Can you dock the Tempo panel in MultiDock?

[carleenpenoza]

This could be my memory, but I seem to remember the Tempo panel being a tab in MultiDock.  At the moment, it wants to a) be its own floating panel or b) dock on the right or left of my main workspace.  Is it possible to dock it in MultiDock?  Or is the correct answer to stop writing fussy prog-rock songs with tempo changes?

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, the Tempo View was originally down in the Multidock but I always found that kind of clunky. They've moved that view over to a tab in the Inspector, and introduced a Tempo Track, which is MUCH better for visualising where the changes are:

Plus new curve types between tempos as well.

This is a fairly simple song as an example, but I've done some pretty nutty prog songs with a lot of tempo and meter changes and this has been a huge workflow improvement for me. If we can get the Meter view shifted over to the Inspector and a Meter Track similar to the Tempo Track brought in, I would be a happy man.  

[user 905133]

11 minutes ago, carleenpenoza said:

This could be my memory, but I seem to remember the Tempo panel being a tab in MultiDock.  At the moment, it wants to a) be its own floating panel or b) dock on the right or left of my main workspace.  Is it possible to dock it in MultiDock?  Or is the correct answer to stop writing fussy prog-rock songs with tempo changes?

I also seem to recall that the older Tempo View could be put into the MultiDock.  Not 100% sure because I generally didn't use it.  I'm not sure if the new Tempo Track changed that.  Just wanted to let you know that your memory might be correct.

[Andres Medina]

If I'm not missing something, I think the Tempo view was replaced in recent CW versions with the tempo TRACK. It opens from the same View/Tempo menu on top, but behaves differently. It's a track, so I don't think it can be docked.

Here is the documentation link: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Tempo.04.html 

But, perhaps I'm wrong on this one.

[bitflipper]

40 minutes ago, carleenpenoza said:

is the correct answer to stop writing fussy prog-rock songs with tempo changes?

Bite  your tongue! The sacred memory of Neil Peart will not be besmirched by even suggesting that a song might be nailed down at 4/4 120 bpm from start to finish! You start thinking that way and the next thing you know you're insulting your listeners with a four-on-the-floor 808 accompanied by a looped 1-bar arpeggio and referring to your compositions as "beatz".

Yes, your memory is correct. The Tempo window used to be dockable, scalable and floatable. That changed in 2021, to generally favorable reactions among the user base, many of whom had been previously requesting the change. 

There is definitely a benefit to locking the tempo track visually to the track view timeline and treating it like a track (which it technically is), but imo it feels vertically cramped now, especially when you want to insert large tempo changes. These days I'll often just build large changes into the MIDI sequence itself, e.g. ignoring the grid for a ritardando ending.

[Lord Tim]

I can see what you're getting at re: vertical space, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks here. Having a visual correspondence between the tempo changes in the Tempo Track and the actual track view itself is super useful, and you can hide it immediately with a ALT+T, and obviously you can show or hide the Tempo Inspector by pressing I. So you really don't need to see either of these things if you don't want, but they're just there the moment you want them.

But of course, each to their own! We all have our preferences  

[carleenpenoza]

Wow. I got the answer, the reason for the answer, and some context on how to best use the new feature. Awesome.  Thank you all.

[Andres Medina]

Now, thinking about this some more, I've found this problem with the new tempo track: if you have some BIG tempo changes, the vertical space scale of the track apparently is drawn according to the extremes of the tempos, and adjust dinamically, which in normal conditions is great. When I sync music to video, it's useful to make these changes to align the 1st frame of the video to my 1st beat of the music, since there is no way to move the video itself. (this is an old trouble for us who deal with video inside CW).

The problem is that the scale of the map gets stuck, making very difficult to draw subtle tempo changes later in the project. 

There is no vertical zoom control, as it was on the original tempo view. I wonder if this can be done.

Should I post this as a request?

 

[msmcleod]

17 minutes ago, Andres Medina said:

There is no vertical zoom control, as it was on the original tempo view. I wonder if this can be done.

Left click on the tempo scale and drag up (zoom in) or drag down (zoom out) in the same way as you would a clip.  Double clicking on the tempo scale will force it to fit to the current extremes.

[Andres Medina]

26 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

Left click on the tempo scale and drag up (zoom in) or drag down (zoom out) in the same way as you would a clip.  Double clicking on the tempo scale will force it to fit to the current extremes.

Wow. Problem solved! Didn't know that either. Thanks!