tempo Tempo Changes Ignored During Export?

[Ratthew]

Hi,

I'm working on a remix of a song that has a varying tempo, starting at 110 and progressing to 112.4.

In Cakewalk, I've used the tempo track to adjust the tempo so that the songs beats line up with Cakewalk's gridlines properly. However, when I export the track I find that the tempo remains unchanged? Perhaps I'm missing something but I've only been using Cakewalk for a couple months. I'd like to be able to export the track with the tempo changes.

If anyone knows a fix for this that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[reginaldStjohn]

Have you marked the  audio clips as groove clips or done audio snap on the audio?  Audio files don't automatically follow tempo changes unless you have marked them as being groove clips. At least that is my experience.  

You can also use "Audio Snap" on an audio file to follow tempo.  Here is a forum thread about a similar issue.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by reginaldStjohn

[John Vere]

It's a bit confusing and possibly not enough information about what you want and what you did? 

The project shown sees to be all audio tracks. So I'll assume this was a recording done without a click track?  

Audio, as said above, unless told to do so with Audio snap or Groove clips,  does not follow the tempo map, only midi does. What you've done is created a tempo map that matches the original audio recording. This is what one  would do before they record midi parts and be able to then quantize to the grid.  

So what is not clear, are you hoping to speed up or slow down the whole song? Or are you hoping to make the whole song play at an even perfect tempo? 

FYI If you have any version of Melodyne installed you can automatically create a tempo map by dragging an audio clip to the timeline, 

Edited August 15, 2023 by JohnnyV

[David Baay]

8 minutes ago, JohnnyV said:

What you've done is created a tempo map that matches the original audio recording.

Yes, that's my understanding as well. And the change is pretty subtle and would probably only be really noticible if it's out of sync with some other timing reference.

So.. what's the goal?

 

[Ratthew]

I'm trying to make the whole song play at a fixed tempo essentially, sorry that wasn't clear before!

The song I'm remixing (shown in the original image) has a varying bpm, however to remix the song I first need to get it all one tempo so I can cut parts out and rearrange them etc.

The tracks shown in the image are the stems of the original song, provided as part of a remix challenge.

Hopefully this helps explain the problem a little better.

Thanks!

[David Baay]

- Save As a copy of the project with "Flattened Tempos" appended to the name. because you're going to be deleting your painstakingly matched tempo changes.

- Select all audio clips.

- Open Audiosnap section of Clip Properties in the Inspector and check the 'Enable' box.

- In 'Follow Options', choose 'Autostretch'' (this mode stretches audio uniformly between tempo changes without regard to beats).

- Check the 'Follow Proj Tempo' box above Follow Options to enable audio stretching to follow changes to project tempo(s).

- Switch to the Tempo List in the Inspector and delete all the variable tempos, leaving just the initial one to be the fixed tempo (you can then adjust that one tempo as needed).

- Experiment with different stretching algorithms on different tracks (see Audiosnap documentation).

- When you're satisfied with the result, you'll probably want to render the stretching permanent by Bounce to Clips(s)) to get the best possible audio quality.

- As before I recommend doing detructive things like Bounce to Clip(s) in a new copy of the project so you can revert to the non-destructively stretched version  if you determine something needs to be fixed later.

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by David Baay
Left out 'Enable' step.

[57Gregy]

On 8/15/2023 at 8:47 AM, Ratthew said:

I'm working on a remix of a song that has a varying tempo, starting at 110 and progressing to 112.4.

In Cakewalk, I've used the tempo track to adjust the tempo so that the songs beats line up with Cakewalk's gridlines properly. However, when I export the track I find that the tempo remains unchanged

How can you tell? The difference between 110 bpm and 112.4 is miniscule.
Just for giggles, use your process to change the tempo from 110 to something like 88 and see if you can hear the change after the export.

[David Baay]

I agree the amount of change he's dealing with is pretty small, especially considering it's over 16 bars. But if he cuts it up and moves parts around without allowing them to follow tempo,  or flattening the tempo overall, he's going to have gaps/overlaps at clip boundaries and sync problem if he moves pieces if individual tracks. In this context, it could be audble if he doesn't do one or the other.

[Ratthew]

On 8/17/2023 at 5:20 PM, David Baay said:

- Save As a copy of the project with "Flattened Tempos" appended to the name. because you're going to be deleting your painstakingly matched tempo changes.

- Select all audio clips.

- Open Audiosnap section of Clip Properties in the Inspector and check the 'Enable' box.

- In 'Follow Options', choose 'Autostretch'' (this mode stretches audio uniformly between tempo changes without regard to beats).

- Check the 'Follow Proj Tempo' box above Follow Options to enable audio stretching to follow changes to project tempo(s).

- Switch to the Tempo List in the Inspector and delete all the variable tempos, leaving just the initial one to be the fixed tempo (you can then adjust that one tempo as needed).

- Experiment with different stretching algorithms on different tracks (see Audiosnap documentation).

- When you're satisfied witht he result, you;ll probalby want to render the stretching permanent by Bounce to Clips(s)) to get the best audio quality.

- As before I recommend doing detructive things like Bounce to Clip(s) in a new copy of the project so you can revert to the non-destructively stretched version  if you determine something needs to be fixed later.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply! I haven't tried this yet and will definitely give it a go.

On 8/17/2023 at 11:25 PM, David Baay said:

I agree the amount of change he's dealing with is pretty small, especially considering it's over 16 bars. But if he cuts it up and moves parts around without allowing them to follow tempo,  or flattening the tempo overall, he's going to have gaps/overlaps at clip boundaries and sync problem if he moves pieces if individual tracks. In this context, it could be audble if he doesn't do one or the other.

This is spot on, having the track tempo matched will allow me to cut and move parts around easily and have all of the clips be aligned properly to the beat when moved.

Will try the above method soon, really appreciate your time and help, thank you!

[David Baay]

Glad to help. Incidentally, it sounds like you manually inserted and adjusted tempos to fit the timeline to the musical tempos. In future - or maybe even in this project -  you might want to look into using Set Measure/Beat At Now (Shift+M) to build the tempo map. You just tell CbB where the beat transients should fall, and it calculates and inserts the tempo changes for you to make that happen. I'm a huge advocate of this technique to allow recording without a click and then matching the timeline to the performance and tightening it up as needed.