drifting tempo

Crispy24 · Post by **Crispy24** » Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:14 pm

I have drifting tempos and not lining up with the metranome. They line up at first then get off. I am not sure what to do. I first off am using mixcraft 5.1. I have watched all the videos I can on mixcraft, and the ones recommended. I have about 15 tracks that make up one song and they are all broken down to individual tracks such as bass, vocals, synth, etc. I started the project with the synth first, and it is a bpm of 135.99587 after selecting just the eited part of the synth I wanted to loop. The song comes from a band who is having a contest for the best remake of there song, and I am stuck because things don't line up exactly. Everything so far is from the tracks the artist gave out, the only track this far along I have used that is Mixcrafts is the kick drum. It is set at a bpm of 135. I want everything to line up with the metranome. I tried setting the project tempo to 135, 136, and even 135.99587. I have literally spent 30 hours over the last week trying to figure this out because I am determined to get it and have the song finished before the deadline which is December 1. If I am having many different tracks that have different bpm's and I am adding them all together, and if I edit and take different parts of the tracks to loop them to make it my own I am changing the bpm so not everything is the same bpm. I am not sure what to set my project tempo to, and I am not sure how to get my synth to line up with the metranome. The Kick Drum is ligned up with the metranome, and I cant get the vocals to lign up either because they are also 135.99587 if I don't spit up the track. I really hope I am making sense, and I appreciate any help, because I have read about the drifting tempos and other help topics. I tried splitting up the synth but it's not easy, and in doing so the first split is 136, and then changes to 135.8, and s on and I can here the split when playing it isn't perfect in the sound during the transition of the bpm change. I have auto beat match on.

Bucktail · Post by **Bucktail** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:40 am

Did you ever get any help on this?

Bucktail · Post by **Bucktail** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:52 am

I have read the documentation on how to fix a drifting tempo. Sure is a lot of work making each beat match up to the project tempo. Can a tempo be forced on a whole track so the beats match up to the tempo you want for the project?

YouTube · Post by **Acoustica Greg** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:03 pm

Bucktail wrote:I have read the documentation on how to fix a drifting tempo. Sure is a lot of work making each beat match up to the project tempo. Can a tempo be forced on a whole track so the beats match up to the tempo you want for the project?

Not if the tempo is changing within the sound. If the tempo is consistent, yes. If it is changing over time, you have to do some tweaking. Check out these video tutorials: Creating mash-ups, remixes and DJ mixes, part 1 and Creating mash-ups, remixes and DJ mixes, part 2. They are for Mixcraft 4, but it's still helpful advice.

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:58 pm

I created a new track for my project with tambourine hits on the 1,2,3,4 and the same with taiko drum hits on 1,2,3,4
quantized them etc...and they still drift out of sync after a while !! how is this possible?

what can I do to correct this? also strangely enough, one of the maracas percussion song loops started fitting perfectly with the taiko drum track after a bit of time stretching.....what puzzles me is how come the tambourine hits which are not preset loops are not syncing perfectly ?

what is the cause of tempo drifts anyway ?

will watch the vids mentioned before as well.

thanks for a detailed answer so noobs like me can understand.

mandofrog · Post by **mandofrog** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 4:22 pm

I'm looking for a similar solution. I've got a simple 5-string banjo track (bluegrass style) on a song. I'm not a banjo player, and after days of practice on a borrowed banjo, my best effort still had pretty shaky tempo throughout. All staccato 1/16th notes, and LOTS of them were slightly ahead or behind the beat.

Well, lo and behold, a friend talked me into exporting that track (.wav file) into Garage Band on his Macbook. Voila! 7 minutes later (it's a 5 minute song), the whole analog track was quantized and all those 16th notes matched up nicely to the BeatCraft generated drum track (steady 110 bpm).

I'm familiar with quantizing MIDI tracks - that's easy - but I didn't think an analong track could be quantized like that. I want MixCraft to do THAT!

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 2:33 am

garage band can do that? hmmm.......when I started out, I thought something like this would be basic functions in any DAW.

mandofrog · Post by **mandofrog** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:50 am

I'm going to find out more about how a friend did this in Garage Band. I started another post ("Quantize an analog track?"), and now realize I should have just stayed on one thread.