Best option if the feel of a track works better at 2 to 4 BPM faster...?

[minminmusic]

Have Sonar and CbB. Track is about 70 to 80 tracks dense. Mixture of audio and frozen soft synths. Currently at 110bpm but it feels a little more exciting at around 113bpm. What's the best way to bulk process the all the tracks just to see how that sounds versus me throwing it into Ableton to get a rough idea? If there's a way to bulk process the tracks...does that adjust the midi within the frozen tracks or will the midi conform and then I have to refreeze the audio to get it in sync. Track is awaiting vocals so still have time to explore options (recutting is really not one of them sadly). :)

[David Baay]

Yes, you can temporarily change tempo of all the audio, including frozen synths. It's non-destructive and completely reversible, but still best to use a copy of the project:

- Ctrl+A to Select All

- Go to the Audiosnap section of Clip Properties in the Inspector and check the Enable box.

- Select Autostretch in Follow Options

- Enable Follow Project and wait for CbB/Sonar to Autostretch-enable all the clips.

- Change the tempo.

If you like the feel, you can set the optimal offline stretching algorithm for each recorded audio clip and bounce to clip(s) to see if the quality is acceptable for your purposes (generally not for publishing/distribution purposes but okay for a demo). And, of course, the synths can just be unfrozen/refrozen at the new tempo.

EDIT:  I should add that the quick and dirty way that will be just as effective for the preview is to bounce the Master bus to a track that outputs directly Main Outs, solo it, Autostretch enable just that clip and change the tempo. You might actually find you get fewer artifacts from stretching the master than stretching individual clips and then mixing down.

Edited April 19 by David Baay

[mettelus]

2 hours ago, David Baay said:

EDIT:  I should add that the quick and dirty way that will be just as effective for the preview is to bounce the Master bus to a track that outputs directly Main Outs, Autostretch enable just that clip and change the tempo. You might actually find you get fewer artifacts from strething the master than stretching individual clips and then mixing down.

When you are that deep into a project this is probably the least painless. To that end you can also have the vocal recorded to the 113bpm version and bring it into the 110 version and slow it accordingly for final mixing. You would still need to repeat the 113 step on the pre-master.

[57Gregy]

If you don't need a definite number (BPM), you can Bounce to Tracks the project twice in the same project, mute all the original tracks and experiment with Process>Length on 1 and compare it to the other which is still at the same speed and length.

[Bajan Blue]

Hi

I use decoda by Zplane for this - I bounce down to a mix track and export it - I can then put that into Decoda and you can change BPM and you can also change the Key

Nigel

 

https://products.zplane.de/products/decoda/

[Craig Anderton]

Don't overlook the ability to render at the existing tempo, then bring the file into Sonar to create tempo changes that help the song "breathe." I did an analysis of several songs' tempo in Sonar, the results are pretty revealing. Please circle back if you need more info on this.

[Glenn Stanton]

a number of years back, a person had done a whole exposé on The Beatles - key changes and tempo changes per song. there is this one but not the tempo map...  https://www.beatlesbible.com/forum/recording-and-musicology/keys-that-the-beatles-used-now-that-youve-found-another-key/

[Herky Acuff]

In the past, artists might speed up the whole recorded song a few bpms, of course, thus having everything raise in pitch. Such as to build excitement, or maybe even fit on the record... This was often done just with vocals - Bruce Springsteen even, on Hungry Heart; Paul McCartney would do this.

I appreciate you're probably not looking for this, well, unless you're working for the Chipmunks... but going up 2-3 bpms overall this way may be okay or fun to try.

[minminmusic]

So...after some experimenting and because I don't think the exact key is super important, I feel the best results I've gotten is taking the whole mix, bringing it into Live at the recorded tempo and then changing the BPM to the desired rate while the Warping is chosen to repitch the whole track upwards. When I used Elastique Pro in Cakewalk...I felt as if the transients were softened a little.  Craig's attached articles are very interesting but I would have to think if you are making subtle variable tempo changes throughout the "finished" track it would have that similar softness I heard on the transients.

So the next question I have...is it possible to repitch a track in Cakewalk similar to Live where in essence...it's just speeding up or down the whole track (with pitch) depending on how you set it? This would seem to have the least artifacts and is almost identical to mixdowns in time past where the mixdown tape decks speed would be adjusted accordingly.

[David Baay]

21 hours ago, minminmusic said:

So the next question I have...is it possible to repitch a track in Cakewalk similar to Live where in essence...it's just speeding up or down the whole track (with pitch) depending on how you set it?

No, you actually have to jump through some hoops to get CbB to change pitch corresponding to the change in playback speed, and it's unlikely to have fewer artifacts because it's two separate DSP operations. If Live is just re-sampling the audio at a lower rate with fewer total samples to make it play back more quickly at the interface clock rate, I believe that would tend to produce the cleanest result other than the slight alteration of pitch formants (chupmunk effect) that shouldn't be a probem with small changes in tempo.

Edited April 26 by David Baay

[Craig Anderton]

On 4/25/2024 at 2:22 PM, minminmusic said:

I feel the best results I've gotten is taking the whole mix, bringing it into Live at the recorded tempo and then changing the BPM to the desired rate while the Warping is chosen to repitch the whole track upwards.

When I used Elastique Pro in Cakewalk...I felt as if the transients were softened a little.  Craig's attached articles are very interesting but I would have to think if you are making subtle variable tempo changes throughout the "finished" track it would have that similar softness I heard on the transients.

If you can handle pitch shifts, speeding up/slowing down preserves fidelity the best. When stretching, what happens to the transients depends on how the stretching algorithm is implemented. The same stretching algorithm can exhibit subtly different characteristics in different programs. For example, a program might prioritize preserving attacks as much as possible, and apply stretching after the attack. 

FWIW, where you place the markers to change tempo also affects the fidelity of stretching-based tempo changes.