Tempo Rubato

Still doesn’t work…Don’t know what else to do when everything is timebased.

Try to write down a detailed list of every step you are doing, and how you are doing it. (because, I promise you, if you do it correctly, it does work :wink: )

1.Open a fresh clean cubase to test this
2.Create a tempo track
3.Setting the tempo to 100 in the tempo track editor.
4.Switch in the transport bar to “tempo track” and not fixed.
5.Create midi track 1
6.Set musical to linear timebase
7.Record and play midi.
8.Quantize and snap it into place,first note starting at bar 3
9.Create a “conductor” midi track with a random click
10.Record the “conducting” on that track
11.Select and click “merge tempo from tapping”

The changes are made and I can see the tempo in the transport bar going up and down as I tapped…But the midi track doesn’t respond to anything.

Please upload a screenshot, showing this (i.e. with that MIDI track selected, and the Inspector visible)

7.Record and play midi.
8.> Quantize > and snap it into place,first note starting at bar 3

What are you quantizing? If you record/played with a “free” tempo, why would you want to quantize its notes to Cubase’s current 100 BPM?

Can you upload a small Project (which you have already “tapped”), so I can check if there is something else wrong somewhere?

9.Create a “conductor” midi track with a random click
10.Record the “conducting” on that track
11.Select and click “merge tempo from tapping”

The changes are made and I can see the tempo in the transport bar going up and down as I tapped…But the midi track doesn’t respond to anything.

If your MIDI tracks really are in Linear Timebase, then what you have written should work (i.e. the recorded music doesn’t change, but Cubase’s grid now aligns with it).

Can you upload a small Project (which you have already “tapped”), so I can check that something else isn’t wrong somewhere?

What are you quantizing? If you record/played with a “free” tempo, why would you want to quantize its notes to Cubase’s current 100 BPM?
The recorded data… I’m not the best player so I quantize it so everything is organized and played correctly(but to mechanical) Thus the need for tempo rubato so I can liven it up and still stick to the correct playing.It’s the same principle as written notes.It LOOKS tidy and mathematically correct.But with some life to it(humanization and tempo rubato “conducting”) It becomes what I want but at the same time keeping all midi data organized and snapped nicely. Does it make any sense?


Cubase file
Orkester template.cpr (747 KB)

(I shall reply later tonight… but I now see that I must have misunderstood your original post… “Merge Tempo from Tapping” is for a different purpose. … I’ll explain later)…
In the meantime… apologies :blush: :wink:

… later…
When you said you had played “rubato”, I had (mis)understood that you had played “freely” (i.e. ignoring Cubase’s metronome completely), whereas in fact (from what I see in your .cpr, but please correct me if I’ve gotten it wrong again :stuck_out_tongue: ) ), you seem to have recorded at a steady 110 BPM (not 100 BPM as you wrote earlier), or at least, after quantizing, the recorded MIDI does line up perfectly with Cubase’s grid, when Cubase’s tempo is set to a fixed 110 BPM (well, at least, after having dragged the events, so that the Piano starts on the first beat of bar #2 here).

Am I now right in thinking that, after quantizing, and before doing any tapping at all, the music was already in perfect sync with Cubase’s grid/metronome? If so, then no tapping is necessary. But as you said, after quantizing, the result is very mechanical. (and in this case, the most direct approach is to set everything to Musical Timebase, then edit the tempo track… or use the Tempo Track Editor’s Tempo Recording slider… although it is a little difficult to control the results).

Or… different approach :wink:
Were you happy with the (rubato) tempo of your recording, before quantizing (but you wanted to get Cubase’s grid to line up with it, so that the other tracks could be in sync/edited)?
If so, the method I had described was in fact correct, but you shouldn’t have quantized your playing…
The whole purpose of “Merge Tempo from Tapping” is to allow to get Cubase’s grid (and therefore, metronome) to line up with already-recorded music, without changing the way the music sounds at all (in other words the notes stay, physically, in exactly the same place in time, while the grid is adjusted to fit it, rather than the other way round)
Also, I had meant that your tapping should match the music that you were actually hearing (i.e. it should have been like any other overdub)… looking at your new tempo track here (btw, the MIDI events on your tapping track are missing, except for the first three bars), I can only guess that what you were tapping never matched the music at all… were you, instead, tapping out what you wanted the tempo to eventually be? (I’m afraid Cubase isn’t capable of that function, it would require to slave to MIDI Clock, and Cubase doesn’t have that).
(I also observe, from your tempo track, that there are tempo events only every half-note, not quarter note, which would partly explain why the end result was incorrect).

So, have I managed to confuse you still further? :open_mouth: :slight_smile: (if so, just erase your memory of the last few days completely from your brain! :stuck_out_tongue: )

To recap… apart from getting the music and the tempo track to match, was the (rubato) tempo of your original playing o.k. for you (i.e. before quantizing)?

Let me clarify…people that don’t know what the *ell they’re doing are very vague :smiley:

I start off by recording without caring about the set tempo or metronome.I don’t use the click,I only play freely. What I really want I think is the orchestra to follow the piano solo.(my freely played solo) BUT I don’t play that perfectly and need to do some editing aswell. And as I’m playing this solo I’m uncounsciously playing rubato and in an unkown tempo. I’m playing by ear. It sounds good but it doesn’t snap to the grid,and it doesn’t follow cubase in any way.It’s just a live played track sitting in cubase. So it SOUNDS good but doesn’t look ORGANIZED.

I’m still undesisive wether I want to “conduct” quantized tracks or have the orchestra follow a live performance.


“Am I now right in thinking that, after quantizing, and before doing any tapping at all, the music was already in perfect sync with Cubase’s grid/metronome?”
Yes.

" If so, then no tapping is necessary. But as you said, after quantizing, the result is very mechanical. (and in this case, the most direct approach is to set everything to Musical Timebase, then edit the tempo track… or use the Tempo Track Editor’s Tempo Recording slider… although it is a little difficult to control the results)."
Tried it…it’s VERY difficult… :confused: If only the ramp function would make smoother curves with closer points it would work easier.

“Were you happy with the (rubato) tempo of your recording, before quantizing (but you wanted to get Cubase’s grid to line up with it, so that the other tracks could be in sync/edited)?”
Yes. I wan’t the other tracks to follow the freely played track. You could say the track played by ear is the conductor in a way. But the thing I was also thinking about was…if I recorded it,quantized it…I could conduct that mechanical track into a rubato performance.

"If so, the method I had described was in fact correct, but you shouldn’t have quantized your playing…
The whole purpose of “Merge Tempo from Tapping” is to allow to get Cubase’s grid (and therefore, metronome) to line up with already-recorded music, without changing the way the music sounds at all (in other words the notes stay, physically, in exactly the same place in time, while the grid is adjusted to fit it, rather than the other way round)
Also, I had meant that your tapping should match the music that you were actually hearing (i.e. it should have been like any other overdub)… "

Ok Then I misunderstood…I was trying to conduct a quantized track to play rubato…I didn’t follow it. No the tapping didn’t match my music at all.

“To recap… apart from getting the music and the tempo track to match, was the (rubato) tempo of your original playing o.k. for you (i.e. before quantizing)?”
Yes.Yes it was :sunglasses:

Good… so we’re back on track then :slight_smile:

  1. Do as you were doing… record your freely-played piano part, but don’t bother to quantize it (you’ll see, that once you have completed “Merge Tempo from Tapping”, it will be much easier to edit the bits you aren’t happy with…, and also, much easier to overdub the other instruments :wink: )
  2. Record your “tapping” track… as you now know, you should play it in time with the already-recorded music (that’s what I meant, earlier, about making the tapping track sound “musical”, it should eventually sound like the click was intended to be part of the music).
    As I mentioned in my previous post, it looks (from your uploaded cpr), that there was some confusion as to whether what you were tapping was supposed to be quarter-notes, or half-notes… when you do the “Merge Tempo from Tapping” operation, the tempo events on the tempo track should take up the same length as your tapping track… if it is about half the length, or double the length, you will know that you made the wrong choice, either when tapping, or when making the setting in the Tapping dialog. No problem, just “Undo” :wink:.

Once you get used to doing it, you’l find it gets much easier :wink:.

Could you look at this crp.?
I don’t seem to understand the the ‘merge tempo from track’ dialogue box. In this file I set it to 1/2. Upton choosing 1/4,1/1 or any others the tempo curve goes to far down or to far up.
Since the performance is live and varies in tempo(rubato)… how can I make a tapping track as freely tapped as the music playing? Because in the tempo track it snaps into clean 1/2 values.
New tempo try.cpr (622 KB)

Well, the “Merge Tempo from Tapping” operation has done its job perfectly… it matches the MIDI Tapping track, but I don’t understand why that tapping track doesn’t match the tempo of the piano :confused: Is that how it sounded when you recorded it, or did it go wrong at some later stage? (and is the piano still playing the same as when you first recorded it?.. it should be )

No that’s what I don’t get. No it didn’t sound like that when recorded…the crazy tempo changes not responding to the tapping happened after…I can clearly hear it being crazy when it slows down. The tempo curves go over 100bpm but it sounds like 50bpm or something. Very strange. I’ll try doing another one from scratch.

… just in case you need to upload it again…
do some separate saves… 1st one after having done the piano, then a separate 2nd one after having recorded your Tapping track (but before applying “Merge Tempo from Tapping”), and then a 3rd save after doing “Merge Tempo” (to see if I can spot at which stage it is going wrong).

First off, Audun, it is nice to see another “free-tempo” forum member! Mr. Crotchety, most active in the C6 forum is another, and searching his posts may be helpful to you (he had a nice series on this very topic in December, 2011).

Next off - if one wants to learn Cubase, they could do much worse than search for and print out EVERY word that vic_france has typed here, put it by their bedside, and read every morning when they wake up (as well, of course, as having it indexed, bound and permanently at the side of the DAW!). He is not only encyclopaedic, but so helpful as well.

Finally, in addition to Mr. France’s precise instructions, perhaps the following link can help as well:

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/audio/9781598639711/taking-audio-to-the-limit-in-cubase-5/ch03lev1sec9#X2ludGVybmFsX0ZsYXNoUmVhZGVyP3htbGlkPTk3ODE1OTg2Mzk3MTEvY2gwM2xldjFzZWM4

Good luck!

I think rubato → it’s just a detailed tempo track. If the tempo track is okay (use the tempo warp stuff) then the score can stay (to some extend) reasonable pretty
In this video I made a tempo track of some pretty rubato piece and just entered the score: (The tempo track is from a real recording)