Tempo correction on an acoustic guitar track

Cubase
1

Has anyone had luck locking an acoustic guitar track to a click track. The artist just couldn’t stay in time while tracking, so I had her record a verse and chorus until we got the closest one, then the same with the bridge, alternate chorus and outro and I pieced together a track. There are still some fluctuations and I need to add another acoustic guitar, bass and some percussion and a mandolin.

I’ve tried tracking my other instruments using the click and with her guitar still in there it’s difficult. Any suggestions on the best way to handle this other than having her re-track which I think will be an act of futility. I know this is done with drums but I have never tried anything like a guitar…

Any suggestions on the best way to correct this? Thanks in advance

2

Are you wanting to tie all the new bits to be recording to her take on the timing or do you wish to force her’s into a more regular timing?

3

I need to correct her timing, my other parts are in time with the click track. When played back with her track muted the other tracks are in time

4

That is a tough thing to do with an acoustic instrument. Better always to re-record the part til it is played well.

You can just cut, slip and crossfade simple timing issues but there is likely no way to get Cubase to do it automatically. That is hit or miss even with percussion instruments that have a defined attack.

If the take has fluidity but out of time, manually move it in time.

By the way, once you slice an event, hold ‘ctrl+alt’ to slip edit the event left or right with mouse. This is IMO the best way to do minor timing adjustments. Just make sure to crossfade the slices.

5

Have you tried the AudioWarp Quantize? It might work

6

One would still have to define the hitpoints manually. Cubase can’t guess what an instrument is supposed to play.

In my experience using Audio Warp Quantize is pretty much useless for anything that isn’t almost perfect to begin with. Especially for anything other than a percussive instrument.

I could be wrong but I don’t see this getting fixed without manually editing or re-tracking.

Posting a sample could be helpful to understand the severity of the situation. I don’t see that much on this site tho. Maybe another forum for that.

7

I agree with Jimmy I’m afraid…I don’t this can be done automatically and the easiest thing is probably to cut it up and move bits as large as you can to get them to fit with the click track. It’ll be a good learning experience and ptobably not take as long as you think once you get started.

Also as Jimmy says, posting a sample of this might make our understanding of the degree of the problem better.

8

Get someone else to play the acoustic guitar - the same patterns but in time.
You can either use that or use the new version to position the out of time parts of the original.

9

Thanks for all the replies. I basically cut and moved a couple of the sections that were the offenders and one section I replayed myself on my Martin D41 and eq’d it as closely to her guitar. luckily it was the bridge so a bit of a change eq wise was fine. Pulled her guitar down and faded it back in for the last chorus…having her back in to re-do it would have accomplished nothing but frustration on her part

I appreciate all the responses and workarounds