I have to make a play-back of an existing song with a lead-vocal.
So, I have to get rid of the vocal-material and should record and replay all the instruments separately myself.
I use the following procedure :
-Load the existing song in an Audio track in Cubase (incl lead-vocal).
-Open midi-tracks for each instrument
-Replay the instruments by using the audio-track as a model.
-At the end I should delete the audio track so that I have only the midi tracks left.

My problem :
- The midi-tempo, bars, measure was not used yet.
-So I have no accurate pre-count neither quantification, etc…

I think that I have to do that first and not at the end.

But how ?
The tempo is rather stable on the audio-track, but of course not perfect.
How can I come to a “synchronisation” ?
-First tap the tempo in a “tempo-track” ? Not perfect either…
- Split the audio track in blocks of 8 or 16 measures and take the blocks separately and then use time-stretching for each block (how to do that ?)
-Glue them together…

Anyone experience how to do that in an efficient manner ?

Thanks
Paul

Re: Audio track and Midi tempo in Cubase Studio4

Forgot to say :
I know about
-Beat Calculator (for smaller loops perhaps)
-Time Warp (do I have to do that bar per bar ???, or take blocks here ?)

I have any practice with these tools yet.
Is this the way to go ?

Paul

Re: Audio track and Midi tempo in Cubase Studio4

I woudl guess that a lot rides on the cruciality of those small tempo changes - do they help the song work? Do they help it groove and sit right?

In my experience on this, I have on two or three occasions taken a live stereo track and rebuilt it from scratch but with the stereo track as a guide, particularly for the drumming. Yes, the tempo varies greatly. But in most cases it was just instability. So I tapped the tempo for the start (or most stable prtion of the song!) and used that to set the tempo for the whole song. I then drummed along to the track to get the drummers feel. Now, the most laborious part, I used the various quantisation tools to tighten the drum track to the grid. This is laborious because, due to the tempo instabilities of the audio track, whatever quantise setting I use, some drum notes will be bang on the grid in the right bar, others will be wildly off. I then have to go and pull most bars around by hand. Of course, at the end of this process I have a drum track which is solid, but (the key purpose) represents what the real drummer played. I can then ignore the stereo audio track (keep for reference perhaps) and rebuild the rest of the arrangement on that.

This process works for rock orientated tracks where there is an obvious pulse. If any tempo changes were deliberate (like bring up by a few BPM for the chorus, dropping back for the verse etc) then these can be added.

If you were doing something based on a different genre, such as classical, I am sure the same could be applied, but it may be more tricky and you may need to incorporate the tempi changes earlier rather than later.

Cheers

Re: Audio track and Midi tempo in Cubase Studio4

Thanks Wellie, this is a very labour-intensive method for my piece of music.
The recording dates from the sixtees, so there was no clicktrack yet. Which means that the tempo is steady, but if you put midi-click against it then it “drifts” away.
By reading the manual I found perhaps a method which will fit my piece of cake :
“Merge Tempo from Tapping.”
This means that I create a new midi-track and I record my taps with notes (eg tap each first note of every bar). I can even adjust them in the editor windows.
Then I have to “Merge Tempo From Tapping” from Functions submenu on MIDI menu and to fill in the dialog box that I tapped 1 full note. After specifying where the start was, the system will create a tempo-track here, bar after bar.

When I want to cancel the audio-track later, I can even make the tempo-track more stable and even fixed.
Quantisation is then possible also.

I will try this tonight and let you know the result.
Paul