Changing a Project's Tempo

[Larry Jones]

I'm trying to slow down a project a little. I have about 40 tracks, both audio and MIDI. I'm using these instructions. But I recall reading somewhere else that I have to bounce all the tracks to clips so that they all start at zero. Can anyone tell me if this is so, or if the SONAR documentation is obsolete?

I tried this once without bouncing everything to clips, and once with the pre-bounce. Both times some tracks followed the new tempo, some didn't, and some changed tempos during the track, apparently at random (the tempo map before this operation was a straight horizontal line). I think it was the MIDI tracks that followed the new tempo, which of course makes sense, but I need the audio tracks to go along. I'm only going for a slight reduction in speed, from 172bpm to ~164bpm.

Is there a better way to do this? Or (more likely) can anyone tell what I'm doing wrong?

UPDATE 1: Some of the audio tracks not only don't follow the new slower tempo, they actually change to a much faster tempo!
UPDATE 2: I should note that none of my tracks were played or sung all the way through. They are all comped or punched, so there are a lot of clips in each track.
UPDATE: 3: It is definitely only the audio tracks that aren't playing nice. All the MIDI tracks are behaving as expected.
UPDATE 4 IMPORTANT: I bounced one of the audio tracks to a new track, making it all one continuous clip, starting at measure one and going all the way to the end. When I tried the tempo change again, this track followed the change. So I think this is the solution. I'll try it (tomorrow) on the rest of the audio tracks and render them and see how it sounds.

I'm still open to suggestions and explanations if anyone wants to jump in.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Larry Jones

[Michael Fogarty]

following. I never knew you could get the audio tracks to follow a tempo change.

[Larry Jones]

On 3/14/2019 at 2:52 AM, Michael Fogarty said:

following. I never knew you could get the audio tracks to follow a tempo change.

@Michael Fogarty With Audiosnap, yes, you can change the tempo of an audio track or group of tracks. Check out the link in my original post. Mind you, I'm not trying to have tempo changes during the track. I'm just trying to have the whole thing go at a lower speed. As I said in my many updates above, the audio tracks in my project didn't behave as expected until I bounced one (containing many clips) to a new track so it became just one clip on its own track. Then it worked, and stayed in sync.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Larry Jones
punctuation

[John Vere]

I'm glad you posted this as a week ago I tried to copy a vocal track from an older version of the same song to a new version.  I loved the way I sang the song ( Into the Mystic )  that first time but the tempo was 4 BPM too fast.  So I re did it and have done a better job overall of all but that lead vocals.. Getting old sucks and I just can't sing like I use to.   

 I knew about the continues track trick so I opened the original project, bounced to one whole track and named it so it would be easy to find. So I opened the new version dropped it in and farted around for I don't know how long with audio snap and gave up.  So I will try following your instructions and see if it works this time.  If it does't I just might resort to using Melodyn   

Edited March 14, 2019 by Cactus Music

[Craig Anderton]

23 hours ago, Larry Jones said:

I'm still open to suggestions and explanations if anyone wants to jump in. 

IIRC you have "The Huge Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips" - turn to page 368. The "Yet Another Option" on page 370 might be appropriate as well.

I still think the easiest solution is to wait until the mix is done, then slow down or speed up the two-track.

Otherwise:

1. Bounce all clips to individual, track-long clips.

2. Slip-edit each track to the beginning of the song, and the end to a specific number of measures (e.g., have all tracks end at beat 1 of measure 90). Bounce each clip to itself.

3. Change CbB to the new tempo.

4. Slip-stretch the audio tracks so that they all end at beat 1 of measure 90 at the new tempo.

I go into this in more detail in my December 2018 Cakewalk column in Sound on Sound.  However, at the moment you need to buy the PDF of the article; I believe their articles don't come out from behind the pay wall until six months after publication.

Edited March 15, 2019 by Craig Anderton

[Larry Jones]

8 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

I will try following your instructions and see if it works this time. 

I'm a novice with Audio Snap. I guess you could drop the older, better vocal into the new project (pre-bounced to a single continuous clip), select just that track in the new project, open Audio Snap, and click the Clip Follows Project Tempo button. That seems (to me) like it should work. Don't give up, Johnny!

1 hour ago, Craig Anderton said:

I still think the easiest solution is to wait until the mix is done, then slow down or speed up the two-track.

Hey Craig! I'm having trouble with this song and I'm experimenting with tempo to find a groove, so I need to work on it as a multitrack. In other words, I might play some parts differently if the track is at a different speed. After it's mixed it's too late for that.

If you don't mind, could you please define "slip edit" and "slip stretch?" Like, how do I do that? Thanks!

[Blogospherianman]

I personally prefer the audio snap method. I also have found that clips that are whole and start at zero typically behave the best when stretching in my experience.  Once You've bounced the clips or flattened comps, highlight all audio tracks (quick group makes thi easy), enable audio snap Clip follows Project (auto-stretch), Now play with the tempo or tempos. Once happy, bounce the clips using a good offline Algo.  I find Radius Mix to be the most reliable for me. One reason I prefer Audio Snap is I like to be able to manipulate the tempos in various places like slightly faster chorus's or ritards or to increase an already fluctuating tempo map by a percentage.  If I'm aping a track, I like to map the original tempo map then enable Audio snap Clip Follows and then draw in my own tempos or calm the drummer on some fills tempo wise. 

Edited March 16, 2019 by Blogospherianman

[Craig Anderton]

On ‎3‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 12:28 AM, Larry Jones said:

Hey Craig! I'm having trouble with this song and I'm experimenting with tempo to find a groove, so I need to work on it as a multitrack. In other words, I might play some parts differently if the track is at a different speed. After it's mixed it's too late for that.

If you don't mind, could you please define "slip edit" and "slip stretch?" Like, how do I do that? Thanks!

Regarding the first, I hear ya. I always start with MIDI parts so I can get the feel of the song before overdubbing audio, but that's not going to work for everybody. In any event it gets me close enough that if I feel I need to bump up or down a per cent or two, I can do that on the master.

"Slip Edit" is the standard edit for clip start or end where you hover the mouse over the edge of the clip, click, and drag right or left to extend or shorten. "Slip stretch" uses the Timing tool (under Edit in the Toolbar) or the Ctrl+Shift keyboard command. It's like slip-edit except when you drag left or right, it time-stretches the clip.

An approach that might work for you after recording several tracks is:

1. Bounce the clips in a track together into a single clip.
2. Slip-edit the beginning of each clip to the beginning of the song, and the end to a specific number of measures after the end of the song (e.g., 64 measures, i.e., the start of measure 65). Bounce each clip to itself so the change in length becomes permanent.
3. Create a premix (i.e., bounce them all to a single track) and mute the existing tracks.
4. While listening to the premix, try different tempos. Each time you change tempo, slip-stretch the end of the premix to the start of measure 65.
5. Once you've established the desired tempo, unmute the original tracks, slip-stretch their ends to the start of measure 65 at the new tempo, then delete the premix because you won’t need it any more. (I suppose you could use AudioSnap, but I find that more time-consuming.)

There are probably lots of other ways to do this, but I think it's pretty straightforward.

[Larry Jones]

9 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

There are probably lots of other ways to do this, but I think it's pretty straightforward.

Thanks, Craig. King of the workaround, Master of the alternate method! ?

[John Vere]

Well I'm a wimp and I took the path of least resistance. I followed directions and dropped the original into the new version and tried a few times but then the guitar parts all went weird??  So I did the right thing and poured a glass of Glenlivet  and re sang it and guess what-- it's was even better!  So there's always more than one way to do something in Cakewalk- I highly recommend the Glenlivet VST. 

 

[Larry Jones]

On 3/17/2019 at 10:13 AM, Cactus Music said:

I followed directions and dropped the original into the new version and tried a few times but then the guitar parts all went weird??  So I did the right thing and poured a glass of Glenlivet  and re sang it and guess what-- it's was even better!

Glad it worked out for you! But I thought if you selected just the one track, other tracks would not be affected by Audiosnap. Shows what I know...

[John Vere]

It's just me.. I just don't get along with Audio snap, never have I ever gotten anything it does to work and I guess I'm just not "getting it". With me it's sort of how much time I'm willing to spend learning a feature. I'm always willing to give it a try but if it takes too long to get things working, I return to my tried and true methods.

[Larry Jones]

1 hour ago, Cactus Music said:

I'm always willing to give it a try but if it takes too long to get things working, I return to my tried and true methods.

I'm with you on that, Johnny. as I write this, I am working on Craig's method above. I have already started over 5 times trying to get it right. I don't know if I ever will. If I don't by the end of the day, I'll just re-record the whole freaking track.

[John Vere]

It's funny because as far as older projects with audio goes, As time goes by I discover better ways to capture audio so re doing stuff usually leads to a better finished project. The only trouble  is  I've gone over that hump of being at my "best" as far as guitar playing goes.  As most of us geezers are aware our finger slowly let us down. Singing I just have to sneak up on that mike and catch it in a good momment. 

What was that little Feat tune  Old folks Boggie  " When your mind tells you something that your body can't fill"  

So let me know if you get it working as then there is hope!  

[Larry Jones]

3 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

So let me know if you get it working as then there is hope!  

Got it working! Took me hours to do, but in reality, once I understood what I needed to do, the process only took about 15 minutes. This was using @Craig Anderton's method above. Thanks Craig.

[Gary Shore]

Appreciate all the replies/info/tutorials here as I just posted this yesterday...