linking beat to acapella?

C

Cion

New member
Is there a way to link my beat or fit an acapella to a track that I made?...

For some reason once I place the audio file into Cubase I can never find a tempo for the file. It starts off good for the first bar, then by the second to forth it's horrible. Can someone tell me how to do this correctly; I'm dying to do some remixes!

Thanks!
Cion'
:cool:
 
Audio files don't generally contain tempo information unless it is specifically embedded (i.e. Acidized files have tempo information). This generally only is fool proof if the original song was written around a fixed tempo (I.e. any drum machine). If the song was done with real people, and real instruments, the tempo is going to vary. It is hard for programs to extract tempo from acapella pieces too, because there is generally no rhythmic information in the track.

Your best bet would be to drag the audio into cubase and zoom in to get a good look and put a MIDI track right beneath (or audio tracks for loops...whichever you use), and put the beats on the track. Use the tempo track to adjust the MIDI track to the peaks in the audio (Just keep them lined up vertically on the screen). Tedious sometimes but cool, because it forces your MIDI tracks to be more organic.
 
Man, is that the only way?!!!... whew...I thought it would be much easier than that. The way you described seem like it would take HOURS to do, that's not enjoyable. Thanks for the info. If anyone knows any other way please feel free.
 
Yeah, unless you tracked with a click and/or know the exact tempo of the piece, it will be hard to line up exactly. Now, Cubase does have a "tempo tap" feature that will allow you to click your mouse with the beat and it will estimate the tempo. Then you can set the tempo to that and it will be easier to drag things around by measure. Otherwise, just zoom in close and manually line up the tracks. There is also a tempo quantize function that you may want to read up on. I don't know how to use it, but that may be what you're looking for.
 
But you can count the BPM though, so THAT's why I don't get it. I count the BPM for the vocal, and the beginning usually starts out good, but then it floats off out of beat. I mean, I set the tempos to 93 90 89 etc.etc. it's rare I set the tempo to like 89.5 93.2 it's always a even number (not literally).
Who records to 95.something?... I mean, I've never did that unless I used a sample in the beat and had to match the beat to the sample. But I'm using a vocal to a track with no samples...I don't get it.
 
Cion said:
But you can count the BPM though, so THAT's why I don't get it. I count the BPM for the vocal, and the beginning usually starts out good, but then it floats off out of beat. I mean, I set the tempos to 93 90 89 etc.etc. it's rare I set the tempo to like 89.5 93.2 it's always a even number (not literally).
Who records to 95.something?... I mean, I've never did that unless I used a sample in the beat and had to match the beat to the sample. But I'm using a vocal to a track with no samples...I don't get it.
Click to expand...
Here's the answer: Human Latency
Simply sequence up a click track (say 90 BPM), and then free record anything (Keyboard, guitar, whatever). Now go back and remove the sequenced click track, and try mapping out the tempo, for the part you recorded live. I can tell you this right now, unless your brain can be hooked up to your PC via highspeed FireWire, when you map out the tempo you'll find it doesn't remain at 90 BPM, it floats above and below (Sometimes as much as 10 BPM in either direction is not uncommon, especially with lower tempo'd songs). Work-around, set your click track to run at twice the tempo (which gives your brain more timing information to work with, you'll find most people when playing say a standard 4/4 track will tap there foot to the quarter note(1234,1234), while drummers usually count 8ths or 16ths (1&2&3&4&,1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a), it helps them focus on the tempo I guess).

For your problem try this:
I just completed a project which was originally recorded as a solo guitar, which I got with no click track. I set up the first down beat right on the grid (Working in linear time base). The song was 174 measures long (at double time 160 BPM, he wrote it at about 80 BPM), and each chord change occured every other measure. So I set a tempo marker on the tempo track every other measure. So with the first beat lined up I drag the first tempo marker until the measure line above the next change lines up with the physical wav itself, then jump to the next tempo marker, and the next, and so on (Basically writing a tempo change every other measure). I could have gone every measure, but for the tempo I was working with, every other measure created a very natural bit of drift between real and sequenced in between the markers. It is a bit confusing the first couple of times you work like this, but it can give your performances more life if you actually record your own music like this, if you use sequenced drums, etc.
 
Thanks for the info...I'll try that. But, I'm not having a problem while recording vocals, it's just matching an acapella (from any artist) to a beat that I made at the same beat rate that I counted the vocal to be.

I'm going to try what you said, but if you know a simple way to link a acapella to a made track let me know...jezzz things were so much easier using turntables... :)
 
um time stretch

I think I kno it
U can right click on the audio snippit on the accapella track and time stretch it to either the locater sets or the bpm of the beat, u can even set the accuracy from 5 (completely rythmic) or 0 (normal) or -5 (preserve more audio than time stretch it) ive done it before and on rappers i usually time stretch the voice. Its a staple in the rap industry now a days.
 
Time strech or set the vocal to start on the fisrt hit of the click track and adjust the tempo till the vocal and tempo line up then build the track around it.
 
You can always use hitpoints, but I think that you are restricted to analysing 10 second clips at a time, and it is as time consuming to wait for the computer to calculate the hitpoints as it is to do it by hand.
 
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