Never ending Tempo problem, blarg!

[Joshoto]

Hello fellow creators of vibrations and melodies. I'm a bigtime newbie and i use acid 5, FL5 and native instruments absynth 3. Now sometimes friends send me little songs they have done on guitar and i want to add stuff to them, such as sequenced drums and synth melodies. But obviously since they made the song first ( lets just say its acoustic with vocals) they made it at their own unknown tempo. How can i figure out a way to get the right tempo for the other guys song so i can toss in some drums and other stuff? I've been trying to figure this out for months.

 

[mrface2112]

IF they recorded to a click track, metronome, etc., the easy way to do it is to pull out a metronome and adjust the tempo on it until it syncs. start around 105 bpm and tweak until it's the right tempo.

my guess, though, is that they did NOT play to a metronome or click track, and if they're like most musicians, their tempo is going to be all over the place (which is also why most musicians HATE playing to a click track/metronome)........in that case, and i hate to say it, you're really pretty much screwed.

adding drums to a pre-recorded song is hard enough WITH a click track and rock-solid tempo.....it's damn-near impossible without it.


good luck,
wade

 

[metalhead28]

jeez, why don't you just post this in every forum on the board.......

 

[Radiohead0709]

it's all in the timing

Yeah, what Mrface said above is true. Unless a musician is recording to a click track or improvised drums from a drum machine, you are pretty much out of luck as far as trying to fit something in with what they recorded.

What you could do, however, is take the beat of the song and make a drum track that would fit if the music was kept in time, and then send that drum track or beat back to the artist and have them rerecord along with the drum track.

Whenever I record I usually just start out with a very generic drum beat, so that way after I lay down the guitar I can replace the generic drum beat with something a little more complex, and I don't have to worry about a changing tempo.

 

[Joshoto]

thanks mates

Alright very helpful, sorry about posting on a couple different sections but i'm not sure what tempo related subjects go under.