Determining The BPM of a Hip Hop/R&B Track

[Rhapsody]

Hi,

I have someone bringing in a Mixed Stereo Hip Hop/R&B Beat Track
to do vocal tracks over it. They don't know what the BPM's are for the
music track. Before I start recording the vocals........

What is the best way to determine the BPM's of the track?

Thanks

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Use Identify Beat

Rail

[sky88dd]

Yeah, Identify Beat is what you need.
Make a selection of your song.(you don't need the whole song, 2 bars will do)
Event>Identify Beat or Command I.
Make sure you enter the correct amount of bars and make sure the selection you made was exactly that amount of bars.
Pro Tools will give you the BPM on the tempo ruler.

[Rhapsody]

Thanks for the replies!

After selecting my 2 bars I then went to Identify Beat and the bpm appeared
in the tempo ruler. I notice that Identify beat only works if the Conductor is on.
Is this right?

Now, I tried doing this with two different beats(Music tracks) and they both came out
pretty close. One @ 120bpm and the other @ 120.004 ,which didn't seem right because the
tempos are different. I also setup a click track to see if the click was in time with
the BPM's and it wasn't. So ,I think I'm doing something wrong.

I have a lot of people bringing in theses beats(music tracks) and they don't
know what the BPM's are . I would like to figure this out, so I can set up
the session the right way.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks so much!

[Mr.BossPlaya]

make sure your "conductor" is unhigh lighted and you high light the bpm to the right of the "conductor", and just play the track and tap the "t" button in time with the beat and it will set up your BPM automatically.

[Holly73]

How did you select your two bars? Try using "Tab to transients". Tab to the beginning of bar one, then hold shift and tab through to beginning of bar 3, then identify beat. This should work fine (and more precise than the suggestion to tap your speed using the tap function.

As it is a Hip Hop track, it should have a constant tempo as the original beat is programmed. Like this, two bars should be enough. If the tempo isn't constant, you need to go through the whole song and identify the beat for every 1, 2, 4 or 8 bars.

[Rhapsody]

Thanks again for the replies!,

I imported the beat track into a new session.I found my 2 bars by looping a 2 bar
section of the hiphop track. The tempo is constant in the song. Then I went to
identify beat.But when I checked the tempo with a click track, It's not right.

When I setup the new session,the grid in the session is set to
PT's default 120bpm ,so I can't line the track up to the grid. Correct?
What am I doing wrong?

[Shawn Simpson]

The mistake a lot of people make is that they don't actually key in the bar|beat numbers into the identify beat window when it comes up.

If you have 2 bars selected (ie. bar 1 to bar 3) and choose identify beat, you need to actually type into that window that the beginning of the selection is 1|1|000 and the end of the selection is 3|1|000. That window will default to whatever the bar|beat ruler is indicating, but you have to tell it what is actually selected so that it can conform.

Good luck.

[Mr.BossPlaya]

Rhapsody,

you would save a lot of time if you use the technique that i gave you. it sets up your tempo automatically, that way you dont have to worry about getting you selection region exactly in the right spots. you just tap the "t" key in tempo. try it out!