Many, many tempo changes throughout the project

[Dana Elston]

To the point...I have wav files recorded in a project not using a click track. The project is 25 minutes long recording session non stop (no breaks). There are 3 separate  songs within the project with varying tempos. I want to add midi drums but not without a click track.  I've looked into ways to do that from Cakewalk such as using Audio Snap and the Fit Improvisation method which are very cumbersome with a project like this. I've seen videos of alternate methods to alter the bpm using a simple midi track to determine the downbeat but can't locate it. Can anyone point me in the right direction here? Thx!

[OutrageProductions]

Trying to turn garbage into a diamond requires a lot of patience and time, but it can be done.

By going through the material in a methodical manner and using the

<Project > Set Measure/Beat at Now>

function measure by measure, you can create a tempo map that works very well.

It is extremely tedious work and I occasionally have to do it for clients, but I get paid handsomely for it.

[David Baay]

 

I must respectfully disagree that music played with a free tempo is necessarily "garbage".  ;^)

I'm a big advocate for using Set Measure/Beta At Now (SM/BAN) for this purpose. But in some cases, it might be quicker - if somewhat less precise - to create a MIDI Guide Track with one note per beat (i.e. quarters), and run Fit Improvisation against that track to create the tempo map.  Audiosnap can be used to take a first whack at generating the notes of the guide track to be dialed in manually as needed, but I wouldn't recommend trying to use Audiosnap - Set Project from Clip with no manual intervention.

And, of course, there's drag-audio to-timeline to have Melondyne (Essential is available as a free add-on for CbB) to create a tempo map, but I don't like some aspects of what it does (namely interpolating "smooth" tempo changes at every 8th note even where no notes exist), and it's not always 100% accurate, either. Like Audiosnap, Melodyne might best be used for extracting MIDI to get a head start on creating a guide track for Fit Improvisation.

In any case, I would advise separating the three songs into separate projects, and trimming/dragging the audio files to start at 1:01:000 in each project - or with the first downbeat on 2:01:000 if there are pick-up notes.

I've given steps for using SM/BAN to do this many times before, but if the OP wants to share one of the tracks - or part of one - I'd be happy to have a look and give specific guidance for applying one or both methods. The exact steps needed can depend significantly on the nature of the recording

 

[Dana Elston]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

 

I must respectfully disagree that music played with a free tempo is necessarily "garbage".  ;^)

I'm a big advocate for using Set Measure/Beta At Now (SM/BAN) for this purpose. But in some cases, it might be quicker - if somewhat less precise - to create a MIDI Guide Track with one note per beat (i.e. quarters), and run Fit Improvisation against that track to create the tempo map.  Audiosnap can be used to take a first whack at generating the notes of the guide track to be dialed in manually as needed, but I wouldn't recommend trying to use Audiosnap - Set Project from Clip with no manual intervention.

And, of course, there's drag-audio to-timeline to have Melondyne (Essential is available as a free add-on for CbB) to create a tempo map, but I don't like some aspects of what it does (namely interpolating "smooth" tempo changes at every 8th note even where no notes exist), and it's not always 100% accurate, either. Like Audiosnap, Melodyne might best be used for extracting MIDI to get a head start on creating a guide track for Fit Improvisation.

In any case, I would advise separating the three songs into separate projects, and trimming/dragging the audio files to start at 1:01:000 in each project - or with the first downbeat on 2:01:000 if there are pick-up notes.

I've given steps for using SM/BAN to do this many times before, but if the OP wants to share one of the tracks - or part of one - I'd be happy to have a look and give specific guidance for applying one or both methods. The exact steps needed can depend significantly on the nature of the recording

 

I actually did create the midi guide track with one note per beat (downbeat) for the entire 25 minute set, selected the track making sure to start at 1:01:000. Got an error message saying "Required tempo exceeds available range". So I don't know what I'm doing wrong there. I did also try Melodyne but I'm a bit unfamiiar on using it this way so I need to educate myself more on it. Just an FYI...when these songs are recorded and because of the nature of how the songs are recorded there is no way to plan ahead how long the songs will be. Otherwise I could set a click track ahead of time for the entire session. What steps would I need to go through for guidance?

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, Dana Elston said:

Got an error message saying "Required tempo exceeds available range". So I don't know what I'm doing wrong there.

That might happen if you inaadvertently put two notes on one beat requiring an impossibly high tempo or, in this case, if you kept the three songs together and had a lng gap between the end of one an the start of the next that would require a tempo less than CbB's minimum of 8 bpm.

Also, Fit Improv requires a note on every beat;  notes on downbeats would be interpreted as quarters, resulting in tempos that are 25% of what they should be.

But you can use that guide track with Set Measure Beat At Now, itshould give a good result.

I would start by setting the Now time at the downbeat that should be 5:01, hitting Shift+M, and entering that measure and beat and OK.

That'll give you a reasonably accurate average tempo so CW can accurately guess the other beats.

Select the MIDI clip and use the Tab-to-notes feature to go out another 4 measure and Set that 9:01 which CbB should guess correctly so all hou have to do is hit Shift+M and Enter.

Then you just keep going: Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab, Shift+M, Enter, Tab, Tab,Tab,Tab, Shift+M, Enter... as fast as you can.

You can speed that up even more by binding a single key to SM/BAN in key bindings. I use it so much I bound S for "Set".

If you make a mistake or get a "tempo out of range" error, Ctrl+Z to Undo and make sure you're setting the right note to the right measure/beat.

At some point, you should stop and listen to the piece with the playback metronome running and see how it sound. If the performance was reasonably tight, a tempo every 4 measure might be enough. If there are rough spots, you can go back and set intermediate downbeats as needed or even every measure.

The beauty of SM/BAN is that you can set as many or as few points as needed to get what you want, and you can even set fractions of beats (just remember that they're decinmal values, so an 8th note between to beats is .500, not 480 ticks).

And finally, Set Measure Beat At Now is only as precise as your precision in setting the Now time to the transients. You can Tab to transients (Shift+Tab to go backward) in an audio clip just as you can Tab to notes in a MIDI clip, but CbB may not place the marker exactly at the beginning of a transient, and you will likely need to enable Audiosnap and raise the Threshold slider in the Audiosnap Palette to disable superfluous markers for transients between beats so you're not Tabbing 8-16 times to get through a measure.

Clear as mud? Sorry, this stuff is always easier to do than to describe. ;^)