I love Tap Tempo to set a tempo.
But it seems like the tempo is not taking an average over a group of taps, but rather re-calculates each tap.
Would it be possible for the tempo tap to take an average, within reason? I find this feature really, really helpful for some apps I use to calculate tempo. A fairly steady tap tends to result in a fixed tempo, rather than slightly changing with each tiny fluctuation of tap.
Nope, it does actually take a moving average, so the value is smoothed over several taps but does actually get updated each click.
Part of the problem with tap tempo is that the timestamps of the events from the keyboard or mouse can have a massive amount of jitter, which can lead to tempos that can fluctuate. The averaging out reduces that variation. On the flip-side though, increasing the length of the averaging means that it will lag more in terms of responding to you going at a different tempo. We tried to set a value that adapted quickly to changes in the tempo you entered, but didn’t fluctuate too much. It could well be the case though that factors unique to every machine may mean the experience is slightly different.
Tap Tempo is a really great feature. Thanks for implementing it.
Thanks for the explanation, Paul. It’s working well for me, for the record!
Out of interest, are you finding that it’s not updating quickly enough or that it’s fluctuating too much?
If I had to nitpick, I feel like it might fluctuate a bit much. I’m tapping a pretty steady tempo, but it still changes slightly. It’s not significant though.
Would jitter be any better if tapping on a midi keyboard note? (if that could be programatically added to Dorico of course?)
And while I’m commenting, it would be REALLY cool if I could import an audio file (via Video of course, doing that already) and then tap along with it through the whole piece to get Dorico to sync up the measures appropriately. I’ve tried using the timeline adjustments and it’s challenging to tweek it. I’ve seen the Video about doing it and I may be too simple minded but I’m just not getting the trick to that. Having the tap tempo do the work would be very nice! Maybe I just need to spend more time with the timeline.
Midi jitter would be lower, though really I don’t think it’s going to make a huge amount of difference. Despite the small fluctuations the tap tempo should give you a good idea.
Using tap tempo for setting up the tempo map is certainly something we’ll think about for the future.