Smooth out tempo map?

[jono grant]

Hey folks,

Just wondered: Is there a way to smooth out a tempo map after it's been created?

I've mapped the tempo for an existing track because I have to match it and replicate the track as closely as possible.

The tempo map is good and it follows the beats well but certain parts you can hear the fluctuation. I just wondered if there's a way to smooth out the curve of the tempo map I created.

I guess it would be like adding all the tempos together and dividing to find an average.

Any methods out there?

Thanks!

Jono

[jono grant]

Anyone have an idea about this?

Thanks

Jono

[Blogospherianman]

Yeah, just open up the tempo map view, make sure your click is on, zoom to an appropriate level and draw or redraw the parts that are off while listening to the click.  I personally prefer to do my maps solely by hand just to make sure they’re correct. You can easily adjust your map though.

 

 

[Blogospherianman]

Now say your reference track fluctuated and you had it mapped out already (by hand or melodyne) and you wanted to adjust for the fluctuations in the reference, you can enable Clip Follows Project on your reference track and then make adjustments to the tempo map by drawing or entering values while having your reference track follow your new changes. You can also then look at the tempo list in the tempo view and highlight and delete all but the first tempo and change that one to a new averaged amount if you prefer.  Pretty easy to tame the fluctuations without killing them all together from the tempo view using the draw tool. Turn snap off for smoother tempo drawing .  You can also use Fit to time to change the whole map (or parts even) up or down while preserving the tempo map’s variations. 

[jono grant]

1 hour ago, Blogospherianman said:

Now say your reference track fluctuated and you had it mapped out already (by hand or melodyne) and you wanted to adjust for the fluctuations in the reference, you can enable Clip Follows Project on your reference track and then make adjustments to the tempo map by drawing or entering values while having your reference track follow your new changes. You can also then look at the tempo list in the tempo view and highlight and delete all but the first tempo and change that one to a new averaged amount if you prefer.  Pretty easy to tame the fluctuations without killing them all together from the tempo view using the draw tool. Turn snap off for smoother tempo drawing .  You can also use Fit to time to change the whole map (or parts even) up or down while preserving the tempo map’s variations. 

Thanks! Really, what I want to do I think, is just fix the odd section of my already mapped tempo, without altering the tempos AFTER that point. In other words, I want to smooth out a section by averaging the tempos into one continuous tempo for a particular section but leave the map as it is from the end of that section on-wards.

The only way I can think of, is to calculate the length of the section in seconds, find out how many beats in that section and then calculate how much a beat is (in seconds or fraction of a second) then multiply X 60 to get the amount of beats per minute. Then somehow put that BPM in as a continuous tempo from beginning to end of that section and hope that everything lines up after that.

Does that make any sense? (I kind of grasp what you wrote above but not quite sure. I can't alter the reference track as that is ultimately what I'm trying to match...)

Thanks!

Jono

 

[jono grant]

Actually, I figured it out, thanks!

To average out a tempo mapped section, I did the following:

- I put a marker at the beginning of a bar and at the end of a bar of the section I wanted to average (6 bars)

- I cut an audio file at those two points so I had a single chunk of audio representing that exact section

- I took the chunk into sound forge and under status format “edit tempo” I told it exactly how many beats were there (24 beats)

- I divided 24 beats by 14.670 seconds and multiplied the result by 60

- The tempo average was 98.16 rounded off

- I told Sonar to insert a series of tempo changes from the in time to the out time and chose the same tempo for the in and out time

- It inserted the (single) tempo for that section and everything seemed to stay lined up after that point

Awesome!

 

[Grem]

I think it would have been easier to draw it. Why didn't you try that? Just trying to understand.

[Lord Tim]

I could definitely see how a "Smooth Tempo" function would  be handy. Imagine dragging a track onto the time ruler and having Melodyne detect the tempo of it. Most of the time it does a pretty good job but sometimes you'll get the odd section where things wildly swing all over the place measure-to-measure if the detection gets a bit iffy. Working out an average between sections would get you to the same place, and eliminate those rogue values, but you have to do it manually like Jono did.

Imagine selecting a tempo range in the Tempo View and right-clicking and choosing Smooth Tempo Map and having it essentially take the average of everything between those points, or have logic in there to work out what may be an intentional change. I reckon that' s a good feature request right there!

[chuckebaby]

I use the "Tap Tempo" button and tap out the beat. it displays the  in the tempo box (as can be seen below).

I've tried it several different ways like drawing it in, drag to timeline, exc. I just use what works for me.

It can be difficult to find the flow of a tempo for a song that was recorded without a tempo. Verses can be one BPM, the Chorus can get faster. I go through each part planning the changes, mapping them out and if needed, writing it down for use in a whole new project.

[Variousartist]

Cubase performs this function and, indeed, any tempo related function exceptionally well.  I prefer to use Cakewalk but I mention this in the hopes that they can acquire some of these capabilities.  Note that I’ve been able to achieve it all within cakewalk, but in this regards the workflow and speed is nowhere near as fast (for me at least)

[jono grant]

On 6/16/2019 at 5:56 AM, Grem said:

I think it would have been easier to draw it. Why didn't you try that? Just trying to understand.

Tempo drawing would be good if you could move nodes around to tweak it, it also creates a jittery tempo map. I need this particular thing to line up to another track that had no click. But I don't want any noticeable tempo jumps on a double time percussion instrument. This method actually worked great and didn't take much time at all.

It would be great for CW to have nodes on a tempo line and also a way to smooth out a curve by average.

 

[Grem]

Agree with nodes on the tempo line. I have often thought that should be the case.