"Change Project Tempo" has no effect on actual tempo

[Gary Shore]

Wonder if anyone here might be able to point me in the right direction...although the tempo box on the Control Bar registers the tempo I select using the Project>Insert Tempo Change process,there's no change in the tempo itself...similarly using Tempo View,although the right hand column shows a indicated bunch of new tempos,the clip area itself plays at the same tempo with no change...

Usually w/things like this there's something I either have disabled or enabled that's preventing things from happening as they should..being new to this stuff I'm not sure what's up with it..the Lock is off on Clips...didn't see anything else and according to the Ref Guide things should have taken place as usual based on the fact that the tempo BPM #  shows what I've set it to...???

[David Baay]

'Normal' audio clips that haven't already been 'REXed' or otherwise loop-enabled do not follow tempo changes. The easy way to enable an audio clip to follow tempo changes is to hit Ctrl+L to enable Groove Clip Looping.

To get the highest quality and options for the stretching algorithm used, you will want to use Audiosnap:

1. Alt+A to open the Audiosnap palette, select the clip and click the 'power' button.

2. Set the drop-down next to Clips Follows Project to 'Autostretch'

3. Click the Clip Follows Project button.

Both of these methods assume that the clip tempo is already matching the existing project tempo. if it isn't, the clip will still follow the percentage change in tempo, but the actual tempo won't automatically match the project tempo.

 

[Gary Shore]

Hey David!!

Really appreciate your continued help over here...

I understand what you"re talking about above and see it echoed in the Facebook forums replies I got when I posted the same question last night....however what's' got me confused here is that in the Reference Guide section starting on page 350 focusing on Tempo,it seems to suggest that just doing what I did produces the intended result without having to get into either of the two options you describe...

 

 

(Note-Since posting this earlier in the week,I've reviewed the section being referred to above in the Ref Guide and realized that ,although the first few paragraphs describe the basic tempo change processes,further down the page the distinction between how this applies to audio-MIDI tracks is clearly made...

Also my confusing Groove Clips as they are created from  a process using Loop Construction View w/Audio Clips etc w/ MIDI Groove Clips in the Browser threw me off as well,new to things and didn't realize what was involved)

 

 

Although I didn't include it in my initial thread yesterday,I did spend some time working with the ASP/Tempo (left hand column) "Set Project from Clip/Clip Follows Project" processes and was able to do what I initially wanted to,which was to have the BPM reflect the actual project tempo instead of the default 120 BPM it showed when I imported the tracks...

However when I tried to use it to change the tempo,the results had things out of sync in addition to the sound quality problems pre-rendering,so I started looking into things and found out where in the Ref Guide this was covered,which led to my eventually posting about things above...

Basically all I want to be able to do here is take something recorded @ a given tempo and move it around a little in either direction in terms of BPM to see where it sits best,then use this new tempo.. for ex. the current project is @ 104:45 BPM,I'd like to move it to around 108....

When I was familiarizing myself w/the DAW,I worked with tempo a little on a single track,stretching it and seeing the results I got,before starting working on this new project which has 8 tracks...Hoping to find an approach that parallels this for the current one ...

I messed around with this in Audacity before getting started with CbBL and saw there that just doing what I did yesterday resulted in an immediate new tempo ..would really like to do as close to this type of thing with CbBL if possible.... 

I tried "Select all" and stretching one yesterday as well but didn't get the results I wanted,not sure if this was because I did some editing on one of the tracks which resulted in split clips/new clips there...remember seeing that although the clip I stretched and most of the others showed 101%,the edited one had 103% or something,but by that time I decided to use Edit/History to get the project back to its original state again as I spent a lot of time prior to importing the tracks making sure they were lined up in terms of their overall sync/groove and didn't want to mess with this.....

Would you recommend using a single track initially to get the tempo adjusted then applying the new tempo across the board rather than trying to set the tempo for the whole project?

The one thing I noticed is that you suggested this yesterday  (see below) ,I had it set to Clips....

I'll  be continuing to work on things a little later on after reviewing a bunch of tutorials about it,as well as some Discuss threads from other people asking about it I found etc..would appreciate your(or anyone else's') continued help getting this skill set together as I'll be working with tempos a lot...

On 1/20/2020 at 10:44 PM, David Baay said:

Set the drop-down next to Clips Follows Project to 'Autostretch'

Edited January 24, 2020 by Gary Shore

[David Baay]

The best approach and exact sequence of steps depends on what you're starting with (i.e. all clips the same length and  at the same, known and fixed tempo, or clips with different lengths and/or variable/unknown tempos). It's hard to give explicit intructions with knowing that. If the tracks were recorded together so they're all nominally in sync with each other, then, yes, I would suggest choosing one track to be the 'master' reference for setting the the project tempo(s). Then enable autostretch on all the clips, and make any changes to the project tempos that you feel are needed. 

If you have the additional situation that the tracks are not already well-synced to begin with - either because they're from different sources or because one or more performances are rushing/dragging - you would need to sort that out as an intermediate step between setting the project, and re-jiggering the tempo(s) of the whole project.

The difference between Autostretch and the other modes of Clip Follows Project is that it won't immediately alter the clip timing when enabled. The clip will just follow changes that you make to the project tempo after enabling it. The other modes will immediately stretch the clip to conform to the project tempo based on the clip's tempo map. This requires doing  a lot of work on each clip to ensure that the beat markers in the clip tempo map are matching the audio transients, and that's going to get messy and time-consuming when working with multi-track recordings.

 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by David Baay

[Bill Phillips]

18 hours ago, David Baay said:

'Normal' audio clips that haven't already been 'REXed' or otherwise loop-enabled do not follow tempo changes. The easy way to enable an audio clip to follow tempo changes is to hit Ctrl+L to enable Groove Clip Looping.

To get the highest quality and options for the stretching algorithm used, you will want to use Audiosnap:

1. Alt+A to open the Audiosnap palette, select the clip and click the 'power' button.

2. Set the drop-down next to Clips Follows Project to 'Autostretch'

3. Click the Clip Follows Project button.

Both of these methods assume that the clip tempo is already matching the existing project tempo. if it isn't, the clip will still follow the percentage change in tempo, but the actual tempo won't automatically match the project tempo.

 

Does the Melodyne Essential which is bundled with Cakewalk have any tempo settings features? If yes, that might be another option. I have the Studio version which has substantial timing and tempo capabilities which I'm trying to learn.

[David Baay]

Yes. Melodyne Essential can both extract tempo from a clip, and allow a clip to follow changes to project tempo. You just don't have as much control over the result as with Editor or Studio. Audiosnap is more flexible and powerful than any of them for adjusting timing, specifically, but it requires more user intervention to get a good result.

[Bill Phillips]

I have Melodyne Studio 4. Doesn't tht Studio version allow me to use ARA to apply the tempo map of a file in the Melodyne RFX to a Cakewalk Project? There should be an "Apply File Tempo to Project" option but I can't find it.

I just applied a Melodyne Region Effect (RFX)  to an acoustic guitar for a project that I'm working on. It's the only file in Melodyne at the moment. Once Melodyne finished analyzing it shows a project tempo (from Cakewalk) of 120 bpm and a tempo from (the Acoustic Guitar track play head location) of 93.23 bpm.  See first screenshot. But there appears to be no option for applying the track tempo to the project. I tried all the options in the green box in screenshot 2. The remaining tempo related options are  in the green boxes on screenshot 3.

I know that I can drag the acoustic guitar track to the timeline to apply the tracks tempo map to the project. But, my understanding is that I should be able to do that from inside the Melodyne RFX as well.

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by Bill Phillips
Clarification

[Gary Shore]

David and Bill-

Have to thank you both for all the info/screenshots...

As usual Cakewalk Discuss Q+ A proves itself a tremendous resource for those of us feeling our way around things we're not entirely sure about....

To be honest I've yet to really study/digest everything that's been posted here since the other day as I was focusing on the info in some of the threads/tutorials I found (as I mentioned above) along w/ one of Karl Rose's great series that abacab posted the link to (#36) which gets into tempo in detail showing the different options available... 

I also posted the same question in the 5 Cakewalk FB groups and got some good info/tips there as well...

Where a few days ago I was in the dark about all this stuff,now I have a sense of what's involved and am trying to slowly internalize everything in the context of just getting starting w/some projects in the DAW and focusing on various other aspects as well(for ex.I just figured out how to use the Markers View to completely identify all the areas I want to focus on in 7-8 min.long tracks,been looking at how the Anderton Kickmaster FX Chain works,etcetc...)

Again much thanks...looking forward to other replies and the thread becoming another of the many invaluable reference threads here on CbBL Discuss that people can use to figure things out....

Edited January 24, 2020 by Gary Shore

[Gary Shore]

On 1/21/2020 at 10:51 AM, David Baay said:

The best approach and exact sequence of steps depends on what you're starting with (i.e. all clips the same length and  at the same, known and fixed tempo, or clips with different lengths and/or variable/unknown tempos). It's hard to give explicit intructions with knowing that. If the tracks were recorded together so they're all nominally in sync with each other, then, yes, I would suggest choosing one track to be the 'master' reference for setting the the project tempo(s). Then enable autostretch on all the clips, and make any changes to the project tempos that you feel are needed. 

If you have the additional situation that the tracks are not already well-synced to begin with - either because they're from different sources or because one or more performances are rushing/dragging

 

 

 

 

 

I posted this section of DB's first reply yesterday so anyone who might want to get into this would have a clear sense of the project in terms of the factors  mentioned ...

These are all audio tracks recorded externally that have had quite a bit of work done on them so they are not only sync'd but have the type of groove I'm looking for as well,in fact I've been looking at where in each of the 3 projects I imported into the DAW I might want to use elements to set up the POOL ...

However there are elements I 'd like to mess with,either sectionally or throughout the track,requiring some of the more detailed processes referred to using ASP/Grid etc ...(this has a lot to do w/my previous thread here from last week that David replied to)...

For ex on the one I spent a few hours on yesterday I think I'll move the hihat placement around a little as it plays the kind of 8ths patterns w/16ths used in the context of an 8th note groove that really glues everything together,it's a focus element of the track and has to be sitting in the pocket so everything else works with it...

W/tracks duplicated in the interest of setting up groups for each instrument,processing each individually (i.e 3 snare tracks,2 bass tracks etc)each project has somewhere between 10-16 and I'm anticipating this increasing as I get more into things. .

Hopefully with this info,understanding what exactly is involved is easier now and could potentially lead to a more specific set of "instructions"  as indicated( in addition to everything else that's already been posted which gives me a clear sense of how proceed across the board...)

 

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Gary Shore