Acoustica User Forums

Yes, been a self taught musician 'at it' since 1959, but never got to music theory.
So I'm undertaking a project for a client who wants to do this old song, but I'm going to be preparing my own backing and arrangement; keeping the tempo and feel the same. I start by importing an MP3 of the original into the project as a point of reference.
Problem: Mixcraft autowarps it beautifully, and says the original tempo is 105 BPM. Yet tapping along with it on a BPM counter clearly has it at 70 BPM; and of course the song in no way synchronizes with the metronome.
I'm asking if some knowledgeable person might take a listen and try and identify where I'm going wrong? Time signature maybe? (It's on 4/4 at the moment).
Thank you Mixcraft People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2OQzk8 ... heRickynow

Appears the song was originally done at a tempo of 111 in the ket of f#. Mp3 ‘s are not very reliable at maintaining constant tempo like a metronome or digital beat. I would just use the mp3 as a guide and set up to record the song at whatever tempo works for your singer.

Thanks Tom. Yeah, I thought as much and I normally do roll that way. Just curious to know how MC determined the tempo at 105, but if I tap (1-2-3-4) it's about 69/70 BPM.

Could there be metadata in the MP3 file that states a certain BPM and Mixcraft reads that first?

Trev, try this out and see what it says. From what I can find Mixcraft reads the file for tempo info and if it’s there it uses that for it’s interpretation. Otherwise, mixcraft does an educated guess just like we would manually.

https://getsongbpm.com/tools/audio

Now this is weird Tom!
I tried that and get 103 BPM. Yet if I play the song and use this site to tap the tempo, I get an average of 70 BPM.
I'm wondering if it's not the slightly un-timed intro before the verse starts that is maybe throwing it?
Try playing the song and tapping out the beat here http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

I think your right. Try using a snippet of the song without that intro and see what you get.

Not sure that this applies, but the beat reference in Mixcraft is quarter note only, so if you have a song that's in 6/8 or something like that, the tempo will be way off, because it is customary to use a dotted quarter note in that situation:

ONE two three FOUR five six.

Whereas with Mixcraft it's like this:

ONE two THREE four FIVE six.

I put in the feature request to change that, we shall see!

Nathan

bigaquarium wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:06 pm Not sure that this applies, but the beat reference in Mixcraft is quarter note only, so if you have a song that's in 6/8 or something like that, the tempo will be way off, because it is customary to use a dotted quarter note in that situation:

ONE two three FOUR five six.

Whereas with Mixcraft it's like this:

ONE two THREE four FIVE six.

I put in the feature request to change that, we shall see!

Nathan

Thank you Nathan. I've noticed that Mixcraft gets 6/8 tempo wrong and I've always wondered why. I appreciate your explanation and I'm glad you put in a request. I'm expecting big things for version 10 and hope they deliver all we've requested and more.

Setting the metronome app on my phone to 6 beats per bar, and tapping along to the song from the first post, after the intro, I get 70-71bpm. I think that opening the project as 6/8 is the answer.

I don't think that mp3 files cause timing issues as much as People do. Older music was not recorded to a click track. People naturally speed up a little and slow down a little during the course of a song. Often times, it is not even noticeable until you compare it to a metronome or click. (Listen to Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. It seems so slow at the beginning, but only compared to the end. I measured 97/98bpm at the beginning, 108bpm at about 1:20, and back down to 103bpm at the end of the guitar solo!)

Also working on a project for an old song, I loaded an mp3 of the song into Mixcraft, tapped the tempo into the metronome app, set the project to that, then created a virtual instrument track of a hi-hat hit on every beat. I then split the mp3 file every four bars or so, then stretched or squeezed that few-bars segment to align with the click. Here is the resulting file:
Notice how, sometimes, I adjust one bar at a time. The tempo wavers that much. Sometimes I stretch two bars and squeeze/shrink the next two bars. I wouldn't even notice that wobble by ear; only the click track betrays the original band.

My way IS time-consuming, but accurate...I will try the warp method.

Thanks so much for your input mellotron - much appreciated