.

#4

I’ve just noticed that you said the MIDI file is 650Kb - although that doesn’t sound like a lot, in MIDI terms that’s pretty huge - about 2 million events (notes + controllers). I might expect that for a long orchestral score with many tracks or with tonnes of automation, but I would check that the MIDI file has the contents that you would expect. Try importing it back into Studio One and see if it seems sensible.

Dorico doesn’t have a tap tempo track yet, but if you can record one in Studio one then you can import the tempo track into Dorico without losing any notes.

#5

To put that number in some sort of context, the biggest (and unperformed!) scores by Sorabji have less than 1 million noteheads - and that’s for a 5-hour-long work for huge orchestra and chorus with 80-90 staves in the condensed full score.

#6

[strokes chin] excellent… :wink: :wink:

#7

I wonder if it’s exported all the controller information then on each track, as each track will probably have at least one, but usually two to interpret expression and dynamic…I thought it was struggling. There are probably 30 or so tracks.

#8

You could try this: Make a backup copy of your Studio One track and remove all midi data and all tracks but one. Make a region (clip) from start to end and insert just one midi note that starts exactly at the beginning of your track and ends at the very end.
Midi file export works only on parts with notes so it’s important to have a note over the whole track but without all other midi information. I do it that way from Logic to Dorico and it works well.

#9

Thanks Saxer …great minds think alike.
I just did that. I deleted everything from the project except the top flute part. It only has a handful of notes throughout. I deleted all the markers but Studio One has a Start and End marker that I don’t think you can delete. I set these to the top and end of the midi track.
The file now is 2.5Kb not 650Kb.
So I tried importing it to my Dorico project. Have I got this right? You just select File \ Import \ Tempo Track, then locate the midi file from your directory? I can’t check this as it’s crashed my computer again and needs resetting.
I then tried making a blank project from the ‘string ensemble’ template. I put the time sig of 12/8 in and made 60 bars. I then went to import the tempo track from the midi file and again it’s crashed the comp. I’m going to try do what you suggested, just one long note.
I’ve attached the midi file.
Thanks
Al
Ave Maria NEW MIDI.zip (1.12 KB)

#10

Ave Maria single note track.zip (1.16 KB)
Just tried again but using Saxer’s advice. So everything has been deleted from the Studio One project. I created one midi track with a single note spanning the 5mins of the piece. The only markers were the Start and End which can’t be deleted. The tempo track varies just near the end. It’s in 12/8 with 48Khz sample rate and 24 bit (though I wouldn’t have thought any audio info is included in a midi file …).
If anyone has a moment, can you see if it will open in Dorico.
I just selected the ‘Open other’ on the Hub and it gets to 60% and after five minutes hasn’t opened.
Thanks
Al

#11

Dorico was hanging here too. Both: importing the tempo track or importing your complete midi file into an empty Dorico project. With the midi import there was a progress bar hanging at 72%.
I could open the midi file in Logic and see the one midi note region and the tempo curves. I exported this region als a midi file from Logic and could import the tempo track from there. It looks like a lot of tempo events at the end (probably from drawing a curve?). But there are a lot of tempo events at the very beginning. Don’t know what happened there. I attached the Dorico project and the midi file I exported from Logic. Hope that helps.
TempoTrack.zip (440 KB)

#12

I didn’t try opening it in Dorico, but it looks very strange.

The “system track” starts with about 100 tempo changes that look sensible. That is what is in Saxer’s file.

Then there are three HUGE time spans between isolated events. Unless I’m misinterpreting something, each one is several million quarter-notes long.

And finally, there are about 150 tempo changes all at exactly the same time point. So even if the file isn’t a few million bars long, the data at the end of the system track doesn’t make any sense.

After the tempo track there are 15 more tracks. The first one is labeled “FLUTE 1” with a couple of notes. The others have labels that are mostly percussion instruments, and don’t contain anything except a SYSEX message.

Just before the huge gaps, there is a marker that contains the text “End” - but so far as the MIDI file format is concerned, that doesn’t have any semantic significance.

#13

Thanks for that Rob and Saxer. I’ll try using the file you provided.

You’ve just made me realise how accustomed we are to thinking all things are going to work. As a short aside, my studio at the moment is a ‘gluttony’ of equipment as I’m one of the older guys possibly here that came up through hardware. About three years ago, I thought I really had better try harder, so bought a secondhand HPZ800 computer simply because I could stuff it with RAM in order to play back some sample libraries. It worked well for a time, but then had problems booting with the all SSD setup I’d put in there. So I reverted back to hard drives. There was a period then, when I wasn’t in the studio and on returning, maybe six months later, had all kinds of problems with clicks and pops and had simply forget that I’d put hard drives back in there. After days of trouble-shooting, I couldn’t solve it, so decided to go back to hardware. So consequently I have a setup on one side of the studio that looks like it belongs in 1997 (Soundcraft Studio Auto desk, Fostex G24S, Fostex D2424LV, AKAI S6000, Yamaha QY700) and on the other side 2018 (Presonus Studiolive Series 3 console / PC , Nektar P6, four monitors). I mention this simply because back in the day, if I needed a tempo change, I’d insert one, two, maybe ten at the most tempo changes to get what I needed. A rallentando from BPM112 down to 100, 86, 76, 60, 45 would just about do it. But as Saxer says, I did draw in the tempo curve without thinking of the ramifications of doing it.

I’ve just been playing catch for the last week or two with what’s possible with Dorico. I caught the two Alan Silvestri films and watched a couple of round table events, but apart from Anthony Hughes and John Barron Dorico tutorials, does anybody know of anything else online that shows a full Dorico project in session as it were? The Dorico tutorials are great, but what I want to hear and get to grips with, is whether it’s possible for Dorico not only to produce great looking music that you could just hand over to live musicians, but a score that plays back sufficiently well enough to get a 95% idea of what the resulting composition will sound like.

#14

My guess would be that somehow, Studio One doesn’t know where your MIDI is supposed to end, and it “ran off the end” of the real data. The huge time increments might be some kind of bug where the computer arithmetic overflowed the maximum value it could process.

The MIDI file is perfectly “valid” (but not what you expected) so when Dorico read the data which says “1,000,000 beats at constant tempo, then a tempo change, then another 1,000,000 beats, then a time signature change, then another 1,000,000 beats, then a bunch of tempo changes at the end of the track” it was just trying to do what it was told to do.

#15

Just had a chance to experiment.
So I deleted all data and made a new midi track as per Saxer advice.
I saved it as a midi file then opened it up in Studio One and as Rob said, there was a track there that started some way down the timeline. I’ve no idea what this was. It wasn’t part of my track, and what’s funny is that I deleted all the tracks, so I’ve no idea what it was but it did extend past 29 hours so couldn’t have been any SMPTE either (doesn’t SMPTE only go to 24 hours?).

What was interesting from this import was that Studio One placed a tempo at a certain interval. This piece is in 12/8 and 80BPM. The imported midi track placed a tempo marker about 17-18 times per bar (repeating the 80BPM instruction effectively as the tempo only changes in the penultimate bar from the end). It then had the tempo changes as instructed.

Since recording and scoring are two different things, I often start my ‘recordings’ from either bar 3 or 5 depending on tempo. This piece has a blank until bar 3. There doesn’t seem to be a way of moving the tempo track data other than highlighting the data you want,copying and pasting to the new cursor position. This I did to effectively move the data back two bars, so that when it is imported to Dorico, it will take account of Dorico starting at bar 1.
I then named this file ‘Ave Maria TT (tempo track) edited TWICE’, saved it,closed Studio One and then opened it up again and selected the midi file I had just saved. It now opened up as it should with no extra tracks and with the tempo track in the ‘Dorico’ position.
My conclusion to this part, is that maybe while assembling the original song in Studio One, a ‘bug’ crept into the song. The template that I’ve assembled is large (22Gb). I have 64Gb RAM but the PC is dual Xeon 5560, which are now about 8 or 9 years old. The template is large because I’ve setup 'Fluffy Audio’s ‘Dominus’ choir as SATB with a separate Kontakt instance for each voice. This allows more contrapuntal writing. I will setup just an orchestral template minus Dominus which the PC should handle better.
I’m now going to try import this new midi file into Dorico and see what happens.

#16

That was interesting.
The new midi file eventually imported to the piece. After taking my PC up to the stratosphere (100% CPU) after about three minutes it returned a score full of tempo insertions such as 80.001, hundreds of these then 80.002 etc). I had deleted all tempo markings in Studio One 4 between the initial one of BPM80 at bar 1 and then when the music changes at bar 59. The one at bar 59 was shown as 80 on my Studio One marker line so I don’t know why it tried to interpolate values in between.

Also, what is so special about bar 23744 in 12/8 time? That’s what the tempo track has done to my score. I think I better delete these bars first. (Read the next couple of sentences as I had a crash beofre realising this)

Anyhow, so I set about deleting these values. Deleting one was ok, deleting 10 ok, so I tried deleting them between bar 2 and bar 40 …Wooaooogh! Crash. I’ve re-opened it and they’re all back. Deleting a bar at a time takes the CPU up to 40%. This is a game of Russian Roulette because it depends on how busy the score is. Now I decide to delete those extra 26670 extra bars. That makes deleting the tempo markers easier.
The score now looks better but I need to re-boot as my audio driver dropped (Fun and games…).

#17

Ok, re-booted and it all plays back fine.
I’ve worked on this track for about three weeks now since first starting it in Studio One, so I know it well. It may be me…but BPM of 80 in Dorico sounds slightly slower than BPM of 80 in Studio One? I have been starting new projects these days at 48Khz simply because most music these days in one way or another ends up either in file format or within video. The sampling rate of 44.1 was always designed for 16bit delivery to CD formats (if my understanding of these matters is correct). But BPM is BPM isn’t it. The sampling rate should only affect audio where time-stretching isn’t available. But the Dorico version at 80BPM seems much more sedate. I guess I could time the two …which I’m doing right now.