Can I get a bars & beats edit grid from a live cowbell 'click track' ?'

[Jules]

PT 5 question....
I often use hand held percussion to guide bands during takes. Any chance I can get a grid as an edit "helper" from it?
So thats audio - to midi - to (variable tempo) bpm grids.

Thanks

Jules

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Sure... read up on the Identify Beat function on page 226 of your PT 5.x manual.

Rail

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Recording Engineer

[Jules]

Ok seen that, Thanks, I will look into it and expiriment...
Any tips? How do I go about adjusting it throught the song.
I daydream that using scrub I could move along the song and line up the grid every 8 clicks or so....???
Power user tips please! Come on Rail, open up a bit!

TIA

Jules

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Hi Jules

Well I'm in the midst of a number of projects, so I haven't installed V5.x yet... so I can only tell you how I do it in V4.x

The main thing to remember is that you can't have negative bar numbers in Pro Tools... so your Bar 1 may not in fact be Bar 1, but more likely Bar 3.

The first thing I do is create 2 or 3 memory locations which have different zoom levels, so I can quickly zoom in and out - zoom 1 would display 3 bars, zoom 2 would display a close look at 1 beat and zoom 3 would be a really close in view.

I locate my first point of interest, usually the count off, and find the first count and place the cursor at the start of the (let's say) cowbell -- using the memory locations, I zoom in to make sure that I'm located right at the start of the cowbell attack - I then hit Command I to identify the beat and define it as Beat 1 Bar 1 and set up the meter usually 4/4. I then zoom out (using the memory location Zoom 1) and locate the second beat of the count off and once again zoom in, etc and identify it as Bar 1 Beat 2 - Pro Tools now has enoug information to attempt to interpolate where each beat should be. Zoom out to Zoom 1, set the display to bars and beats, set your quantize value to quarter notes and hit the numeric + (plus) key to move forward to the next beat. This should place you close to the next quarter note. If you're off from the cowbell, place your cursor on the cowbell and zoom in, etc and identify this next beat as Bar 1 Beat 3, zoom out to Zoom 1 and hit the numerix + (plus) key and continue this procedure for the first 8 bars of the song.

Now zoom out completely (double click the Zoom tool) and in a similar fashion identify the beats of the last 2 bars of the song. Pro Tools will attempt to interpolate the beats in between - depending on how good the player was, or how much the tempo varied, the beats will be off. I usually use a QuicKeys macro I've programmed and use it to help me define every quarter note in the song... which usually takes me anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on tempo and song length.

I'm sure there are other users who do it differently, and will be willing to share their techniques.

Oh yes... I forgot...

If you want to delete any bar markers then select them with the selector tool in the time line where the bar markers are displayed and hit the Backspace key. To move bar markers, use the grabber tool and gran the bar marker in the bars and beats timeline and drag them to where you'd like them to be.

To Digidesign: In an earlier version of Pro Tools, when we grabbed a bar marker to move it, a cursor would be shown down all the tracks to help align the bar marker -- this was taken out in more recent versions of v4.x. Has this been given back to us in v5.x? If not, make this a feature request for this to return.

Good luck.

Rail

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Recording Engineer

[This message has been edited by Rail Jon Rogut (edited January 11, 2000).]

[Tim Walters]

I have a slightly different technique that I think is a little faster. I make a selection right on the first beat, then play the song while counting bars. Somewhere near the end of the song, I make note of a bar|beat value, zoom in to the exact location, extend the selection to that point, and identify beat. This ensures that the bar|beat grid has a nice long baseline to work with (therefore more accurate) and also guarantees right off the bat that the *average* beat length is correct (which you don't get by extrapolating from just one bar). Then I pick a downbeat in the middle of the song, get the correct bar number from the grid (it's the closest value, unless the track is *really* ragged or you've miscounted bars), and lock it down exactly to that point. Repeat as often as necessary, depending on the looseness of the track.

The only drawbacks to this method are that you might mess up the count (but it's easy to fix by dragging the Identify Beat marker to the next or previous bar) and you look a bit silly counting bars in front of the client. Also, it doesn't work if there are time signature changes, for obvious reasons.

PT 5.0 has negative bars, BTW.

[Jules]

Wickid! I like the sound of that one too.
Thanks Jules

[Jules]

Thanks a lot Rail
I will print out your advice and work through it to the letter.
Can a scub followed by beat marker also work?
I have a Gallery Mission Control with programable macro keys, I wonder if I could make up some macros buttons just for this type of task...

Thanks again,

Jules

[digimidi]

My approach is also a little different. I will usually identify the first beat zoomed in tight, zoom out and identify the down beat of the second bar zoomed in real tight. If the click is fairly consistant, ie midi or drum machine, you can stay zoomed in pretty tight for the next phase. If not, zoom out a little to taste. Then I hit the = key on the keypad and locate to the next down beat, ie 3. Place your cursor on the beat and Identify. You can do every downbeat if your source is not consistant, or every 5 to 10 bars if it is. No need to scrub or mouse around and it doesn't take very long to do once you get the hang of it. Also, if there are time signatures in the song, you should place them after the first step, if you have v5.0 of course. Hope this is of some help.

Gil

[Jules]

Cool! thanks,
I am refering to a cowbell played by hand, not machine...

jules

[Nick Batzdorf]

All you have to do is identify beats every couple or few bars if it's a live cowbell. How accurate you need the grid to be depends on what you're doing. If you're working with (shudder) loops, it has to be absolutely spot on or your loops will glitch. If you're working with real music, it's usually less critical.