Make project tempo follow kick drum

[Matt Rayner]

Hi!
My son's band want me to mix one of their live recordings.
The tempo varies from about 170 - 210bmp.
Luckily it's all very tight and sounds good, and I've got a clear recording of the kick.
Can I make the Time Ruler and Gridlines follow it?
Cheers

[Jonathan Sasor]

28 minutes ago, Matt Rayner said:

Hi!
My son's band want me to mix one of their live recordings.
The tempo varies from about 170 - 210bmp.
Luckily it's all very tight and sounds good, and I've got a clear recording of the kick.
Can I make the Time Ruler and Gridlines follow it?
Cheers

There's a few different ways to accomplish this. The easiest way is if you have Melodyne, then you can drag to the time ruler to extract the tempo. Beyond that you can use AudioSnap's "Set Project from Clip"

[David Baay]

Or (my preference), do it manually with Set Measure/Beat At Now - more flexible, more precise, and worth the time to get it exactly right. 

[Matt Rayner]

Thanks for the replies.

[Jonathan Sasor]

41 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Or (my preference), do it manually with Set Measure/Beat At Now - more flexible, more precise, and worth the time to get it exactly right. 

Manually editing the clip map gets dead on the money too, but more than one way to crack that nut. 

[sjoens]

Or as I always say:  More than one way to skin . . .  (never mind).

Edited 23 hours ago by sjoens

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

Manually editing the clip map gets dead on the money too

Several things have put me off that approach in recent years:

- A regression bug that results in tempo changes not being entered exactly on beats.

- Clip mapping not being restored when a project is saved/re-opened, so you have to get the mapping and extraction done all in one session.

- Related to the above, a tendency for Sonar to crash when doing extended clip mapping work.

- Even if everything goes smoothly, precise clip mapping can take as long as Set Measure/Beat at Now which has none of the other drawbacks.

[Promidi]

10 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

Manually editing the clip map gets dead on the money too

This is the method I have only ever used.  

[Bass Guitar]

May I ask why you need to lock the song to the grid?  Are you going to add midi tracks?
 

Make sure you use a backup copy. 
 

It’s worth a shot to try the dragging the kick drum to the timeline trick first. It takes no effort or time and if it works great, if it doesn’t just undo and try the slow method. 
I’ve had very good success using it.