pt time stretching

[geeball]

hello all..i have a hard time picking this up in pt8..what step do you guys use for finding the bpm of an accapela that u do not know the bpm of . that for songs that have not been released indie tracks .what is the method used by most pro toolers....can u give step by step details ..i watched alot of toturial vids and i still cannot get it ...should i use tab to transient or ea ..and what would be the processes used ...much appreciated in advance if someone could help me out ...thanks

[wwittman]

I would Tab To Transient, or just select by eye as close as you can, at beat ONE of the first measure, and separate the region there.
then play and count along until you find beat ONE of the NEXT measure, and separate there.

Carry on until you have the piece divided into one measure regions all the way through.

Then use IDENTIFY BEAT.
Select the first region (bar 1) and Identify Beat . Tell the pop up dialog that it's from (pick any starting bar, but I'll say your song starts at bar 3, just arbitrarily) Bar 3 beat 1 (3/1/00) to Bar 4 beat 1 (4/1/00)
and make sure you have the whole song set to 4/4 or whatever the meter SHOULD be.

Now select the NEXT bar and Identify IT. (it goes from 4/1/00 to 5/1/00)
and so on

You'll notice ProTools is creating a Tempo event at each bar, changing it to match the time of each bar you select.

If you now set up a click track, you can check it through to see that you got it right.
Sometimes you need to Identify smaller segments (like half a bar) but most often once a measure is plenty.

it's tedious, but you get used to it and it works.


I did it just tonight, setting up a click to match a drummer's varying tempo.

The other plus is that once you have this tempo map in place, Elastic Time can use this grid to conform other overdubs to the basic layer.



Good luck.