Can't align midi piano to metronome

[gmp]

I have a midi piano part that was played without a click, but the timing is pretty steady, so if I match it with a tempo I can quantize it.  I'd like to align it to the beats and bars and quantize it. 

As of now it's off with the internal metronome. So if I speed up the metronome to match the piano tempo, then it speeds up the piano too.  If I could speed up the metronome without affecting the piano, then I can do what I need.

Or I can play and record high hat click quarter notes. Can I tell CbB to use that as quarter notes when quantizing

Is any of this possible? Any suggestions are welcome

Edited June 3, 2022 by gmp

[John Vere]

w

Edited June 5, 2022 by John Vere

[David Baay]

If the MIDI starts at 1:01:000, set the Now time at downbeat event that should be at 5:01, hit Ctrl+M to open the Set Measure/Beat At Now dialogue, enter measure 5, beat 1, and OK. CbB will adjust the initial tempo to make that note fall on that beat, and adjust start times and duration to preserve the absolute playback timing at the new tempo. You can set additional points as needed to match the timeline more closely to the performance every 4-8 measures as needed to be able to quantize. You can also adjust or completely delete the tempo changes to reduce or completely flatten the tempo variation.

If the piece has 'pick-up" notes before the first full measure, you should start by sliding the clip to put the first downbeat on 2:01, and Ctrl+M to set that point.

I recommend you do all of this starting with a copy of the project because it can't be undone once you close the session and lose the Undo history.

Edited June 3, 2022 by David Baay

[rfssongs]

Make a backup copy of the file first.

Tap a quarter note midi pulse on another track

Use Fit improvisation

Set Tempo to the average of the result

Quantize

Fix the stuff that didn't work by dragging it around. Sometimes you may need to drag pieces to fit to the bar line. Split the clip where you need to.

You may want to disable the snap while you are splitting clips and enable it while you drag them, for shortcut use-(N). Mostly I spilt and move the remainder from that point on because that's most likely the way it will fall anyway.

 

This can work. I have made it work but it is still better to play to a metronome if that's what you want in the end. You might want to look at the documentation for a better description than I have given.

 

 

[gmp]

I got it done. The trick is to play the hat on quarter notes for the whole song and then bounce to clip so it's 1 big clip, make sure it starts at 0 sec. Then select only that clip and choose Fit Improvisation. You'll find there are tons of slight tempo changes in the Tempo view.

Then I exported as a midi file, imported it into Finale and it was great. All the bars lined up. No need for me to split clips and manually line up anything or even quantize except the first downbeat at bar 1

Edited June 12, 2022 by gmp

[lapasoa]

The best way is to record the piano part over metronome playing..

[gmp]

4 hours ago, lapasoa said:

The best way is to record the piano part over metronome playing..

That's what I do also, except to a drum loop which is easy to feel the groove. But this was a project where the pianist didn't want to do that and then later wanted sheet music for her piano part. Once I figured out Finale was really quirky about doing this kind of process from a midi file. I tried Fit Improvisation and after a while worked out a good method.