Tempo Map

[BradC]

I have a song that is an old Irish lament in the Sean Nos style.
Meaning there is no set BPM or steady rhythm so it varies.
I recorded the melody guitar without a metronome with the time on the track not beats.
I want to add other parts and was advised to create a tempo map that the other parts can adhere to.

Is there a way to create such a tempo map with Mixcraft 8 and Melodyne?
If so does anyone know of a tutorial for doing it or can you advise on how?

Thanks much!

Cheers!

[BradC]

I take it by the underabundance of replies that a tempo map cannot be created in Mixcraft...

Oh well.

[aj113]

Beat matching is difficult and time-consuming in any DAW, but even worse, it is not Mixcraft's strongest suit, since it has no dedicated feature. I've tried it a few ways but all are painful. If I were to do it again, I'd copy an audio sample of whatever I wanted to use as a click sound (sidestick for example), then paste it in manually at the beginning of each bar. If you're lucky the waveform will be a big help as a guide. You can then go back and paste in half notes and quarter notes if necessary. Sounds like hard work but I reckon it would only take about 15 minutes or so.

[Acoustica Greg]

I have a song that is an old Irish lament in the Sean Nos style.
Meaning there is no set BPM or steady rhythm so it varies.
I recorded the melody guitar without a metronome with the time on the track not beats.
I want to add other parts and was advised to create a tempo map that the other parts can adhere to.

Is there a way to create such a tempo map with Mixcraft 8 and Melodyne?
If so does anyone know of a tutorial for doing it or can you advise on how?

Thanks much!

Cheers!

Hi,

You can add track markers with tempo information in them for different sections of the song.



On the sound tab, you can set sounds to Use Project Tempo, but this will work well only if Mixcraft can detect the tempo of the audio or read tempo data stored in the audio. If you recorded it yourself, it won't have tempo data stored in it and it would have to have a clear beat for Mixcraft to detect it. In that case, you'd have to play around with it. There is a tap tempo option so you can try to tap out the BPM.

Greg

[BradC]

Thanks Greg and aj113!

I appreciate you taking the time.

Yep, sounds like a frustrating and laborious undertaking.
I'll give it a shot though.

Thanks again!

Ciao, Brad

[msnickybee]

I've done a song with a lot of tempo changes in Mixcraft, to give it the feel of naturally accelerating slightly (a more "human" feel), and I can say that it works quite well.
The problem comes of course when there's a time signature change (think The Stranglers "Golden Brown" or Pink Floyd "Money") as well. Mixcraft can handle this of course, but I find it difficult, and you can rapidly get in a pickle with linked tracks and "snap to grid" etc.
Even in this Sound on Sound article it talks about how it sometimes comes down to a bar-by-bar analysis.

Good luck, and if I know *anything* (I don't):
(1) record against a metronome or click or lay down rhythm first (you can always humanise this later as explained above)
(2) or keep it all free...just play along and enjoy, and play by ear... you can always "time stretch" parts that you then play and record slightly out of time (be careful with warp/quantise)

[BSArmstrong]

If I am recording with a (regular) drum beat then beat matching is pretty straightforward.

Like the original poster, however, I regularly record with freer time so that the music breathes.
If the track does not require or benefit from metronomic pulse then this is the only practical way to get such a recording.
Recording to a metronome and then adjusting the tempo of individual bars (or even parts of bars!) to get the same effect is as bad - probably worse - than the issue raised with the poster, which I have tried to find a solution to which works for me.

I have tried with some success a method which is time consuming but not overly so for shortish pieces:
I went through the clips containing the melody and inserted a marker at the first beat of each bar - labelling them 1.1, 2.1, 3.1 etc. It was also useful to place markers on each beat for some bars (1.2, 1.3, 1.4 etc).

Then using my ear to detect when I wasn't happy that my "free tempo" recordings sounded satisfactory I inspected the other instruments and could see when notes played were sufficiently distant from my markers to result in them sounding out of time.

Interestingly, from the musical point of view, I found that placing things "correctly" often sounded equally unmusical, as if the bass for example were driving/pushing the music forward when I wanted it to drift behind the melody at times.

Of course, at other times I might find it more helpful to apply the markers to a bass-line and then adjust melodic clips against them if you want accompanying chords, etc to sound more in time, but with the melody being more ad lib.

Finally - assuming the facility isn't in Mixcraft already and I've just not found it! - could a suggestion for Mixcraft development be to allow markers to appear on the piano roll as vertical lines to make beat matching so much easier and quicker should my method be used frequently - as I suspect it will for me from now on.

Thank you