Beat Dectective -> tempo map trouble!

[Willie Myers]

H'lo all,
I'm having a helluva time trying to get Beat Dectective (BD) to do what seems like what ought to be the simplest of jobs, but no joy. It feels like I'm missing something really simple here, so please weigh in if you have an idea where I'm screwing up.

A client has sent me 2 files in a PT session; a 2 mix and a mono audio click track that the rhythm was cut to. It's about a 6 min. tune. The click rambles between aobut 125bpm and 130 bpm, with an occasional accel. up to about 155 for afew bars, then a ritard back to about 125. The click is in 4/4, all quarters. The click track is clean and I'm trying to get BD to anaylize it and create a tempo map for the session that I can quantize my midi parts to.

I've trimmed the click track to it's first click, positioned it on Bar 1 Beat 1, selected the entire click track and opened BD. I've selected "Bar/Beat Marker Generation", "Start Bar/Beat 1/1, Time Sig. 4/4, Contains 1/4 notes", Analysis:High Emph., Then I hit "Analyze".

I wind up with Beat markers (Triggers) on *most* of the clix - at least for the first 3-4 minutes of the track- but not all of them. I mess with the Sensitivity and (sometimes) get a few more of the clix to show Beat Markers, but never all of them. So, when I hit 'Generate', I get a tempo map that's valid for the first 80 bars or so, but then drifts significantly from the audio clix and is usless for the remainder of the tune.

So that's where I am...can't get started on this project without an accurate tempo map and can't figure out what I'm missing in BD to get it to create one. Any/all help *HUGELY* appreciated!

thanks,

bill myers

[bassntreble]

the accellerandos and ritardos may be messing up the tempo map. It may help to map the click track in sections. if you have an approximate tempo to start with and it's reasonably stable for let's say 16 bars before the 1st accel, seperate a region after the 16 bars and BD on the first 16. seperate and select a region for the accel and BD it noting the start bar and length in the BD window. "Use selection" works well for reasonably stable tempos but for rubato performances, you have to split it up. lather, rinse, repeat. It's a little more work but you should be able to obtain very good results this way.

just another helpful hint. use tab to transient on the click track to place the selector when you make your region definitions.

hope this helps.

[Willie Myers]

man, thanks for that idea, I'll try this afternoon!

thanks again,

bill