Topic: Beginner question – free jamming in Podium

What I really want is an easy interactive way to figure out not only BPM (that’s not too bad as it is really) but also time signature and on what beat my guitar idea starts on. The best way I can think of would be a way to comprehensively experiment with MIDI tempo realtime against prerecorded audio. There are countless tools to mangle and chop audio to fit a MIDI tempo, but it seems little is available to manipulate MIDI tempo into fitting with audio.

A function to automatically extract time signature from an audio recording requires some clever DSP coding. At the moment I don’t have time to implement this. However I have now added a simple function that can help set up a tempo map that matches an audio recording:

Right clicking the tempo lane shows a new “match tempo to cursor” command. This command will adjust the tempo of the last tempo event prior to the play cursor position.

The procedure for tempo mapping an audio recording will thus be:

Align the sound event so that the first bar/beat in the recording is on a bar/beat grid line. If this position is not at the start of the recording, then also insert a tempo event at the first bar/beat position. Now move the play cursor to the next noticeable bar/beat position in the recording, right click the tempo lane and select the “match tempo to cursor” command. The tempo event prior to the play cursor is now adjusted so that the play cursor is aligned on a bar/beat grid line. The editor quantize value determines the snap resolution used by the match tempo command.

You now have a tempo indication of the recording. If this tempo is general for the song, and you had a pause before the recording started, you could replace the default tempo event at the start of the arrangement with this tempo, and then realign the sound event to the new bar/beat grid positions.

If there are tempo changes within the recording, you can repeat this procedure from start to end of the recording. Find the next position where the tempo is changing, insert a tempo event at this position, move the play cursor to the next bar/beat position in the recording, and use the “match tempo to cursor” command.

Will this be in the next demo realease?

Yes.

Is is possible to try a current demo and still have the CM version installed?

I recommend that you uninstall one before installing the other. It should be quick to reinstall the CM version.

Is there an option to make the buttons bigger or to enable tooltips on those track buttons?

The BSMRX track buttons cannot be resized. Later on I’m going to implement mouse-over highlighting of the buttons, like I did recently with the mixer buttons. The tooltips will appear if you hover over the track buttons in the track inspector. All the track buttons have key shortcuts.