Music production: need a tempo-fluctuation-fixer.
March 10, 2005 11:01 PM   Subscribe

Music production software: I need a beatfixer. I've got recordings of a live percussion ensemble. I've also got electronic/sequenced music that I want to mashup with the live percussion. The live ensemble recording -- what with the humans and all -- has tempo fluctuations: that's a big problem for mashing. I want a music processing tool that will "straighten out" the live recording so that the live track will stay in sync with the electronic track.

This is not on-the-fly, mid-performance processing. In fact, the tool (if it exists) will need ME to tell it where the beats are and then will apply small time-stretches at many, many points in the track. The end result is a doctored live performance that sounds as if the human performers keep the exact tempo for the entire performance.

Does Ableton Live do this? Does anything?

My thanks go to eleven.
posted by Moistener to Media & Arts (11 answers total)
 
You want Acid. There's an excellent beatmapper function in the program.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 11:22 PM on March 10, 2005


Ableton Live sounds like it could be the right thing for this. Or Recycle.

Also there's a ProTools plugin called something like BeatDoctor (anyone help me out on this??) but I'm struggling to find it.

You may have some luck with Acid but my instinct suggests Acid is probably not going to help you straighten out the groove of your live track.
posted by skylar at 1:57 AM on March 11, 2005


I have done this many, many times. I used to use Acid, but I've since found MixMeister Pro, which does the job much better, allowing for a greater degree of precision and fine-tuning.
posted by Jairus at 2:09 AM on March 11, 2005


I personally find Acid easier for slicing than Recycle, and the learning curve is much shorter/shallower. That said, Recycle is certainly much more powerful.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:01 AM on March 11, 2005


There's a far out program called Hummingbird that you might find interesting. More hands on and less automated than Acid or Ableton - but if you are working with specific tracks you might be able to do some really cool stuff with it.
posted by 31d1 at 7:10 AM on March 11, 2005


I'm pretty sure I did this once with Ableton live - just move the bar-markers to where you want them to be. Don't konw how great it'd work for anything over a minute or so though - It'll likely be tedious no matter how you do it...
posted by soplerfo at 7:15 AM on March 11, 2005


Great thread/question. This is something I have thought a lot about but never tried. I was just reading a bit about the new version of ProTools LE v.6.7 (their "light" version), which now has something called "Beat Detective LE" which is supposed to find beats automatically. I haven't played with this particular feature, but wanted to mention as one other possibility. ProTools had not, in the past, been known for their MIDI compatibility, but they have been beefing up in that area in the last couple of years. If possible, please let us know what works for you.
posted by turtlegirl at 7:59 AM on March 11, 2005


Chop up your live recording in to seperate pieces, by varying tempos. Ensure the resulting samples start at the beginning of a bar and end at the end of a bar. Bring these samples in to Ableton Live. If you chopped the samples up properly Live will calculate the original tempo based on the length of your samples and warp them to match your Live Project tempo. You may have to tweak the bar/beat markers by dbl-clicking and dragging them to be on beat while in sample view in Ableton Live. Don't get to pedantic about this, just clear up any glaring slippage.
posted by mnology at 9:50 AM on March 11, 2005


Native Instruments' Intakt is a beat sampling/slicing tool that has automatic beat detection.
posted by abcde at 11:49 AM on March 11, 2005


Response by poster: Oh WOW this thread is useful. Many thanks.

As requested, I'll be posting my results to this thread 3 weeks from now.
posted by Moistener at 11:54 AM on March 11, 2005


That's it - thanks Turtlegirl - Beat Detective. I have seen it do what Moistener wants, albeit that it's a pretty long-winded process.
posted by skylar at 8:28 PM on March 11, 2005


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