I have drum tracks that are in a project where the drums are the last thing to be recorded. The project has an erratic tempo - it increases in speed quite rapidly and then the speed increase eases a bit. The drumming is a bit off at points because of it. I imagined the advanced drum editing in Cubase 6 would help me out but if I create slices from hitpoints within the tracks then the slices don’t retain the tempo change. There’s no way to do it is there?
You’ll need to create a tempo map first. Then the tempo changes follow the audio & you can drum edit & quantise within that.
Great, thanks a lot.
Be careful…do some research on different ways to tempo map as if your drums are significantly out then you don’t want to use those for the tempo detection…you can manually create a map & then run the click & tweak the tabs till it’s right or you can tap along & use that as your guide.
Often it’s better to have a tempo change only at the start of each 2 or 4 bars…this way your drums get more evened out. The automatic detect tempo creates a tab at every beat so quantise won’t do anything to pull it more in time.
I don’t think that I need to make a tempo map, at least I don’t have to detect the tempo - I have a tempo track.
It’s just that when I create hitpoints from slices it treates the resultant track as though it had a fixed tempo (I guess based on the playback position at the time of processing but I haven’t checked) so the slices are completely out of time with the rest of the song.
I actually edited all the drum tracks and did the slicing manually, basing it on a guide artificial, MIDI track, and it works fine. Would be good to know if I could automate the process if needed in the future…
Would be good to know if I could automate the process if needed in the future…
Let’s approach this from another angle.
Switch on the metronome click. Not your midi one…the Cubase built in metronome in the transport panel.
Do the song & the click stay together or does the song vary while the click stays regular??
The keyboards fit with it, after all they are midi. Recorded next are guitars, bass and vocals - they all fit fine. Lastly the drums were recorded in a studio, one of a half dozen songs recorded in the session. Unfortunately they do not fit with it. Or rather they didn’t until I manually sliced and realigned them (lining them up with a midi guide.)
If I made hitpoints and then sliced them they did not line up with the tempo track. So, what I was wanting to know if it would ever be needed in the future, can slicing a drum track fit with a dynamic tempo track and not end up being out of time with everything because cubase gives it a linear tempo?
Thanks for your help!
So, yes, everything fits with the metronome click except the original drum tracks (before they were sliced, manually…)
OK so your tempo map follows the song…your description of erratic timing made it sound like it was a live recording not to any click but you actually set up an erratic metronome click first & then played along to it…correct??
So if the answer to that was yes, the drum editing slice & quantise should pull the drums onto the grid…you are doing this by putting all drums into a folder & using the folder group edit…then setting hitpoints in the sample editor & then opening the quantise panel to slice quantise & crossfade?