Quite often anymore, when I’m composing some of my Classical stuff, I’m playing it in without using a click, and without even setting a tempo beforehand – what I guess you’d call “a tempo” or “rubato?” There are two obvious problems with this, and I can’t figure out a solution, let alone a way to mitigate them: the resulting MIDI data has no framework against which one can edit accurately – it’s all intuitive and quite “hit-and-miss.” The other problem is similar when you want to produce a score, you have a complete mess.
It would be awesome if the DAW could sense, on the basis of the time signature you chose as well as an approximate tempo, where the beats are in any given measure, regardless of whether you speed up or slow down.
Now somebody will tell me Cubase can actually do this!
That’s exactly how I record my stuff, twilightsong - just free-form piano, no click, and irrespective of a grid (because I have a lot of slow downs and pauses in my stuff). What I’ve evolved to doing is:
Setting a tempo track tempo that’s reasonably close the majority of my song. It makes the subsequent steps a little easier.
Play/record.
Now the recorded music is of course not on the grid, but maybe (as a result of step 1) not in the next county either.
Then right click the arrow tool to choose the warp tabs arrow option. Start at the beginning of the song, and march my way to the end, dragging all the bar/beat markers on the tempo track to match the appropriate musical events. So, for example, if there is a slow down in measures 20-22, the tempo track has it’s beats slow down accordingly, because I’ve made it match the music.
Now at the end of that, the tempo track exactly matches the music. One immediate benefit for me is that the click track now matches the music! Also, all this lets me edit and add instruments that are dependent on the tempo track (like drums).
I don’t know if that works with classical music like you do, though -
Create two Tracks
Record your first song track
Drag your song track to make the downbeat match e.g. 1.1.1.0
Set booth track to Linear Mode
record a MIDI Track along your original Track and just play 1/4 notes on your MIDI keys
Select the Part with 1/4 MIDI notes
Menu > MIDI > Functions > Merge Tempo from Tapping
Now look at your Tempo Track …
Maybe you want some percussive sound routed from the MIDI track and double check to make it match as close as possible to your song track before hitting “Merge Tempo from Tapping”.
Awesome, I had just yesterday given up on making drums for a recording I did for a friend of mine a while ago, because he refused to play to click at that time and I can’t be bothered to edit every single note in midi, as my playing can be a bit sloppy. (and because in the recording the tempo is more like a sinewave, try drumming to that )
Okay great gents… I didn’t RTFM simply because I had no idea Cubase could do this. I still don’t quite comprehend what you’re saying but I’m going to look into it today. Thank you very much!
Do a little test project first where is doesn’t matter if you screw up or waste something.
If your music track is fine but something sounds off in the other track you may need to edit it by hand.
I just tried this again and edited the 1/4 track by just moving the notes to look like they were evenly spaced where something sounded off and it seemed to do the trick.
A practice round definitely helps and don’t despair if you don’t get a perfect result the first time.
Yes, I think so. Sorry for not reporting back, been very busy.
Once I switched the audio tracks to musical mode as Tom directed, it worked perfectly, or almost perfectly. For about 70% of the song, the MIDI is lined up more or less accurately against the grid… but then for some unknown reason the last 30% isn’t. I can probably adjust this since it’s off by a consistent amount, about one quarter note.
And yes, it’s vsti tracks that I’m working with, but technically vsti tracks ARE audio tracks. One problem however is that after having switched the tracks to musical mode, they don’t sound the same – there’s a slight warbling in the audio. Not sure what to o about that. But it’s not important, because I only wanted the MIDI to line up roughly with the grid so I could print out a score that a singer can read. Once I’ve done that, I’ll revert to the previous version where the audio wasn’t warbly
Glad to hear it’s all working for you, twilightsong!
I’m banging my head against the brick wall trying to figure out how to edit the TimeWarp tabs … I feel that if I can get past that I’ll be home free. Of course I’ve been saying something similar about other parts of this for what seems like years …
I’ve done some of that. To delete one, I believe you just highlight it and hit “delete.” To move one, I believe you just drag it with the mouse. I suppose you know all that, however
Yes, but thanks, though. My current “challenge” has to do with the behavior of tempo markings just before and after the ones I delete or move. I’ll be putting together a test project and taking notes so I can formulate a rational-sounding post before asking for help from the board. (Though sometimes irrational screams seem much more emotionally fulfilling in the short term … !)
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