Correct tempo on "You Oughta Know"...

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cram242

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I'm working on a personal remix project of the old Alanis tune, and I can't get my metronome to line up correctly throughout the track in Sonar 8.5. The closest I can get is 105bpm, but it doesn't stay in time consistently throughout the song. Has anyone here tried to line up a click to the original recording before?
 
If it wasn't recorded to a click originally it's extremely unlikely you'll get it to match up for more than a few measures at a time.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
If it wasn't recorded to a click originally it's extremely unlikely you'll get it to match up for more than a few measures at a time.
Click to expand...

Do you have a reasonable suspicion that it wasn't done with one? Seems to me like most mainstream rock has been recorded track-at-a-time for a while now, and I think it would be difficult to follow weaving drums on a song with those kind of dynamics.
 
It's probably something crazy like 105.435

If it is consitant you can do it.

Get the start of the song close, sounds like you have.

Watch it to see if you think it's slow or fast then adjust by +/- .1 BPM then check again. try the end of the song and see if you can tell if you're fast or slow. Zoom right in to the wav graphic, hopefully you can see the peaks of the drum beats.

Keep adjusting up or down by .1 until you pass it. then start adjusting by .01

I guess I should have mentioned this first but does sonar have a beat calculator tool where you can just tap the space bar to the tempo?
 
cram242 said:
Do you have a reasonable suspicion that it wasn't done with one? Seems to me like most mainstream rock has been recorded track-at-a-time for a while now, and I think it would be difficult to follow weaving drums on a song with those kind of dynamics.
Click to expand...

I record track-at-a-time without a click all the time. If a player can follow a live drummer they can probably follow a recorded one. A couple of passes to learn any tempo drift is usually all it takes. And usually I've tracked the drums with the guitar playing along (isolated in another room or DI) anyway.

As for the song in question, she makes my skin crawl so I generally avoid her music.
 
cram242 said:
I'm working on a personal remix project of the old Alanis tune, and I can't get my metronome to line up correctly throughout the track in Sonar 8.5. The closest I can get is 105bpm, but it doesn't stay in time consistently throughout the song. Has anyone here tried to line up a click to the original recording before?
Click to expand...

The other thing, of course, is just because the original was either 1.) cut without a click, at about 105bpm, or 2.) cut at something esoteric like 104.728bpm, doesn't mean you can't do your version to a click at 105.
 
cram242 said:
I think it would be difficult to follow weaving drums on a song with those kind of dynamics.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Listen to the song. It might not be an exact tempo (if it wasn't done to a click), but there's nothing hard to follow there. The only other thing they might have done is have the drummer play his hi-hat during the stops and then remove it later. Like bouldersoundguy said, if you can follow a live drummer playing without a click, you can do it tracking, too.

Try this: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Audio/taptempo/Freeware.htm
 
I doubt they would have actually recorded at some bizzare tempo, It was probably 105 but there 105 and yours could be out just milliseconds that add up after 60 or 70 bars. I've done this on my own stuff that we recorded with a pre sequenced keyboard track at say 124 BPM and then in cubase it was 123.879.

Just sayin'
 
I've done stuff like this before with old Metallica tunes where they didn't even know what time signature they were playing in. I had the same problem. The best I could do was spend some time getting my absolute closest approximation to tempos and time signatures, and then used warping to pull it into shape at a pretty zoomed in level so it sticks to the grid and the click. For me that made it a lot easier to put do the MIDI drums. It's a long laborious process though considering you don't even use the thing you just spend ages warping. Which is good really because it sounds like absolute crap after all the warping, but it works for the purpose of mapping everything out on the grid.
 
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