Subject:Beatmapping A Whole Song

Posted by: nomis

Date:5/5/2003 2:45:22 PM

I am trying to beatmap a whole song in 4.0 in order to add more sounds to it. However, I noticed that after the first 15 seconds, the beats are out of synch. The beatmap wizard does not help because it does not adjust beats independently of other beats. In other words, if I correct one part, it messes up another part that was OK to begin with. Is there a way around this? Thx.

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:5/5/2003 3:48:33 PM

Try checking out this KB article.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: nomis

Date:5/6/2003 6:59:15 PM

I tried the solution in the KB item #1674, but get stuck when trying to go from step 5 to step 6. When I Right-click the Hit marker and choose "Adjust tempo to match marker to cursor", I get this error: The requested match would require a tempo outside the allowed range"

If I try to position the cursor earlier than the fifth beat, I generate a really high bpm (about 200) when the song should only be approx. 110 bpm.

What am I missing?

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:5/6/2003 10:25:01 PM

Sounds like there's a large disparity between where the hit marker is and where the cursor is when you use the "adjust tempo" command. (Specifically, the cursor is way ahead of the hit marker.) The technique described in the KB article would be used on a track that goes a little "off" in tempo.

You basically want the hit marker to be the exact location where you want your project to be in sync with your song. The cursor would represent the part that's "off" that you need to get in line with the hit marker (which never moves from its location in time).

If you need more help, email me. (If you want to send me a small portion of your project as an ACD-ZIP file, you can do that.)

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: Erik_Nygaard

Date:5/7/2003 6:32:29 AM

For me the beatmapping only work as long as there's no drift in tempo.
Another solution is to chop your wave up in say 4-measure segments and acidize each segment, ie make a loop with 4 beats x 4 measures = 16 beats.
Then you just paint track-1 = loop-1, track-2 =loop-2 and basically construct your original wave. Set the master tempo and you should be fine. You can render this to a new wave.
I did this with a prerecorded drum-track that fluctuated somewhat in tempo.

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: nomis

Date:5/8/2003 9:12:06 AM

Erik- If you chop up one wave into several in SoundForge, isn't there a risk that the waves will not match up perfectly when you paint them side by side in Acid, especially if you're working with continuous sounds like strings? Also, I would have to chop the entire track into 2-measure segments to insure accurate beatmapping, which is a bit tedeous.

Iacobus- I tried emailing you my file, but it's too large for Hotmail to handle. Perhaps you can use Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight as an example. How would you go about manually beatmapping, say, the first 2 measures (first 8 beats)? I get the error mentioned previously when trying KB item #1674.

General Question- Has anyone been able to beatmap an entire track successfully? I'm really disappointed with the beatmapper wizard which adjusts all the tempo markers at once. It would be great if we could adjust each marker independent of the others. Maybe Acid is not the right tool for this???

Thx, I appreciate your help.
Nomis

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: DJ_Don

Date:5/8/2003 5:34:20 PM

OK, I've been following this thread and I read the tutorial myself. THANK
YOU for pointing me to this tutorial, because I'm ashamed to say that I did
not know how to do this before in Acid, and I've needed to do it several
times. The way it is written is a little screwy, though, and I had to play
with it to make it work (I got the "tempo out of boundary" message too, at
first, but now I know how to do it). So try this:
First, figure out the tempo of the song, and don't worry about the
fluctuations in the tempo. You can use the Beatmapper function for this, and
it should get you very close. Second, paint the song into Acid, and set it
as a one shot (like the tutorial says). Make sure the project tempo is the
same tempo as the song (again, not worrying about the fact that the tempo
drifts a bit). What I would do now is, draw a kick sample, or snare, or
whatever short drum hit across the whole song in quarter, half, or even
whole notes. Make sure the first beat of the song lines up perfectly with
the first drum hit that you painted in. Hint--hit F8 to turn snapping on and
off--you are going to need to turn it on and off a LOT in this process. Now
the part of the tutorial that is messing you up (it also messed me up) was
looking at the timeline on the bottom of the screen. IGNORE IT
COMPLETELY--you don't need it for this. Start listening to the song. Chances
are the first few beats line up fine with your drum hits, but it will start
to go off tempo soon. Find the first downbeat of the song that strays from
the drum hit that you painted in (which should be in perfect tempo). Put the
cursor right on that downbeat in the song and press H. Now hit F8 to turn
snapping on and click on the drum hit that you painted in that is closest to
the drum beat you just highlighted by hitting H. Hopefully, it won't be too
far off--just a little bit (unless the drummer in your song was on something
that day :-)). Now go back to the hit point (where you hit H) and
right-click on it at the bottom. Making sure the song is highlighted, select
the option to snap that hit point to the cursor (which is sitting on your
perfect-tempo drum hit). You should now see the song stretch such that the
song's downbeat now lines up perfectly with your drawn-in drum hit. Now go
back and listen to the song from the beginning and find where it strays
again--a little farther into the song than before, because you've already
made a correction where it drifts the first time. If your song has an
obvious downbeat, this will be easier to do (you can do it visually by
looking at the waveform). Find the next downbeat that drifts, put the cursor on it, hit H, and line it up with the closest drum hit that you drew in, and repeat the process. Do this
for the whole song, and in less than an hour you should have everything
squared away and in perfect time. This isn't a fast process, but it beats
cutting up the song into segments and stretching little segments separately.
I hope my little lesson makes sense :o). It is easy once you get the hang of
it. Gotta go--I've been away from my work too long already! Let us know if
this works, and good luck!

Peace

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: DJ_Don

Date:5/8/2003 6:41:54 PM

Oops! I forgot to mention one other (crucial) thing. Once you make a stretch in the song, you have to hit T and then click OK to place a tempo marker there. If you don't do that at every hit point, you'll just speed up and slow down the whole song--not what you want. Sorry to leave out that crucial tidbit of info--I wrote my above post away from my music PC, and I simply forgot that part.

Peace.

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:5/8/2003 9:23:40 PM

I've been able to beatmap an entire track, but that's probably because I knew for a fact what the original tempo of the track was.

Don is on the right track as far as using the Beatmapper is concerned. You might want to check out an earlier post of mine on the subject. Like Don said, you will probably have to repeat the procedure as necessary.

If you're still having problems, email me (via my previous post) and I'll create an FTP user account on my Web server for you to upload your project. You don't have to actually try to give the whole project if you want; just the Beatmapped track and one or two other tracks will probably do.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: Erik_Nygaard

Date:5/9/2003 4:45:40 AM

Continous sounds like strings overlapping the measure boundaries would be a problem.
You could increase the number of measures for the loop until the strings had died.
Of course chopping up a finished mix is more difficult that a single instrument track.
Drums usually not, just beware of any cymbals ringing.

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: nomis

Date:5/9/2003 1:04:54 PM

DJ Don- Sounds like you got the same error and came up with a good work around. Thanks for taking the time to share it.

I spoke to SF support regarding this and they said that if a track wanders from the beatmapper, then there are substantial flaws in the original recording. However, I suspect that this is fairly common, as even some tracks from big artists don't get beatmapped accurately from start to finish via the beatmapper wizard.

SF- You may want to consider incorporating DJ Don's approach into KB item #1674. The current instructions may produce the error mentioned previously.

Thx for everyone's suggestions.
Nomis

Subject:RE: Beatmapping A Whole Song

Reply by: dorkus

Date:5/9/2003 1:47:01 PM

A couple of points on both methods:
1) Item 1674 will only match Acid tracks to your imperfect drum track; it will not alter the timing of the drums. In order to fix the imperfect drum track, you have to use the "stepladder" approach (chopping up in Soundforge and then painting in Acid)
2) The stepladder approach can be made faster by opening the drum tracks in Soundforge and using the <split into regions> command. Then go and delete the region markers you don't want, and then <save regions as separate files>. The program will save them all in order to whatever folder you specify. Then you can paint each one in Acid quickly. Oh yeah - it only works if you aren't picky about what your drums will now sound like.