I’m looking for the simplest method to match the TIMING of one live performed vocal to another. Neither were recorded with a click track, so the tempo varies quite a bit between the start and end of the tracks. I do not want to warp the entire performance, but simply bring in a better performed instance of the live vocals.
Am I missing a basic functionality?
I have looked at Time stretching, but this seems to require opening up the clip and editing it individually. It is important that I can stretch the second performance too closely match the first
NB: When I do the same using video in Premiere Pro, I found a very straightforward method that works very well (though it is a bit time-consuming):
- Place both tracks in parallel in the timeline
- Cut both tracks at multiple corresponding reference points (downbeats, snare hits, etc)
- Stretch the beginning and end points of each cut of the second track to match the first, using snap to perfectly match to the cuts in the reference track.
- The number of cuts needed depends on how much variation there is between the tracks. The more cuts, the more precise the match is.
Unfortunately, in Cubase 5, the snap function seems to only snap to the grid, and not to the beginning and ends of samples. Because of this, I must do all of these stretches visually, which is imprecise and results in artifacts. Of course, I could crossfade between the beginning and in points of the clips, but this seems like a clumsy solution.
Thanks very much to anyone who can help with this. This must be a very common task, and I’m surprised that I am struggling with it. Maybe I’m just missing basic something here…
Randy