Please help a Newbie with basic track clip editing, moving, copying etc.

[Roy Slough]

OK, Am new to CbB but have done work previously with audacity. I cannot find an easy guide to manipulating clips in  tracks.

If I split a clip and delete a section and then drag the edge of the remaining clip, the section I deleted is still there, revealed by the drag.
I understand this is because the original clip is not altered just reference pointers to it but is it possible to trim a section so all the previous and following audio/midi is gone. e.g. I have a vocal in the middle 8 I want to process differently. I split the clip to isolate the section, move it to a new track for different processing/mixing and I don't want all the previous and following sound/data.

Midi data has similar features. If I drag the edge of a midi clip (previously split) it repeats the notes contained within, but this includes notes from earlier in the clip which I didn't want even if I split it.

And lastly (for this question) I have imported several audio tracks, created Midi from the drums. I finally got the tempo sorted manually (if anyone knows how to set tempo from any of the tracks I would appreciate it) Now I find all tracks are .050 behind the beat. How can I move everything? I tried selecting all and dragging left (with Snap off) and the sound totally changed, effects on vox and guitars were lost, midi drums had new sounds etc.  

It may be that use of Ctrl, or Shift or Alt. may be the answers but I am having trouble finding in the CbB help.

Thanks

 

[David Baay]

Right-click > Bounce to Clip(s) will generate new audio file, discarding that parts hidden by slip-editing. Right-click > Apply Trimming is a semi-destructive alternative in that it will effectively flatline the part of the clip that's been slip-edited out, but the clip will still be referencing the original file.

For MIDI, you can also use either Bounce to Clip(s) or Apply Trimming, and you can also disable 'Non-destructive MIDI Editing' in Preference > Customization > Editing so that when you split MIDI clips or delete events in either the Track View or the Piano Roll View , the events are discarded rather then hidden by slip editing.

It's not clear what happened when you dragged everything. In general that should have worked as expected. It's especially unusual that FX changed - not sure how that would happen. But if everything was off the beat, your tempo setting was probably not correct. The approach you need to take to match tempos depends on whether you are all-MIDI or still have a mix of MIDI and Audio. It's difficult to give steps without knowing details of what's in the project. If the drum instruments changed, it sounds like you inadvertently changed pitch. Holding Shift when dragging will constrain movement to one dimension (time or pitch, whichever changes first).

The Reference Guide is here:

 

Edited April 3 by David Baay

[Roy Slough]

7 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Right-click > Bounce to Clip(s) will generate new audio file, discarding that parts hidden by slip-editing. Right-click > Apply Trimming is a semi-destructive alternative in that it will effectively flatline the part of the clip that's been slip-edited out, but the clip will still be referencing the original file.

For MIDI, you can also use either Bounce to Clip(s) or Apply Trimming, and you can also disable 'Non-destructive MIDI Editing' in Preference > Customization > Editing so that when you split MIDI clips or delete events in either the Track View or the Piano Roll View , the events are discarded rather then hidden by slip editing.

It's not clear what happened when you dragged everything. In general that should have worked as expected. It's especially unusual that FX changed - not sure how that would happen. But if everything was off the beat, your tempo setting was probably not correct. The approach you need to take to match tempos depends on whether you are all-MIDI or still have a mix of MIDI and Audio. It's difficult to give steps without knowing details of what's in the project. If the drum instruments changed, it sounds like you inadvertently changed pitch. Holding Shift when dragging will constrain movement to one dimension (time or pitch, whichever changes first).

The Reference Guide is here:

Thanks the reference guide will be ultra useful for me.

Also the info about right click & non destructive vs destructive point me in the right direction.

I have also become aware of nudge which I will try to nudge everything.

To give more info I imported 8 tracks of a song (4xvox, guitar, bass & drums) these were in time with each other but did not match the 120bpm default. I created Midi for the drums using drum replacer to enhance the drums and add extra cymbals etc. At some point during that process I manually altered the tempo until I found one which seemed to match all the transient points for the drums BUT not on the beat. I carried on add effects and mix to the tracks to demo what I was doing for the Artist.  At this point it would be good to further enhance drums etc. but it will be increasingly difficult while everything is slightly off the beat. 

Having learnt this, next time I will import the drum track 1st, align with tempo then all other tracks aligned with the drums, but I don't want to lose the work done so far on this song.

Thanks again

[David Baay]

11 minutes ago, Roy Slough said:

I created Midi for the drums using drum replacer to enhance the drums and add extra cymbals etc. At some point during that process I manually altered the tempo until I found one which seemed to match all the transient points for the drums BUT not on the beat.

Ideally you should get the tempo matched before doing anything with MIDI because MIDI will follow any tempo changes you make later, throwing audio and MIDI out of sync. The exception to this is if you use Set Measure/Beat At Now (SM/BAN) to align the timeline to the audio and MIDI which effectively alters the timeline tempo around both audio and MIDI, adjusting the MIDI event timing and duration to preserve its absolute playback timing at the new tempo(s).

If the audio is starting with a downbeat at 1:01:000, you can just play the project, counting time out to, say 9:01, stop playback, snap the Now Time to the transient or MIDI note that should be on that beat, hit Shift+M to open the SM/BAN dialog, enter measure 9, beat 1, and OK. CbB will change the initial tempo to make that happen.

If the audio wasn't recorded to a click, you may need to 'Set' additional points to get the timeline in sync everywhere. If it was recorded to a click, and you find the new initial tempo is within a few hundreths of some whole number, you can undo the 'Set', snap the Now time to the Measure = Current Tempo +1, Shift+M, enter measure = Target Tempo +1, beat 1, and OK.

Some may suggest using the the drag-audio-to-timeline feature of Melodyne to have it create a tempo map automatically, but in my experience, the results can be hit or miss, depending on the material, and never as precise as doing it manually.

[mettelus]

David introduced me to SM/BAN years ago, and with a small learning curve it is one of the fastest and easiest built-in methods to map tempo to pre-recorded material. It doesn't alter the track material (just the tempo map itself) and can be better visualized as "anchor points" in the tempo map... be sure to also anchor the start point. As David mentioned above (and it is important enough to reiterate), MIDI/Soft Synths will want to align to a tempo map, so be sure to do that tempo mapping before diving too deeply into work. Tools like "snap to grid" rely on the grid (tempo map) being accurate.

Being new, another thing to be aware of is that the old forum is abundant with information, but the search engine on both this one and that are terrible (to put it mildly). Many posts try to drop the terms for things you are asking about (SM/BAN, nudge, etc.), and the forums tend to have better explanations than the User Guide in many instances. To that end, the best method to search each forum is to precede your search terms with "site:forum.cakewalk.com" (old forum), or "site:discuss.cakewalk.com" (this forum), and Google searches tend to be better at returning hits. As an example, if you type "site:forum.cakewalk.com SM/BAN" into Google, it will return hits on SM/BAN from the old forum. Some of the questions you are asking are for terms/functions that have been around forever, so both forums will have relevant hits, but the old forum will have better write-ups at times.

Side note: If you get a response and the term/function is not obvious to you, do not hesitate to clarify so that you can get the info you need for a proper search into the forums (or User Guide, YouTube, whatever).

[Roy Slough]

Can someone tell me why this method didn't work = It should help my understanding of track clips.

All the clips begin at Measure 4:1  So I thought if I set  a tempo change at 3:4 to 150 (the correct tempo for the song) and alter the tempo at 1:1 to somewhere between 140&145 Then it would move the time signature just enough so that 4:1 would land where I need it.  However when I changed the tempo at 1:1 All the clips seemed to adjust themselves.

1st was this a bad plan and if not how do I stop the clips adjusting to the new tempo?

I will try the SM/BAN If/when I do this importing of tracks again.

Edited April 4 by Roy Slough
Corrected

[Roy Slough]

I want to separate the individual drums for stereo effects and different FX , SO I began putting those I wanted separate on different tracks.

This is now making Midi editing too hard so I want all the Midi info in one track and will use a drum map to divert those I need different processing/pan to other tracks.

When I create a new Midi track the solo button appears linked to one of the SI-Drum tracks.  I do not want these tracks linked in this way. what did I do wrong?

Edited April 4 by Roy Slough

[Glenn Stanton]

SI-Drums is limited to 2 tracks. if you have or can install SessionDrummer, then you can get the individual tracks needed. check the box that says "all output channels" and the assign the drums in the SD mixer UI to the channels. one MIDI track, 24 audio tracks.

[Roy Slough]

3 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

SI-Drums is limited to 2 tracks. if you have or can install SessionDrummer, then you can get the individual tracks needed. check the box that says "all output channels" and the assign the drums in the SD mixer UI to the channels. one MIDI track, 24 audio tracks.

 

Dear Glenn, Thank you for the suggestion. It raises 2 questions though

1. Is there a free session drummer available to download?

2. I have been following YouTube videos from Mike at https://www.creativesauce.net/  In this video he creates many tracks for the drums. He creates them in the synth rack and this creates the tracks. To a novice like me this appears the same as creating the instrument in the track BUT is this how he circumvents the 2 track SI-Drum limit?

[David Baay]

9 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

1st was this a bad plan and if not how do I stop the clips adjusting to the new tempo?

Changing the initial tempo after setting one at 3:04 should not have had any effect unless you've changed the Timebase property of some clips to Absolute...? But it wouldn't get the result you're after, either.

By default the Timebase of both MIDI and Audio Clips is "Musical". This means that when you change tempos, their start times will stay locked to the Measure/Beat they're on. But they will go out of sync with each other after that because audio will maintian its Absolute duration, but MIDI will folllow the new tempo. So entering a different tempo at 3:03 would immediately have caused a sync problem, but changing the initial tempo would not have affected anything because everything is still starting at 4:01, and subject only to the tempo at 3:04.

The best way for me to explain what you need to do would be to share a zipped copy of the project folder somewhere and PM me a link. I can fix the tempo issues and tell you the steps it took.

Regarding Session Drummer, it was part of the paid versions of SONAR and is not available for free download, legally. But there are free drum synths available that offer multiple outs. Here's one:

https://www.powerdrumkit.com/

 

 

[mettelus]

10 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

All the clips begin at Measure 4:1  So I thought if I set  a tempo change at 3:4 to 150 (the correct tempo for the song) and alter the tempo at 1:1 to somewhere between 140&145 Then it would move the time signature just enough so that 4:1 would land where I need it.  However when I changed the tempo at 1:1 All the clips seemed to adjust themselves.

1st was this a bad plan and if not how do I stop the clips adjusting to the new tempo?

This is actually a situation where SM/BAN would be worth learning (will explain that after the "why" part... David replied as I was typing this as well). If you think of putting pins/needles into a bolt of cloth from left to right (what inserting tempo changes or SM/BAN is doing), then if you go back to the left and insert another pin to make a portion shorter/longer, it will pull all of the pins right of it along with it. You must work left to right when setting a tempo map to prevent this, and why the very first pin (the "anchor point") is crucial (the very beginning of the song), where everything to the right is attached to that and will move accordingly if you ever move it.

To use SM/BAN:

1. File->Save As... your current project with a new name (can just add SMBAN to the end for the name to make it simple). This way you can work with another project and not make any changes to the one you have now.
2. Open the Tempo Track in the Track View (ALT-T) and expand it enough so that you can see the content. Also, click the "Show/Hide Tempo Inspector" (metronome icon) at the top of the Inspector (I) if not already open so you can see tempo mapping points.
3. Disable Snap to Grid at the top.
4. If you already have tempo map points showing in the inspector, right click in the left side of the Tempo Track and select "Reset Tempo Map" near the bottom. This will flat-line the Tempo Track and leave you with one tempo insert (the project tempo) at 1:01:000 in the inspector.
5. Since you know the project is 150 bpm, rewind to the start of the project (CTRL-Home) and type 150 in as the project tempo.
6. If your project starts at 4:1, and you have a defined drum track, focus the drum track and zoom in (Z-click drag) enough to see that first downbeat. ALT-Z resets your zoom level, so you can bebop in and out quickly with that.
7. CRTL-A to select ALL track clips (this is important), and drag that first downbeat to 4:1. It doesn't need to be perfect, since you need to drive your anchor in here anyway.
8. Click on the first downbeat and hit SM/BAN (Shift-M). This defaults to the closest beat, and the measure is highlighted already, so you can set them by typing the measure (if needed), then TAB to shift to the Beat, enter that, then ENTER to quickly work them through.
9. Hit ALT-Z to do a sanity check and make sure you moved all clips when you scooted them, then ALT-Z to zoom back in.
10. From there, tempos that are pretty tight only need to be checked every bar or so (I would not go any finer resolution that a Beat even if it is all over the place). Focusing on SM/BAN with the drum track zoomed in, CTRL-Scroll wheel to move right and SM/BAN as needed as you move left to right on the track on places where it begins to drift, and work that through to the end of the song.

Once you get the hang of this, you can tempo map a song in pretty short order. Again, if you are ever going to "insert" a soft synth on a pre-recorded song, this is of utmost importance before doing any MIDI work.

Edited April 4 by mettelus

[Roy Slough]

On 4/4/2024 at 8:13 PM, mettelus said:

This is actually a situation where SM/BAN would be worth learning (will explain that after the "why" part... David replied as I was typing this as well). If you think of putting pins/needles into a bolt of cloth from left to right (what inserting tempo changes or SM/BAN is doing), then if you go back to the left and insert another pin to make a portion shorter/longer, it will pull all of the pins right of it along with it. You must work left to right when setting a tempo map to prevent this, and why the very first pin (the "anchor point") is crucial (the very beginning of the song), where everything to the right is attached to that and will move accordingly if you ever move it.

To use SM/BAN:

1. File->Save As... your current project with a new name (can just add SMBAN to the end for the name to make it simple). This way you can work with another project and not make any changes to the one you have now.
2. Open the Tempo Track in the Track View (ALT-T) and expand it enough so that you can see the content. Also, click the "Show/Hide Tempo Inspector" (metronome icon) at the top of the Inspector (I) if not already open so you can see tempo mapping points.
3. Disable Snap to Grid at the top.
4. If you already have tempo map points showing in the inspector, right click in the left side of the Tempo Track and select "Reset Tempo Map" near the bottom. This will flat-line the Tempo Track and leave you with one tempo insert (the project tempo) at 1:01:000 in the inspector.
5. Since you know the project is 150 bpm, rewind to the start of the project (CTRL-Home) and type 150 in as the project tempo.
6. If your project starts at 4:1, and you have a defined drum track, focus the drum track and zoom in (Z-click drag) enough to see that first downbeat. ALT-Z resets your zoom level, so you can bebop in and out quickly with that.
7. CRTL-A to select ALL track clips (this is important), and drag that first downbeat to 4:1. It doesn't need to be perfect, since you need to drive your anchor in here anyway.
8. Click on the first downbeat and hit SM/BAN (Shift-M). This defaults to the closest beat, and the measure is highlighted already, so you can set them by typing the measure (if needed), then TAB to shift to the Beat, enter that, then ENTER to quickly work them through.
9. Hit ALT-Z to do a sanity check and make sure you moved all clips when you scooted them, then ALT-Z to zoom back in.
10. From there, tempos that are pretty tight only need to be checked every bar or so (I would not go any finer resolution that a Beat even if it is all over the place). Focusing on SM/BAN with the drum track zoomed in, CTRL-Scroll wheel to move right and SM/BAN as needed as you move left to right on the track on places where it begins to drift, and work that through to the end of the song.

Once you get the hang of this, you can tempo map a song in pretty short order. Again, if you are ever going to "insert" a soft synth on a pre-recorded song, this is of utmost importance before doing any MIDI work.

Apologies for the delay in getting back = been busy at sons house.

Now... I got as far as set 7 CTRL-A did select all track clips but nothing would move. If I clicked again the drum track became the only track selected as would move. Is it because I have a soft synth with Midi track already added? If so what is the easiest way around?  N.B. I have done some work with a drum map and soft synth rack to separate the individual drums.

Thanks Again Mettelus

[mettelus]

I am not quite sure why those would be locked, @David Baay would be better to answer that one. As far as the easiest way around, as long as you are working in new cwp file (so you are not modifying the old one), you can delete everything but the guide track to set the tempo map. Once that is complete you can then drag/drop the old cwp into the new one (from the Browser->Projects).... this will import all of the instruments, so you can retain the instruments/settings, but the MIDI notes will need to be redone since you have changed the tempo map and the duplicate guide track will need to be deleted. Save the new cwp before that drag/drop just in case... I do not recall offhand if that actually overwrites the tempo map or not, but is another one David would know better. If it does (but I think it doesn't), you can open two cwps side-by-side and drag tracks between them as well as an alternative.

[Roy Slough]

4 hours ago, mettelus said:

I am not quite sure why those would be locked, @David Baay would be better to answer that one. As far as the easiest way around, as long as you are working in new cwp file (so you are not modifying the old one), you can delete everything but the guide track to set the tempo map. Once that is complete you can then drag/drop the old cwp into the new one (from the Browser->Projects).... this will import all of the instruments, so you can retain the instruments/settings, but the MIDI notes will need to be redone since you have changed the tempo map and the duplicate guide track will need to be deleted. Save the new cwp before that drag/drop just in case... I do not recall offhand if that actually overwrites the tempo map or not, but is another one David would know better. If it does (but I think it doesn't), you can open two cwps side-by-side and drag tracks between them as well as an alternative.

I seem to be having difficulties.....  I could find no way to drag/drop the .cwp into the new one,
While I am in the browser window (where you can select which project to open) I cannot drag any project.
If I open the new project, then open the start screen (which shows the select project screen) then those projects cannot be dragged into the new one. Therefore I must not be understanding the (from the Browser->Projects) instruction.

If I have both projects side-by-side The tracks cannot be dragged, they can be copied and pasted but I have to select "new" for the destination, none of the track details such as effects are copied. Then I have to drag/move the clips in that track so that the first transient lines up with the beat (I started with drums) . 
when I then copy/paste the following tracks it becomes difficult to move the resultant clips to line up with the first, sometimes all the clips move, but sometimes only the first clip in a track moves, others remain where they were creating a small gap. I can see this if I have the entire track length in the window, but I need a close up on the start to align with the first track.

OK, Enough of my whinging. I will begin again importing original audio, starting with the drums and ensuring the tempo matches. Then I will add the other audio ensuring they align before any splitting/editing of clips.

I remain baffled as to why I cannot follow simple instructions OR my installation of CbB operates differently

Edited April 8 by Roy Slough

[David Baay]

This kind of stuff is very difficult to advise on without fully understanding the layout of the project, what you're trying to accomplish and the exact steps and moves you're trying to make to get there. I'm confident it's all explainable, but I would have to see the project. While starting over may still be the easiest course, depending on how out-of-whack (the technical term) things have become, I'm pretty sure I could fix the existing one if you care to share it.

[Roy Slough]

15 hours ago, David Baay said:

This kind of stuff is very difficult to advise on without fully understanding the layout of the project, what you're trying to accomplish and the exact steps and moves you're trying to make to get there. I'm confident it's all explainable, but I would have to see the project. While starting over may still be the easiest course, depending on how out-of-whack (the technical term) things have become, I'm pretty sure I could fix the existing one if you care to share it.

Thank you David, By the time I read this I had already started again from the beginning, I have learnt so much that this is a far better organised project than before (and on beat). I still have the previous project so can refer back if necessary.

Once again thanks for the offer.

 

[Roy Slough]

On 4/4/2024 at 4:50 AM, mettelus said:

David introduced me to SM/BAN years ago, and with a small learning curve it is one of the fastest and easiest built-in methods to map tempo to pre-recorded material. It doesn't alter the track material (just the tempo map itself) and can be better visualized as "anchor points" in the tempo map... be sure to also anchor the start point. As David mentioned above (and it is important enough to reiterate), MIDI/Soft Synths will want to align to a tempo map, so be sure to do that tempo mapping before diving too deeply into work. Tools like "snap to grid" rely on the grid (tempo map) being accurate.

Being new, another thing to be aware of is that the old forum is abundant with information, but the search engine on both this one and that are terrible (to put it mildly). Many posts try to drop the terms for things you are asking about (SM/BAN, nudge, etc.), and the forums tend to have better explanations than the User Guide in many instances. To that end, the best method to search each forum is to precede your search terms with "site:forum.cakewalk.com" (old forum), or "site:discuss.cakewalk.com" (this forum), and Google searches tend to be better at returning hits. As an example, if you type "site:forum.cakewalk.com SM/BAN" into Google, it will return hits on SM/BAN from the old forum. Some of the questions you are asking are for terms/functions that have been around forever, so both forums will have relevant hits, but the old forum will have better write-ups at times.

Side note: If you get a response and the term/function is not obvious to you, do not hesitate to clarify so that you can get the info you need for a proper search into the forums (or User Guide, YouTube, whatever).

It has been a while but I thought I would add some information for anyone else trying to match a tempo to imported material.

The whole SM/BAN advice is still good and will help when aligning Bars and beats to a song - But I also discovered in the AudioSnap feature a set tempo from clip.
This worked well for me (even though it calculated 62.5 when I thought it was 125) then I could use the SM/BAN technique to set the bars as I needed (This song had a couple of 2/4 and 3/4  bars ) .

So AudioSnap is something to look at and play with also. - it worked for me....:-)

[John Vere]

 

Edited July 29 by John Vere

[Roy Slough]

On 6/20/2024 at 3:20 PM, John Vere said:

I just read this quickly but I don't think anybody advised about drag and dropping the drum track to the time line to create a tempo map. 

I demonstrate in this video. This has a few tips on extracting tempo as well as lining it up with grid and so on. 

Dear John,  Yes that was very helpful and interesting. Do you know which version of melodyne is needed?
I got 30 days free trial when I started using Cakewalk but that's finished now. This is only a hobby for me so I have to spend my money wisely.
I was going to go for essential as I can always convert Audio to midi outside the DAW using one of the free online websites.
However the timeline thing would also be useful as I am mainly working on mixing stems given to me by my singer (we were in a band 30 years ago).
So IF assistant is needed for both Audio to midi & timeline stuff it might be worth the extra.
I definitely do not need and cannot afford the whole studio melodyne suite.

Thanks for the advice and my response may also help others understand that melodyne has different levels.

Roy

 

 

[David Baay]

47 minutes ago, Roy Slough said:

I got 30 days free trial when I started using Cakewalk but that's finished now.

Essential is sufficient, and my understanding is that the drag-to-timeline function should continue working after the trial has expired, but I can't verify that because I have Studio.

Personally, I prefer Set Measure/Beat At Now because Melodyne interpolates tempo changes every 8th note where they are not needed and often makes gross errors if the tempo is more than slightly variable.

EDIT: Here's quick example of two projects using the same short audio clip - one with tempos set by Melodyne and the other using Set Measure/Beat at Now. The tempo map in the Melodyne project might look "smoother" and more precise, but the metronome is terribly out of sync with the audio:

 

SMBAN vs Melodyne Tempos.zip

Edited June 23 by David Baay

[John Vere]

I’ve rarely ever had that issue. I think it depends on material. It most certainly won’t work with sustained music. I always use the drum track. I Can now improve on that thanks to Next stem separation tool. Split the drums out of any song. 

In the past I sometimes had to nudge a few tempo nodes but now I seem to get very good results. I’m not trying to have dead on midi anyway.

Mostly it really helps work on any song to have the beats and measures at least 1/32 or 1/64 note close enough just for visual editing. 
 

So if the OP has a drum stem to work with it is worth a shot. 
 

And yes I think you only need the very basic version of Melodyne which goes on sale for under $50.