Thanks John Walden! Cubase Tempo tricks revealed

[scw]

Hi John

Thanks for a clear informative article this month on tempo tools in Cubase. This is something I've meddled with for ages but never been sure if I was on the right "track". I'm sure many others will find this helpful.

Cheers

Stewart

[VOLOVIA]

Does this all mean that finally, FINALLY, we shall be able to start recording music again (except for dance or hip-hop) with natural tempo fluctuations, i.e. soul?

I am a firm believer that recording to a click is the most unnatural expression of music art. Paint by number tyranny. I started experimenting with recording my voice and strumming guitar first, clickless, then putting a tempo map as described, a few adjustments, but the results are so much more alive and breathing!

Sting's pet hate was Copelands 'enthusiastic' tempo meanderings when in The Police. As soon as he went solo he forced top drummers (i.e. Manu K., Vinnie Colaiuta) to wear its straightclick jacket. And his music stopped sounding interesting and exiting. Just an example...

Anyone agrees?

[Scramble]

I agree about the getting drummers to record to clicks, don't like it.

As for Sting, it's certainly hard to get excited about the drumming on any of his solo material no matter how accomplished it was. Whereas I'd be happy to have Copeland drumming for me any day.

[The Elf]

I prefer a drummer playing to click when it's done well. The good ones breath life while keeping the click as a backbone to the overall timing. The very best I've worked with have often preferred playing to click as it can actually allow them to be more creative and adventurous.

[alexis]

Great article! It took me the better part of 10 years to piece together from various internet sources how to do this, so Mr. Walden's putting it in such a high profile spot as SOS Cubase techniques is going to be a HUGE help to those just starting out. And even though I've been doing this for a while now, I still found some great tips, such as the suggestions of quantize length to make it easier to visually appreciate tempo changes, and also to use the Edit-in-Place feature for the same reason.

One other thing I learned from trial and error is that setting the Cubase song tempo before recording to a value that is reasonably close to the song's tempo makes the Time Warp manipulations much easier.

The next step is overdubbing to the song after creating the variable tempo track. The more variable the tempo, the more time it can take to get the overdub to exactly match the tempo variations (it's so much easier in a live band where everybody's watching each other for timing cues). A quick and easy way is to flatten the tempo track to a constant value (in essence making a "dumb" click track), overdub to that, then restore the original (variable) tempo track - voila, the overdubs now follow the freely-flowing tempo exactly.

[chris...]

I prefer a drummer playing to click when it's done well. The good ones breath life while keeping the click as a backbone to the overall timing

Yep - and that certainly includes Vinnie and Manu

(who I've just booked tickets to see with PG next october...)

Anyway, as you were.

[The Elf]

I prefer a drummer playing to click when it's done well. The good ones breath life while keeping the click as a backbone to the overall timing

Yep - and that certainly includes Vinnie and Manu

(who I've just booked tickets to see with PG next october...)

You and me both, man!

[oggyb]

OT:

Re PG, I'd just this evening sacked it off as nobody wanted to go with me

[VOLOVIA]

Excuse my ignorance, who's this PG, tips please?

[Scramble]

Gabriel, I presumed.

[Matt Houghton]

Glad people are finding it useful. John will be following this one up in the next issue with a look at the reverse of this process: taking a variable-tempo recording and matching it to tempo-fixed material. (Even if you don't want things to sound metronomic, you can use the same techniques to sync one non-fixed-tempo piece to another, different tempo piece)

[Scramble]

[Material deleted -- got the wrong post.]

[mick.n]

This is interesting indeed. Does this mean that i can program a midi backing track of a song and then create a tempo map of the original song, then use that tempo map for the midifile?