Tempo detection....Problem Solved

Cubase
#1

I’m trying out the tempo detection & am confused by a few things or am having a few issues.

I’m tempo detecting on the kick & results were passable…some tweaking would have fixed things fine so my click is in with the track…however:

  1. The smooth tempo option is always greyed out so I can’t use it?

  2. The process adds a time signature change of 1/4 to the first detected point so I have one bar every beat.
    If I change this sig the track slips out of time.

Is anyone else seeing similar problems or am I just doing something obviously wrong!

Cheers.

#2

Update: Trying different tracks I think the smooth tempo problem may be to do with the pro tools recordings I was using as this seems to be available in tracks that were originally recorded in cubase.

But after analysis it still sets a time signature of 1/4 at the first beat & changing to 4/4 breaks the tempo map.

#3

One more try!

Can anybody confirm that they have tempo detected an audio file without having a 1/4 time signature inserted in their song?

Seems odd that it does this for every file for me but no one else is mentioning it.

Thanks.

#4

Yes, I found that when I tried out Tempo Detection. The manual says

The project will get a 1/4 signature, because the tempo de-
tection only calculates a tempo based on beats, regardless of
a musical signature. The signature can be modified later.

(pasted from p474 operation manual)

Rather odd behaviour, IMHO - after going to all that trouble to make a tempo detection function which works, why make it default to 1/4? Why not let it default to 4/4 or to the user-set signature? You would of course need to start the file at beat 1, in any event.

I found if I reset the signature in the tempo track editor, it still lined up OK. Only tried on one stereo mix file so far.

Regarding the greyed out smooth tempo option, is it available BEFORE analysing the tempo? I haven’t been able to test it yet. I found it greyed out, too.

#5

Thanks…Don’t know how I managed to miss that in the manual!!

Yeah I worked out that I could change it back as long as the first beat was on a bar before detecting.

Regarding the smooth tempo…this is not what I first thought. I tried detection on a song with a slowdown in the middle & the tempo was detected up to this point…but a message pops up saying use smooth tempo if your audio should be a fixed tempo.

Would be nice if you could select a range or a start point for detection to avoid having to cut intros first…I haven’t been able to get any useable result if I had a pre song snare hit for instance.

#6

In the case of odd tempos at the start or end, try removing them (move the ends of the Part) before analysing, then pull them out again afterwards. You can fairly easily edit the temp during the slow down manually using the tempo warp tool.

#7

I think I’m getting there now after carefully re-reading the manual!!

Just cutting the beginning & end of files where you want to start end is setting the range exactly as I was suggesting.

The only thing that’s still a pain is if a tab need repositioning & then you either need to move 4 (1 for each beat) to keep the tempo map smooth or just delete the 3 beats between the bars.

Still…its working pretty well all in all…like the way if it has slipped off you only need correct one point & all later points re-adjust for you.