Zynewave's Forum Page

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.

i like that feature as well. but the ability to do it on your own is still important for many reasons. what if i am simply removing the vocal “ohh” in 12 spots along 8 measures.

I’ve modified the Q/W key shortcuts to use the quantize value of the editor, instead of always stepping between bars. This means you should have key shortcuts for all the edit actions you’ve mentioned. Shift+Q/W to move the play cursor in quantize steps. Shift+D/F to change the quantize step value. Ctrl+T to split the selected event at the play cursor. Cursor left/right to move between the split events. Delete key to remove a split event. You would probably like to avoid the shift and ctrl key modifiers, but that will need to wait until I implement customization of key shortcuts. There just aren’t enough keys on the keyboard to make all commands available with a single keystroke.

if you have ever have to edit a live mic on 4 minutes of a vox track you will find splitting a track with an S, moving the play cursor with the arrow keys and mouse cursor in any finite increment and not having to click on the cut tool and top of the timeline repeatedly a very effecient thing.

That’s a good example. Trying to look at the bigger picture, would it not be the best solution to have a function that automatically cut out silent passages in a recording? I’m thinking a function similar to the Beat Slice, which has a dialog with various settings and a preview button. There would be settings for silence level threshold (dB), silence time threshold (ms), spike threshold (ms, to be able to cut out clicks in a silent passage) and fade-in/out time on the split events to get rid of clicks.

There is no command yet to match the tempo of an arrangement to an audio recording. But I intend to add this feature. It would be a “match tempo to selection” kind of edit menu, with a dialog box where you would enter the time signature and how many bars the audio recording stretches. Podium would then insert a tempo event that matches the arrangement to the recording.

Until this is implemented, you can do it manually by inserting a tempo event and adjusting the tempo until the bar grid lines lines up with the audio recording. The sound events will resize, and this is in fact what you want in this case.

Please let me know Frits, if there is a way to use a new folder in the devices menu created with the New Folder option I cannot find a way to do it without moving it to another new folder first.

You need to hold the control key to drop objects into a folder. The highlighting under the mouse should indicate this, by either a shaded line between objects (for placing objects between the two neighbouring objects under the cursor), or a fully drawn line over the folder with control key held.

I’m not sure how Chordspace MIDI output works. Podium does not yet support streaming of plugin MIDI output into other plugins, so this could be the problem. I tried the chordspace.com, but it seems the website has been taken down?