What's the best way to move the first chorus to the 2nd/3rd so it'll be on beat?

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helpmeplease

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I have a few songs that I've recorded that I've never be able to get the choruses all lined up. No matter what I do the 2nd/3rd choruses sound off beat. Is there a calculator I can use if I put in the tempo and the placement of the first chorus it'll tell me where to place the other 2?
Please realize for a couple of these songs I've tried for years getting them fixed and I can't do it. I've had several other people give a crack at it and they've also failed. Is there a scientific way to do this?
 
Joza said:
1 bar is (240/tempo) seconds.
Click to expand...

Though I'm guilty of doing it myself, its quite sad that it is just assumed everything will be written in 4/4. What is even more sad is that its quite a valid assumption, as it nearly always holds true. Ah well.
 
Was your song recorded to a click track or looped drums? If so you can copy and paste chorus elements pretty easily. The trick is to copy them from an exact beat, often the 1, and paste them to the same beat in the other chorus.

Depending on the DAW used there are different ways of referencing beats. I use Sony Vegas with drum tracks supplied from Sony Acid Pro. When I import the track I can look at the track properties and find the tempo. Then I enter that tempo into the Vegas project properties and change the ruler to Beats and Measures. Now markings of the ruler line up perfectly with the tempo of the song, and I just have to select and copy parts from a particular beat, then paste to the same beat of a corresponding measure of another chorus. Once pasted I can trim or stretch the start and end of the block as needed.
 
helpmeplease said:
I have a few songs that I've recorded that I've never be able to get the choruses all lined up. No matter what I do the 2nd/3rd choruses sound off beat. Is there a calculator I can use if I put in the tempo and the placement of the first chorus it'll tell me where to place the other 2?
Please realize for a couple of these songs I've tried for years getting them fixed and I can't do it. I've had several other people give a crack at it and they've also failed. Is there a scientific way to do this?
Click to expand...

If you tracked with a click...it's pretty easy to do, because the entire song would be following a steady reference.

If you just played it, then there is going to be playing drift throughout the song no matter who was following who...therefore, a straight cut/paste may or may not fit with the beat (as you found out)...BUT...it's still not that hard to slice-edit and make it work.
You just need to pick a timing reference...which would be the existing sections that you are trying to replace.
You simply cut/edit the 1st chorus against the 2nd and 3rd choruses as timing reference. You may need to go beat by beat in some spots...but it's not that complicated, even across multiple tracks (you just keep them grouped as you cut/move).
Of course...you may need to touch up the cross-fades and whatnot at some cuts keep it all smooth...but certainly not impossible to do.

That said...
If you've "tried for years" to fix them...wouldn't it have been easier and certainly quicker to just re-record? ;)
 
helpmeplease said:
I have a few songs that I've recorded that I've never be able to get the choruses all lined up. No matter what I do the 2nd/3rd choruses sound off beat.
Click to expand...
It should not be difficult to slide tracks into place simply by sight and sound. If you're having that much trouble, I'd gamble it might be because something *is* off-beat - i.e. they simply don't match.

One possibility may be if you have mixed sample rates going on in one project; a 48k clip played back as if it's a 44.1k clip can in some DAWs cause playback timing issues. Another may simply be a badly-timed performance that just does not match whatever rhythm track you;re trying to align it to.

G.
 
helpmeplease said:
I have a few songs that I've recorded that I've never be able to get the choruses all lined up. No matter what I do the 2nd/3rd choruses sound off beat. Is there a calculator I can use if I put in the tempo and the placement of the first chorus it'll tell me where to place the other 2?
Please realize for a couple of these songs I've tried for years getting them fixed and I can't do it. I've had several other people give a crack at it and they've also failed. Is there a scientific way to do this?
Click to expand...
If this was recorded on tape with each track in succession you should just give it up because unless you have synchronized motors, as you get towards the end the tape runs faster and throws off the timing. It takes forever and a day to line those up.
 
NYMorningstar said:
If this was recorded on tape with each track in succession you should just give it up because unless you have synchronized motors, as you get towards the end the tape runs faster and throws off the timing. It takes forever and a day to line those up.
Click to expand...

I thought the capstans and pinch rollers along with clutched take up hubs addressed this issue. Besides, if the effect were present during recording, wouldn't it also be there during playback and cancel out? And if it didn't cancel out wouldn't pitch drift so much as to make recording on tape essentially impossible?
 
The tape travels past the record and playback heads at the same speed regardless of where one is on the tape. The speed of the reels changes only to make up for the chage in radius of the tape spooled om the reel, but the actual speed of the tape past the heads remains constant and is controlled by the capstan.

That's how things are on paper. Of course, there can be some degree of wow and flutter (periodic error in speed) caused by physical design errors and variations in tape stretch. That can cause problems syncing non-sound-with-sound tape recordings. It's rare that one needs to do that, but it can happen.

G.
 
helpmeplease said:
I have a few songs that I've recorded that I've never be able to get the choruses all lined up. No matter what I do the 2nd/3rd choruses sound off beat. Is there a calculator I can use if I put in the tempo and the placement of the first chorus it'll tell me where to place the other 2?
Please realize for a couple of these songs I've tried for years getting them fixed and I can't do it. I've had several other people give a crack at it and they've also failed. Is there a scientific way to do this?
Click to expand...
What exactly are you trying to move ? When you say the choruses don't line up, what exactly do you mean ?
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I thought the capstans and pinch rollers along with clutched take up hubs addressed this issue. Besides, if the effect were present during recording, wouldn't it also be there during playback and cancel out? And if it didn't cancel out wouldn't pitch drift so much as to make recording on tape essentially impossible?
Click to expand...
The older 4 track machines had this problem. If you ran all 4 tracks together then the problem wasn't noticeable but if you recorded the tracks in succession and then placed them side by side, the timings would drift apart as you went along in the song for whatever reason, drag, stretch whatever. A real nightmare to edit:eek:
 
woah ya'll!!!

first off what DAW are you using and welcome to HR!!
most Daw's have a grid mode that you can sync up to the tempo of the song :D then after you type in the tempo itll be clear as day where your choruses should go (i also had this problem when I first started using pro tools and now im all about using the grid mode
 
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