Time stretching audio in Cubase 4

[refrshr]

Hi,

Ive been a browser for some time but thought I would sign up to see if anyone can help.
I am a total beginer and only just getting into digital audio here so please bare with me

I currently have 2 loops of audio drum breaks. The first one is 6 seconds long and has a tempo of 141 bpm.

Im trying to time stretch another break so that is matches this one. This break is only 2 seconds long and has a bpm of 123.

What is the best way to do this in Cubase?
Whenever I try to do this the tmepo of the track im time stretching goes so unbelievably slow it sounds awful.

Is there anyway to make the tempo's align?

I dont even know if Im making sense, Hopefully someone understands.
Thanks.

[Neil C]

Time stretching any drum loop a long way will make it sound unnatural. You don't want to stretch the shorter to the length of the longer, you want beats that are working together and then duplicate the shorter one (although this will mean the shorter will constantly shift against the longer).
In the time stretch box you can feed in the original bpm and say what bpm you want it to end up as. Some loops just won't sound right together however you stretch them.

Remember, time stretch can time shorten too.

You will also be able to see visually if your beats are in time with each other. Set the project tempo to the bpm of the longer loop so it fits to bars, and then stretch or shorten the other loop so it matches/lines up/look like it has a musical relation. The loop you are changing will not fit neatly into bars, although you can chop it and add a bit of itself on the end if you want.

Another approach is to go into the sample editor, bring up hitpoints, and then if you split by event your loop will be split into its individual hits. You can then move them about or delete or copy some, to make a beat that will work with the other one.

I may have missed something obvious, but the above is something.
The Loop Mash in Cubase 5 does beat fusing.

[Neil C]

Sorry, bit of confusion there.
With the method I suggest your short loop will fit into bar lengths.

The bpm setting in the time stretch doesn't seem to work so well. With the project tempo set to 141 you can time shorten your shorter loop to a length of one bar using 'sizing applies time stretch' (it's an option on the little black triangle on the pointer tool) then duplicate your short loop as needed. You will see/hear that the relationship between the loops shifts due to the long loop ending half way through a bar (if it is exactly 6 seconds long). This may or may not be satisfactory and your loops may not work together. You may have to chop the loop up, or move the beats about using the hitpoints method.

You can set the project to 123 and stretch shorten the long loop but you will still have a shift going on.

[refrshr]

Thanks for the help, Will give it a shot later and let you know how I get on.

Thanks again!