Tempo-quantizing drums?!?! Pleeeease help!

Cubase
1

Hi all and I’m completely out of it - again. After all that hassle with Adobe products I have completely forgotten everything about Cubase. At least quantizing tempo.

So I remember vaguely that Cubase 6.5 has some kind of a “drum editor” or “tempo detector” or something that will automatically slice your drums and set them to desired tempo.

I have this project of my client who has played the drums by himself and then he has recorded vocals, guitars, bass etc. on top of the drums. So I would have to tempo-quantize EVERYTHING.

First I tried tapping (recording MIDI notes) the hitpoints manually but the tempo slowed down mystically very much. Then I remembered this new feature about editing drums but I don’t remember the feature’s name nor anything else.

So please help me, how do I tempo-quantize the whole song in correlation to the tempo-quantized drums - and how do I do that drum tempo-quantizing in the first place?

I have been pretty down lately and I just don’t have the energy to try and learn new things that I have mastered earlier and then forgotten about them. Please please please… Someone. And try to explain the procedure like you were writing to a six-year old.

Thank you.

-Tommi

2

Give that a whirl.

You bay need to create a tempo map to quantize to

I don’t know how cubase handles varying tempo tracks. I still quantize to ear which takes some time but its much less rigid sounding.

3

If everything is in time with everything else and you just want to quantise the the whole arrange, then using the “set definition from tempo” command is a good one to use.

Make a tempo map that follows the drums kik and Snr using the timewarp tool.

Then select all, set tempo from definition then delete the tempo track points, setting the tempo back to it’s original.

Bang, all in time.

4

I exactly DID try the lower option like tapping the tempo in but I don’t know how to “flatten” the tempo so that Cubase would stretch and shrink audio data according to those Tempo “hitpoints”. So that when I set a CONSTANT tempo instead of letting the value of the Tempo track to change then how can I make the whole project’s tempo constant throughout all the audio tracks?

Is there a way to

5

WOW MAN YOU GOT IT WHAT I MEAN!!! That’s EXACTLY what I want! Making the whoooole project to follow constant tempo. YES!

But how do you mean making a tempo map using a timewarp tool? That part I don’t quite understand. Do you mean making a Tempo track with changing values? I have done this by recording MIDI notes by tapping along the song and then selecting MIDI > FUNCTIONS > Merge Tempo from Tapping. But doing this with WARP tool I have no idea about…

Please help further! I must be so close now.

6

When using the “merge tempo…” tool I found that I was at first confused by the fact that the track generating the tempo track (cowbell, whatever, that you tapped along on) then had nothing to do with the process.

Could that be part of the confusion?

7

I don’t bother with tapping or anything like that. Just select the timewarp tool from the little tool box, It actually has nothing to do with timewarping audio!!!

It’s allows you to warp (or move) the grid to match the audio thus making a tempo map that follows the drums.

Then just move the grid to the drum beats untill the whole song has been mapped.

Make sure all tracks are in linear mode first.

Then do the set definition from tempo. put tracks into musical mode, delete tempo map… thats it.

8

Dear mindastray,

have you tried the ‘Tempo detection’ tool? Please take a look at this video (minute 4:13) that you might find helpful:

Regards

9

I tried the Tempo detection tool but it failed detecting the whole song - only the first 20-30 seconds of it until it gave an error. I don’t know what the problem is, but I will certainly check out that video if I could use it later. I found that manual Warping pretty handy and at least it’s accurate :slight_smile: Thank you!