Getting set sequence tempo from MIDI working

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pencilina
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Joined: Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:01 pm
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Getting set sequence tempo from MIDI working

Post by pencilina »

Hi All,

I hadn’t used the region > set sequence tempo from MIDI function in a while and kept getting garbage conductor tracks with tempo info that didn’t line up.
I did a search here and RTFM, found nothing then called tech support and they didn’t have an answer.

Then I remembered the procedure and it’s working fine now.
I thought I’d share this as it might help someone or I can look it up in a couple years when I’ve forgotten the trick.

-Do a rubato performance or edit whatever tracks together don’t worry about DP’s grid
-Make a MIDI track clicking 1/4 notes along to the piece (model 12’s cowbell works great). Adjust any clams if you feel the need.
-IMPORTANT (for v9.x and below): if this MIDI click doesn’t start on the First bar and beat of the chunk draw in a some arbitrary beats before your click otherwise this won’t work.

EDIT (5 years later)>MORE IMPORTANT(for v10 and possibly above)- DO NOT have a click on the first beat of the sequence. Have it on the 2nd beat and it will work. Some thing changed in the way DP figures this out.

Another EDIT(7 Years later): 11.1 Have a click on the 1st beat of the the sequence and make sure you have a couple bars of clickin' before your performance starts. Also, I set all the velocities to 127 and duration to 16th notes and it worked.

-Lock any tracks that you want to stay in time- all the tracks relevant to your original performance including your clicked tracks. This way their timing won’t be changed by the tempo map created in the next step.
-Select your clicked track then select region>set sequence tempo from MIDI

All should work - notice the tempo changes corresponding to your clicks in the conductor track and the metronome should follow your performance. If you didn’t lock your clicked track it won’t be in time (you can delete it). Also, you might need to pencil in meter changes.


Reflections after a decade of annoyance:

This feature is indeed buggy but can work and save a lot of time. I think it was based on some sort of analysis of MIDI (ie like get tempo from soundbite) that might have barely worked at some point. I wish they would fix this or have a "quantize to click" feature BUT region>record beats still seems alive and well and could be a better option. When I do this I usually loop a clicked MIDI track back into DP with the clicks on it w/"ok is first beat" and conductor track remote source to the looped back MIDI.

Have fun off the grid.

-Bradford
Last edited by pencilina on Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:47 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Latest DP, Gigabyte Designaire z390 i9 Hackintosh 32G Ram, Lucid ADA88192, RME FF800 and FF802 on M1 MPB, Ventura, and a Pencilina
rockman413
Posts: 244
Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:15 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS

Re: Getting set sequence tempo from MIDI working

Post by rockman413 »

pencilina wrote:Hi All,

I hadn’t used the region > set sequence tempo from MIDI function in a while and kept getting garbage conductor tracks with tempo info that didn’t line up.
I did a search here and RTFM, found nothing then called tech support and they didn’t have an answer.

Then I remembered the procedure and it’s working fine now.
I though I’d share this as it might help someone or I can look it up in a couple years when I’ve forgotten the trick.

-Do a rubato performance or edit whatever tracks together don’t worry about DP’s grid
-Make a MIDI track clicking 1/4 notes along to the piece (model 12’s cowbell works great). Adjust any clams if you feel the need.
-IMPORTANT: if this MIDI click doesn’t start on the First bar and beat of the chunk draw in a some arbitrary beats before your click otherwise this won’t work.
-Lock any tracks that you want to stay in time- all the tracks relevant to your original performance including your clicked tracks. This way their timing won’t be changed by the tempo map created in the next step.
-Select your clicked track then select region>set sequence tempo from MIDI

All should work - notice the tempo changes corresponding to your clicks in the conductor track and the metronome should follow your performance. If you didn’t lock your clicked track it won’t be in time (you can delete it). Also, you might need to pencil in meter changes.


Have fun off the grid.

-Bradford
Thank you a lot.
macbook pro 10.10, 2.5G,16G ram,256G SSD
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