winkpain

I'm really hoping someone here will chime in with experience with Melodyne in Cakewalk in the tempo department! My confusion is worsening, and I can only imagine there is something I'm not understanding with the ARA relationship between the two programs. I am fine (elated, in fact!) with Melodyne as a standalone and have no problems with its impeccable tempo (and meter) analysis and mapping, but it is only when using it as a plugin in CW that the bizarre (to me) behavior begins. Now I'm finding that in a totally new project that dragging the audio file to the time bar (for Melodyne tempo map application) is not working as expected. A tempo map comes in, but upon playback it is not in sync with the audio. It seems offset, but by what amount and for what reason, I have no idea. It is an acoustic guitar track recorded without click, so mildly fluctuating tempo. The file begins at the zero mark. Turning on Region FX for Melodyne on the track performs the analysis, and auditioning the detected tempo within Melodyne (with "Assign tempo" and Melodyne's metronome on) proves a perfect match with Melodyne marking the first downbeat as the 1 of the 4/4 bar. The recorded audio clip, of course, starts with a bit of silence before playing began. When dragging the perfect tempo map from the Melodyne clip to the time bar, the audio gets "shifted" it seems, and although the tempo map now in CW visually matches the one in Melodyne, the clip does not play back in sync with the CW metronome. Visually, the beats on the grid do not match where they fall in the clip. CW, of course, shows the 1 of bar 1 as being the beginning of the clip. The clip played within Melodyne with the Mel. metronome on still sounds perfect all the way through as well as it's time grid corresponding with beats in the visible file . If I drag or slide the file position on the track within CW to match up with beat and bar (say, to begin on beat 1 of bar 2 in CW), the tempo map in CW does not, of course, slide along with it and the audio will be quite out of sync with the (CW) metronome within several bars, but it was out of sync to begin with. In any case, the literature on this makes it sound so easy: drag and drop, and Boom! you have tempo map that follows the recorded track. I see nothing about having to adjust anything afterwards. Are there settings somewhere that need to be a certain way for this transfer of tempo information to work just so?? It seems to be something in the nature of the ARA relationship and how Melodyne "knows" where bar 1 begins whereas Cakewalk thinks bar 1 begins at the 00:00:00:00 of the file. I don't know... Does anybody??

Any ideas why CW can't seem to handle playback of a Melodyne clip with "Follow host tempo" chosen in the above example??

I have no issue with dragging to the time line. The track currently in question is a guitar track, and dragging it to apply the track's tempo ends up working perfectly. It is only when I want the Melodyne analyzed track/clip to "Follow Host Tempo" that the problems begin.

Two separate things. Extracting the tempo by dragging the clip to the time bar is what I meant above by, "first apply the Melodyne detected tempo map to the project". That is not a problem, in fact it works quite well. This is making Cakewalk "follow" the tempo of the clip so to speak. The issue is if I want to then alter the tempo of the Melodyne clip to follow the tempo in CW. The "smoothing" of tempo in Cakewalk (adjusting it any way desired) is what requires the clip to "Follow host tempo" as is available in the Region FX context menu on the Melodyne clip. Whenever I choose this, all hell breaks loose!

Totally agreed! I'm all for keeping this thread afloat in the mix. I'm right there with you with 20 years using Cakewalk. I have used others as well, not Studio One, however. But only have CW (and Ableton for very specific purposes) as a DAW now. And I have been absolutely delighted at the the care and attention the Bandlab parentage has brought into it. Let's hope the momentum of the Arranger and Articulations additions will help push along these further additions! Chord and Meter tracks!!! (and an improved Staff view!!)

[Only my second problem, which developed as this post progressed, is solved. The Follow Host Tempo issue remains.] I am trying to get an understanding of how Melodyne integrates with CW, specifically regarding tempo. With the ARA integration I understood that it should be fairly seamless in the CW environment. However, working with a track recorded without click and having its natural (but not drastic) fluctuations, I am having what seem serious issues. I do the following: Choose the track and create the Melodyne Region Melodyne analyzes the tempo I listen within Melodyne to its native click which varies with my recorded track and it's spot on I then "Confirm" Melodyne's tempo detection and choose for this clip to Follow Project tempo so that Melodyne will adjust the clip to follow whatever tempo that I choose within CW. This is as instructed in the manual which then says: This however makes no changes to the Melodyne clip and its tempo and Cakewalk's tempo are not in sync and playback stutters like mentioned below. I can, in fact, only get the expected corrected tempo results if I: first apply the Melodyne detected tempo map to the project THEN tell Melodyne to Follow Host Tempo and THEN adjust the tempo variations within CW in order to have the clip follow these new tempos However, at this point the playback of the project begins to fail utterly, without any dropouts or halting of the audio device, but the playback stutters with clicks and pops and visual stuttering of the playback head as well. This in a new project with only this one clip of about 6 seconds, no other current tracks, no VSTs added, and an ASIO buffer size of 1024. It is repeatable after closing, reopening, and starting fresh again. I can say that if, after the second process above and even though playback through Melodyne is corrupted, I can Bounce to Clip to commit the Melodyne adjustments and then the clip plays back fine and as expected. But surely CW should be able to playback the Melodyne clip with just a few subtle tempo adjustments! I have poured over the manuals, I do not see what else I should be doing. What is it I am missing??

Well, that's mighty nice. But a bit of a flaunt as I'm using Cakewalk ;-) (and I use Sibelius for notation) But it would be great if we had something like this here in CW !

That all sounds smart. I've never used Studio One. I would love to have these layered auxiliary tracks in CW, especially for Chord, key, and time sig. (these last two separately editable, as I say). And all of them "smartly" behaving, of course, respecting transpositions of key and such. I particularly like the way the Time Signature strip works in Melodyne , smartly compensating existing meters if you add new changes in odd locations; allowing you to double-click an insert point and just type in the numerator (top) value if the bottom is to stay the same. The meter and chord tracks then being able to be visible above Track and Piano Roll views as simple (colored, perhaps!) markers (as opposed to the current "Window" view style only) would be a huge boon for more music compositional oriented workflows. I hope it is a possibility and a likely one here!

Excellent! That's it precisely! Your knowledge here is concise and vast, scook. Thank you! Any idea how to work around editing song key signature without the time signature coupling?

Yes, please! Chord track, or layered markers with a smart key/chord layer! And If this could be in the works, please decouple key from meter so that key editing/transposing isn't related to meter/time signature! Mixed meter does not pre-suppose mixed key, certainly not necessarily at the same points.

Any Melodyne/CW experts out there? I figure with the integration that this would be an appropriate place to try and sort this out...

Here's an idiosyncratic issue that has cropped up for me: I have a project that I have been working on extensively in Melodyne 5 stand-alone to get tempo, pitch, and timing info from a complex, mixed-meter traditional song (audio file recording). After having done the work of analyzing, editing, and getting notes, timing, key, and a tempo map(with its key and meter info as well) where I want them in Melodyne, I have exported them as a MIDI file and tempo map from there. In the stand alone of Melodyne, there is an export function for Tempo Maps as well as a regular MIDI file export for notes, etc. Melodyne stand-alone has come to be a go-to for me for this type of work, as I then have these project files and their exports available elsewhere in my workflow. I have noticed that in order to get the exported tempo map into a Cakewalk project, I cannot simply (as I would assume) drag the MIDI file into my project and retain the tempo map info, neither can I choose "Import/MIDI..." and bring the file in successfully that way. Both these methods bring in an empty MIDI track with no tempo/meter/key info in the case of the tempo map MIDI file, or the MIDI file with the note info but neither any tempo/meter/key info. It is this info, of course, that is the crucial stuff desired from the project. The only way I seem to be able to get this info into Cakewalk is to start with a blank slate and choose "Open" from the file menu and choose the tempo map file. In this case, CW brings in the MIDI file (and the tempo map, thankfully) into a blank project, but with no output busses added. This is odd to me, but easily remedied. None of the above is necessarily a show stopper of course, but it certainly hampers workflow if I have a project that I have been working on already a bit and want to import this tempo and meter/key info into it. So, is this not possible? Is that not what at least "Import/MIDI" should do?? Why would tempo/meter/key info not be included with this action? And, a little additional issue here that inhibits this project as well, one that has been cropping up for me lately and I mentioned in a previous post, is that once the meter/key info is in a project, there seems to be no way to globally edit the key (signature) of the project. By which I mean, if the project contains many changes of meter (time signature), it is extremely cumbersome to change the key signature as it is individually coupled with each of these meter changes (seen in the Meter/Key view), which is by no means musically necessary or appropriate. I have many meter changes and only one key for the entire song, and I would like to alter that key at will in one go without touching the meter changes. It is not uncommon to have pieces with, say, 20-40 meter changes and only one or two key signatures throughout. That is quite a lot of work, then, to go through and change 20-40 key "changes" all individually to the same key whenever we want to try a different key of the entire piece. So, is this decoupling of meter and key possible?? OR Is there a work-around for this that someone can clue me in to?

Testing with a new project, and no. The key in the Insert Meter/Key box defaults to whatever was last used. So yes, once setting the desired key, that should be what remains for whatever meter changes follow. I don't know how the C key got into my original project after having set it to D in the beginning. Perhaps a mindless mistake of mine. I then thought CW had defaulted back to key of C and got lazy, figuring I could change it (that is, them all) easily later on. So it goes. I do wish that key and meter could be decoupled. It is of course quite common to have many desired changes in one and not the other in a given piece, and a single edit to multiples of them would be nice. BUT that is a feature request low in the ranks even for me. Thanks for the encouragement and lesson learned!

The strange thing is my first insert meter/key selection, I did insert the preferred key of the song (D major), but then all the following insert meter/key choices (where I wanted only to change the meter) defaulted to the key of C. Assuming I could change this in one go later, I let it be. I then found myself unfortunately in this situation. Selecting the existing entries one by one is indeed all I found that I could do. I'm surprised that I've never run into this before in all these years.

I have an irregularly mixed meter piece for which I have many changes (over 50) from 3/4 to 4/4, 6/4, etc. All of those Insert meter changes ended up defaulting the Key signature to C at each change. I want to change the key signature to indicate the key of D for the entire piece for appropriate Staff view display maintaining the meter changes. Is there a way change this for the entire piece in one go without effecting all the desired meter changes? All I can tell is to go in and edit each one individually. Must a meter change be coupled with a key change?

Ah! Well, that makes it j u s t a s m i d g e better. No real effect on the grid lines themselves, but the slight contrast helps. I'll take it. (and the adjustment in the stand-alone does indeed effect the VST!) Thanks.

Does anyone know a way of being able to change at least the contrast on the grid lines in Melodyne?? There seems to be nothing on doing so out there anywhere, so I'm assuming "no", but I figured I'd finally ask here. They are next to bloody invisible on my system.

Excellent! New build working well here!

The problem seems to appear for me at a particular indeterminate zoom level and/or PRV screen/scroll position. Happy to see it's getting worked on!

Done

I downloaded this update, tried the Extract Keyswitch Articulations feature with a keyswitch map I had just created and it worked beautifully! All recorded/written MIDI keyswitches were converted to the appropriate articulation.... thingees (What do well call them? Articulation cells? Articulation clips?) Then I added one more keyswitch that I had forgotten to the map, attempted extraction again, and CW hung up. I opened a new project, started from scratch again creating the keyswitch map again and attempted an extraction, and it hung again. Repeated attempts now all end up in hanging Cakewalk. No CW minidump was created, but I took a couple minidumps from Task Manager... Edit: It seems to happen when there are multiple take lanes. As I recorded the keyswitches in a separate take(s), there were of course multiple take lanes. Repeated attempts at extracting the keyswitches to mapped articulations causes the crash (hang) every time. By simple bouncing the MIDI all to one clip, I can then extract with no problem. Is this single MIDI clip containing both musical notes and keyswitches a condition for extraction?? Edit (Nov 24): FIXED in latest build

Someday, Noel , we're all going to take you lunch! 😊

I see this too. It does seem counter-intuitive.

Gotcha. My questioning was more of my own understanding than your intended meaning. Not that I have any expectation of someone else having a handle on that! 😉 and This is precisely what my thoughts about it lead to and where I began to stumble, for the concept of a separate transform articulation for each and any note that may be played polyphonically and placing as many of the individual note articulations as needed for the number of polyphonic aftertouch effects desired... well, it all started to seem so cumbersome! But I guess the point is that it could be done, yes? And if you want key pressure effects only on a few notes, that's not such a pain. I guess for a minute I was mistakenly thinking about it as a potential filter for real-time MIDI input that could transform a channel pressure keyboard into a polyphonic key pressure one! And then I realized that was kooky. I think I'll just wait and upgrade my MIDI keyboard someday.

I see this as well.