I need to change the tempo.

[Terry Wetzel]

Good morning. I have all but completed a project,("song") In Pro Tools 9.0.6, Windows 7, 32 bit. I have a bad habit of setting the tempo a little slower than it should be. In this case I clicked the conductor button off, (not highlighted) and performed all the tracks at a tempo of 160 bpm. Now the song lacks punch! I'm almost positive that I remember videos showing that all you have to do is highlight the conductor button, increase the tempo bpm and voila! Am I wrong? I am able to increase the tempo of the click track but the song tempo doesn't change! Is it possible to change the tempo if the song is started at a given bpm ,(manual tempo) and then increase or decrease it? Thanks for any help offered.

[Natanel Arnson]

In the upper left, directly above where your tracks are, you should see a list of a few grey bars, saying "tempo", "meter", "bars beats", ect. Click on the + sign at the end of it and a window will pop up to change tempo. You may not have "tempo" showing, so you'll have to click on the drop down menu (the top grey bar) to check tempo to be shown.

[albee1952]

First thing to do is open the session and choose "Save As" and give it a new name(like "song at 172bpm"). This way, no matter how bad you mess it up, you can open the earlier version

Next, put all your audio tracks in Ticks mode(usually they default to Samples mode, but there is an option under the preferences menus). Then, enable Polyphonic Elastic Audio on all audio tracks. Now change the bpm. With a little luck, the song will play at the new speed, and if you don't try to go too far, it SHOULD still sound good.

Now the above all happens in PT, but there are other options available. One is Serato Pitch 'n Time, which works as AudioSuite. So you could take your 2-track mix(after Bounce to Disk), import it into a new blank session and highlight the entire track, and let PnT change the tempo(they have a free 14 day demo). I also use Wavelab and it has a time compression process that does much the same(taking a 3 minute song and make it fit in a 2:45 time frame makes it faster, without changing the pitch). Hope something here works

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks Natanel Arson. I've tried that but no dice. At least in my PT's9 version.

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks albee. I didn't know you could use ticks mode for audio! I thought it was only for midi. I'll try your suggestion. As for Pitch in time, I'm tempted to download the free sample but I've tried to speed it up with Pro tools version and it really sounded terrible. That was only a one track experiment but it scared me off! I had thought about copying the tracks minus the vocal to my Masterlink in stereo which has a feature that enables pitch change but also affects the speed! I'm only looking to go from 160 bpm to say 165 or so and then go back into PT's as a new session and add the vocal. What do you think?

[Terry Wetzel]

albee. Thanks. Your method worked for me with the exception of the bass track which for some reason was skewed. I just re recorded it since this is not a complicated song. I checked the tempo against my keyboard metronome since there isn't that much difference in 160 bpm and 165 bpm but it's right on! Thanks again.

[albee1952]

Cool. Can't imagine why the bass didn't follow, but if you got what you wanted, job well done

[necjamc]

If quality is of the essence, you can set all the tracks to X-form render only instead of Poly. I find its a far superior quality, but takes much much longer. Also when doing it this way I will copy the track, select it all and consolidate to commit the change so that during future edits it won't re-render xform. Just a thought..

[Terry Wetzel]

necjamc. Thanks for your advice. quality is always important but since albee's solution worked I'd rather not rock the boat at this point.

[upscaps]

In the future:

1. consolidate audio tracks
2. activate EA on all Audio tracks set to poly (poly so u can try different tempos), Make sure u r using ticks and not samples for all tracks.
3. Once you are comfortable with your tempo, change EA on all audio tracks from poly to X-Form
4. Go get some coffee or a sandwich as it will take a while. X-Form is an offline process but it is worth it.