Midi file to Audio track waveform/ASP

[Gary Shore]

Appreciate all the previous replies I've gotten from people here when I've posted a question...really helped me figure things out...

 

Probably there's info about this in the Documentation/Ref Guide but figured I'd open it up for feedback here...

 

I have an audio track I've been working on getting a sense of how to use AudioSnap/Quantization with,dealing w/everything involved(Clip tempo Map,Tempo View,Transient Markers etcetc)and applying varous things I've been seeing in tutorials...

This is a  percussion track recorded externally then imported into Cakewalk that already has had Quantization and other ways of setting up the groove applied;just wanted to see how things worked using it...

 

Not getting the results I'm looking for,dealing w/"tempo jumping" /uneven  tempo/measures shortened/weird artifacts relating to stretching the audio etc etc whenever I try to Quantize/Groove Quantize it....

Assuming this is due to my initial approach to things which I'm still getting a sense of,for ex.how adjusting the strength/window/offset in the Quantize Dialogue affects things...

Been checking out the Groove Monkee and other MIDI clips and would like to see if I'd get better results with these since they're set up differently in terms of the timing being exact/no doubt line up directly to the grid etc...

 

Realize I could get into working w/these in the PRV however I have a bunch of other audio files ready to import into Cakewalk which will require similar tweaking w/ASP etc and want to figure things out....

 

Would greatly appreciate a simple walk-through of how I might be able to to convert these type of MIDI clips (which I know how to get  onto a MIDI track from the Browser and work with)to an Audio track/waveform so I could apply the things I'm currently looking at with all the ASP/Quantization aspects  of Cakewalk ....as well as any links to where this info is /tutorials explaining it...

In addition,I would really like to hear from anyone who understands what I'm describing going on with the track I've been getting all these unwanted results with who might know what's behind this .....

The strange thing is that the Tempo View shows only the one tempo used over on the right side at the top of the column,yet playing back the track after Quantization produces the results described above....

 

 

Edited January 19, 2020 by Gary Shore

[reginaldStjohn]

3 hours ago, Gary Shore said:

 

Would greatly appreciate a simple walk-through of how I might be able to to convert these type of MIDI clips (which I know how to get  onto a MIDI track from the Browser and work with)to an Audio track/waveform so I could apply the things I'm currently looking at with all the ASP/Quantization aspects  of Cakewalk ....as well as any links to where this info is /tutorials explaining it...

As far as getting a midi file into an audio waveform the easiest way is to just freeze the track (the little * on the track header).  Of course this assumes you have the midi routed to a synth and the synth output routed to a track. Then when you freeze the audio will get "recorded" on the audio track of the synth output.

[Gary Shore]

Thanks for replying ..actually saw this mentioned online prior to posting but it was an older article and wasn't sure it still applied...

Is there anything else involved in doing this or is the audio  now on the Instrument track of the Soft Synth 2 track set-up the same as any other audio track?

Also on a related subject,are any of the files in the Media Browser (Cakewalk Core or any other locations)audio files instead of MIDI?

[David Baay]

Yes, you can use Audiosnap on frozen audio tracks. But Audiosnap is really optimized for music that is essentially a fixed tempo with just a bit of rushing/dragging.  For music that has more deliberate/radical rubato, you will be better of using a manual method like Set Measure/Beat At Now, which I prefer for mapping even fixed tempo audio (and which can work directly with MIDI to even better effect because the note starts can be precisely located).

For automatic tempo extraction requiring the least amount of fiddling/tweaking, you will get the best result from the drag-to-timeline function of Melodyne. A Melodyne Essential demo can be installed from the Add-Ons section of Bandlab Assistant, and the drag-to-timeline function will continue to work indefinitely even after the rest of the demo expires. You just drag and drop the audio clip on Cakewalk's timline. But Melodyne also works best for essentially fixed-tempo music.

See this post (and the thread in general) for guidance on doing it manually with Set Measure/Beat At Now:

 

 

[Gary Shore]

David-

Good to hear from you again,remember you helping me figure out other things I posted about...

Glad to see you mentioned Melodyne as coincidentally I just spent some time studying tutorials about using it after installing it earlier this week in the context of looking into how to convert audio files to MIDI and was able to do it successfully as well as get a sense of what you can do w/the Editor...

A few questions-

After installing it,I got a screen telling me to install the 4.2.4 version, which I did,however apparently Cakewalk is still using the original version installed from the Bandlab Assistant dropdown as I keep getting the same screen each time I open the Editor.....?????

Melodyne Studio which is the 30 day trial version will continue as Melodyne Essentials after the trial ends if I 'm correct.....will this still allow an audio file to be converted to MIDI?Also will the Polyphony Algorithm I used to get a single-line MIDI file made from percussion audio track to display the different instruments on different lines in the Editor be available as well?

I spent some more time w/ASP/Quantization  this AM and am happy to report I was able to get the audio file to Quantize successfully without any of the problems I referred to above...

I focused on using Snap to Grid to set up Transient Markers at regular locations/evenly spaced...disabled all the TM that were between them and even inserted new TM where there was no transient,as well as moving existing ones directly to the Grid.....also set the Clip Tempo Map up directly corresponding to this....

Thinking that the previous phenomena were due to the fact that the audio track had transients that,although they showed up using Threshold/Resolution set to 8ths,were far enough off the Grid that,without what I did this AM(although sounding good in the context of the track after various processes had been applied before importing it into CbBL),Quantizing it led to all kinds of unwanted results as described.....

Since I'm just getting a sense of things w/ASP/Quantize,still very interested in any feedback you or anyone else might have about the things being focused on here......

[David Baay]

I didn't realize BA was installing a Melodyne Studio trial because I had already upgraded my Essentials version from SONAR to Editor some time ago, and never installed from BA . I'm pretty sure you'll be down to monophonic MIDI extraction after the expiration in any case.

 My main complaint with using Audiosnap to extract tempo is that it doesn't place the tempo changes exactly on beats - a regression that came up in X1 and was never fixed. The small discrepancies aren't really audible for the most part, but it offends my sense of order. I've also found it to be a bit unstable when making a lot of clip tempo map adjustments, and those adjustments inevitably take as much or more work than just using Set Measure/Beat At Now which offers more flexibility and precision (e.g. setting fractional beats, dealing with rubato, or setting nothing for several meaures when the tempo and timing are stable). Also, alterations to clip tempo maps don't save properly, so you have to do all the mapping and execute Set Project from Clip in one session.