Beat Detection mini tutorial

[musicarteca]

Hey Denis, Bonjour,
I am not sure that compressing is the issue, send me an email and I will send you the file directly.
musicarteca@yahoo.com

[Denis]

I've found a cure! Had no prob with it when i downld with Safari. Doesn't work when i get it wit Firefox . Time to learn again
Thx Alex.

[kinnylandrum]

Alex,
That really was an enlightening tutorial, especially the part about inserting beats in the waveform editor. I just did a jingle project where I wanted to use some guitar samples (believe it or not from the stock sounds supplied by MOTU with DP 4.52), but I didn't know the tempo of the loops. I finally figured out how to do it, though not as straight ahead as your tutorial. If I had looked at yours first I might have saved a lot of time. Now I know how to do it. Thanks so much.
Kinny Landrum

[musicarteca]

Thank you Kinny. It seems to me that working with Beat Detection is not so obvious; there are many possibilities and different applications where you can use it, and the results could vary depending on the music style and how you follow the steps, that is why I designed the tutorial to follow along, to let you know that if you miss a step you can get unexpected results. Very fragile I would say! Initially I suggested the people at MOTU to design some tutorials, but I got no answer. So simple as it is, I hope that some people will benefit from this one. There have been a lot of downloads.

[shuld]

Hello,
In the beat det tutorial, what is select tempo ta WE, and what is Beat tab?
Thanx
Dave

[musicarteca]

WE stands for Wave Editor. In the mini tutorial, it is in the lower part of the consolidated window.

In the upper left side of the WE you will see four gray "tabs" that read: Soundbites, loops, beats, and tempos. Press the Beats tab to see the beats. Press the tempo tab to see the tempo.

<small>[ May 04, 2005, 06:31 PM: Message edited by: musicarteca ]</small>

[Digitalperformer88]

Alex,
Way cool tutorial, It worked perfectly step by step from your example download.
Next I tried to use your technique on a new sequence of my own, and ran into a few gltches.
I started with a sequence at 65 BPM 24 bit @ 44.1, with 1 track of MIDI (piano) and a scratch vox track.
Next I imported a drum loop from a loop cd that was @ 16 bit 44.1, DP converted it to 24 bit for the project, I dragged it from the sounbites window into a stereo track and followed your tutorial guidlines step by step.
The first problem was that after the WE showed me the beat slices, it would not show me any tempo at all after telling it to analyze tempo from the audio menu.
Next even though I know that I most likely needed that tempo to be analyzed for the next step It would also give me a pop up window saying "There are not enough beats in the following audio files to analyze the tempo!"
Would appreciate some help if possible
Thank you,

[musicarteca]

Depending on the drum loop that you have, it might not be so obvious for the program to detect which beats determine the tempo and which ones are just "decoration", for example if you have a drum roll, and DP uses those beats to calculate the tempo, it will be not be able to or will give and incorrect answer.

When this happens you have to be a little bit more selective with the beats, remember that you can manually add, copy, delete or disable beats. Look closer at the beats that you have, try to limit them only to snare and kick, you can use Adjust beat detection or Adjust beat sensitivity in the beats mini menu on the WE., or try editing individual beats.

If everything fails, you can always determine the tempo of the drum loop using: audio menu>soundbite tempo>set soundbite tempo (instead of analyze ST). When the menu pops up, write the number of "tempo" beats that you have in the loop (on the length column). For example if you have 2 measures of 4/4, write 8|000, if you have 4 measures of 3/4, write 12|000. That will give you the correct tempo for the loop soundbite.

[Harry]

Cookies must be on!!!

[Digitalperformer88]

ALEX,
Could you shed a little more lite on how to edit individual beats out, say removing all the hi hats, in order to have just kick and snare?
The adjust beat detection removes kicks and snares that are important before removing all the hats, on this particular loop!
Thank you again.

[musicarteca]

On the Wave Editor select the Beats Tab to see the beats:

- To delete an individual beat: select it (you will see a blue arrow on top of it) and from the beats mini menu select: delete beat.
- To delete a group of beats: select the region with the beats that you want to delete and choose: delete beats in selection.
- To add a beat: place the insertion point where you want it and choose: Create a beat from insertion point.
- To disable a beat: open the tools window, and use the mute tool (X) to temporarily disable it. You can enable it later on if you want by selecting it and choosing: Toggle active beat.
- To disable (or enable) a group of beats: choose: Toggle beats in selection.

[Digitalperformer88]

Alex,
First of all, thank you for your help it is greatly appreciated.
I have tried all your suggestions with no luck so far.
One thing is still not making sense to me, on the tutorial the first thing to do is find beats in selection, next is go to the audio menu select> soundbite tempo > analyze soundbite tempo, when I do this, that is when DP tells me there are not enough beats to analyze, this is before I am supposed to adjust the beat sensitivity, and after I do adjust how many beats weather it be by removing beats manualy or with the slider>apply method, same result it will not analyze the loop.
I have even tried the method of (set soundbite tempo) at it sets a tempo but never lines up with the metrenome after adjusting seq to ST. Its a 4 bar loop in 4/4 I should have to enter 16 for beats, correct?
One other thing maybe worth mentioning, when I first import the loop and bring it up on the WE, click find beats, it does, and then just click on the tempo button in the WE it shows various tempos between beats, could this be anything important? 
What am I doing wrong?
Many Thanks again,

[musicarteca]

I find that one of the most difficult things about beat detection is that every case is unique, so what might work in one case might not work on another. Why? Because every musical program is different. There are a few important things to keep in mind though:

- You have to have the correct tempo determined in every soundbite to work effectively with the sequence tempo.
- To find the correct tempo on the soundbite, you have to have the correct beats analyzed, which usually means adjusting beat detection or editing the beats.

So here is the step by step to follow in your case, which is not exactly the same procedure to follow in the tutorial:
1- find the beats
2- Edit the beats so you only have kick and snare. Disable any snare roll, and any snare or kick beat that plays off tempo.
3- Analyze soundbite tempo. Once you have the soundbite tempo make sure that the beginning of the loop is exactly at the beginning of a measure, otherwise the click is never going to match.
4- Adjust the sequence to the soundbite tempo.

Remember when calculating the SB tempo either use "analyze ST" or "set ST". Do not use both.

You said that when calculating the tempo with "Set ST" it does not match the metronome. Are you sure that the loop is 4 bars of 4/4? Is the beginning of the loop lined up with the beginning of the measure? How off is the tempo?

I get disappointed to the fact that BDE can be a very powerful feature, yet its functionality is far from practical, and its learning curve is steep. So the only way to learn how to use it efficiently is using it, and using it again, and again ...

Hang in there, we'll solve your problem! (hopefully).

<small>[ May 17, 2005, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: musicarteca ]</small>

[Digitalperformer88]

Hey Alex!
I am still hanging in, I havnt had a chance to dive in to the BDE again for a couple of days, I have been busy with a few other projects that didnt have the steep new learning curve, gotta make the green!
I should have a chance to jump back in in a couple of days and I will keep you posted as to the results.
Thank you again for your sluthing of my ongoing loop schooling.