Export MIDI with tempo map

A singer sung without metronome at her place and passed me a wav file. I built a whole arrangement  on her voice, just spending half an hour to contruct first a good tempo map, by aligning the first measure of audio in the voice and then progressing with the "set measure/beat at now time" command. First I guessed the overall tempo (128 bpm) then captured all the slight variations (127.3, 126.6, 127.9, 128.3 etc) every 2-3 measures.
It worked brilliantly  . I recorded the first MIDI instruments with a Sonar metronome following the sliding tempo, then all audio records, and this original little shift really gives breath to the piece.
 
Now I need to export a midi part, but when dragged to the desktop I see it does not retain the tempo variation information, which is stored in the tempo view within the Sonar project. How can i tell Sonar to keep this "sliding tempo info" in the exported MIDI file?
Alternatively, can I set an overall timing info in the midi file (128 bpm) at the beginning, and then write a midi file that goes out of the tempo grid, but stays in time when replayed at that bpm?
 
Please help. I'm working with Sonar since almost 10 years daily and I'm amazed I still get stuck with MIDI!

John


You might have better results by doing a save as and saving it as a MIDI file.

Yes.  I can say with certainty that save-as-MIDI-file does retain the tempo map.  I never noticed one way or the other whether dragging/dropping a MIDI clip kept the tempo information ... something to test next time I fire up SONAR.

fcarosone

The only little work was that the save as function under the File menu is conceived for a whole Sonar project and not for a single MIDI clip within a project (although the contextual help in the save as window mention that it could be applied to clips). So when I opened the new mid it had all midi parts in it. But then it was easy to delete all the rest and have a .mid with that only clip starting at measure 1 and retaining the tempo map.

I suppose if this activity was something I needed to do all the time, I'd be annoyed at Cakewalk for not giving us a little more power and flexibility.  But the extra hassle actually isn't really all that much extra work, and like I said, it's probably not something anyone has to do all that often.

I have always viewed them as two different things for two different purposes . A drag and drop to me is a simple way to have a copy of a clip or track n. I would not think it would include other project settings other than what is contained in the clip itself. Where a save as for the project is meant to create a complete standard MIDI file. One that includes all data for playing back that file on any MIDI player. I look at it from a GM perspective. 

Then we have MIDI groove clips. These are not GM type MIDI files. But they would contain more information then a simple copied MIDI clip. Not sure if they have tempo in them. From my view with MIDI storing tempo with a clip seems silly. If you consider that tempo with MIDI is completely controllable in most any DAW.  A clip will follow the DAWs project tempo. So the rare occasion when tempo for a clip is needed it can be done with the save as command and the right editing. 

I hope this makes some sense.

I did an experiment, dragging a MIDI file onto the desktop (something I'd never done before). The resulting file was a type 1 MIDI file (meaning the tempo map is in a separate track). Then I dragged the file into an empty project. All of the original tracks were recreated as expected, but there were no tempo changes. 

I opened the file in a hex editor to see if there were any tempo meta-events in it (FF 51 03 xx xx xx for the nerds out there) and there was indeed tempo data included in the file.

I then opened the MIDI file using SONAR's File->Open. This time, the project contained all the tempo information.

My theory is this: when you drag a MIDI file into an existing project, SONAR ignores the tempo data. This, I believe, is how it should be. When you have an existing project it already has a tempo map, and you wouldn't want to replace it every time you dragged a new track into it.

bitflipper


I did an experiment, dragging a MIDI file onto the desktop (something I'd never done before). The resulting file was a type 1 MIDI file (meaning the tempo map is in a separate track). Then I dragged the file into an empty project. All of the original tracks were recreated as expected, but there were no tempo changes. 

I opened the file in a hex editor to see if there were any tempo meta-events in it (FF 51 03 xx xx xx for the nerds out there) and there was indeed tempo data included in the file.

I then opened the MIDI file using SONAR's File->Open. This time, the project contained all the tempo information.

My theory is this: when you drag a MIDI file into an existing project, SONAR ignores the tempo data. This, I believe, is how it should be. When you have an existing project it already has a tempo map, and you wouldn't want to replace it every time you dragged a new track into it.

Sheesh Dave,
 
you read hex too - you must be as big a nerd as me :-)
 
You are right on the money.
I took a look when I saw the title and was going to answer, but you've already done that perfectly.
I remember having to do my own little tests to figure it out when I first got Sonar.
Another one of those things that's mysterious if you don't already know.
 
Cheers - Cliff

Well some of us remember having to refer to the SYS EX list in the back of our sound module owner manuals if you wanted to do certain functions.. 
And yep, I figured out from day one you always OPEN a MIDI file to retain tempo and the sys. ex. data. Importing or drag and drop only brings in the basic note info. 

Even though I never have done this I would imagine this works in reverse and you need to SAVE  a MIDI file to retain all the goodies. This is done when we save a CWP.