Writing music to picture - Pro Tools isn't good enough?

[jahtao]

Hi I'm trying to write some music to picture. It's quiet a difficult project in that it's like a cartoon and so the music follows the action very, very closely - there's a lot of sync points and the tempo needs to change all the time so that notes coincide with movement. I'm having trouble.

It seems that once you've put in all your tempo change events its very hard to do any fine tuning to them: Although Pro Tools has the option to 'preserve tempo after selection' once you've created a tempo change in this way, it'll move all over the place if you make changes to surrounding events.

I'm going to have yet another look at the reference guide to see if it all becomes clear. Does anyone have any words of wisdom or links to good articles on the subject? I'm thinking about doing each scene in a different session, or using Logic for some duties, but would rather not.

Much appreciated
Matt

[Slim Shady]

Doing each scene (cue) in a different session is pretty much the norm, whether you're working with PT, Logic or DP. There are many reasons, tempo maps being one, another one being when you make cue sheets for your musicians, it's better if each cue has a 'bar 1' to start with (musicians like this) and your sessions will match the bar numbers.

I work (and have worked with) many composers, a couple of whom you've probably heard of, and it's always 1 session per cue, except in the extremely rare case where two cues might overlap, and then you get a 1m04-05 sorta thing going instead of just 1m04 and 1m05 separately.

[jahtao]

Thanks, I really appreciate your input.

I'll stop making life hard for myself and go with your suggestion : )

Progress here we come!

Thanks again,
Matt

[jahtao]

OK am making progress.

I think Pro Tools might just be 'good enough' (eek, sorry) : )

Another great help is to know that command clicking on the plus sign in the tempo ruler enables SMPTE points to to be specified as specific bars|beats (blue mode aka create bar|beat markers). These are more easily moved around than the green tempo flags. Still, I'm finding it necessary to create green ones and then edit them in 'blue' mode for some reason.

Now what I need to work out is how to create gradual tempo changes without having my anchor points move. At the moment, my tempos jump at the start of each bar (where I've put my tempo change events). I'd like the intervening 1/4 notes, eighths and sixteenths to speed up and slow down between tempo change events.

...

Just worked that one out (being a bit sllllloww). Use grid in Bars|Beats, select the bars you want create the drifting tempo in, select 'linear' and set density to 1/16th or whatever.....

Nice... PT rules!

[Slim Shady]

You can also use the pencil tool to draw in tempo changes if you expand the Tempo[+] area at the top of your sessions.

[jahtao]

Cheers. On this particular project it's got to be SCIENCE. All numbers and calculator type stuff, the pencil might be a bit 'loose'. But hey, this is a type of audio work that's new to me, and is a deep and complex field no doubt about it, I bet when you get good at it you can handle that pencil like an artist... or scientist... real surgical like, as required.

m