Or maybe someone just knows what's happening.
Full disclosure: I suck royal at piano.
 
I have the latest Splat and a song all done all analog except for the drums and piano which I played both.
It was all locked to the Sonar steady tempo, with the piano quantized to the nearest 8th. Yes I'm that bad at it.
Anyway all was good, Then I dragged the main strum acoustic guitar track to the title bar to make a melodyne 4 tempo detected tempo map. The drums that were on the old steady tempo were a bit off now so I quantized them to the nearest 16th and we have lock. - beautiful!
 
When the piano came in at the chorus it was waaay out of sync. So I re-quantized them to the new varying tempo again but that didn't fix it. So off it was difficult to determine whether it was late or early. attempts to select all the notes and drag them left and right but finally just gave up and muted the piano to make a listening CD of the drum lock.
 
My question is if the drums are midi - played by a human and so is the piano, why did the piano slip so far away from the groove? It sounds like when you change the tempo on audio tracks. They get way out of sync unless the clip's timebase is set to absolute (Thanks brundlefly). But it's just a midi track driving the cakewalk tts-1.
 
????
 I should add that after all this I audio snapped the vocal track to the new varying tempo grid and it worked like gangbusters!
 

Audio clips should have timebase set to absolute, MIDI clips should be set to M:B:T.
 
 

Oh crap, That's very likely the problem. I did a select all, then set all the selected to absolute so the audio tracks would stay put. It didn't even dawn on me that I would also be doing this to the midi track(s).
 
I'll check when I get home.
 
Fortunately I have backups of the file before I started monkeying with it.
 
Thanks!

Ok,
 
I went back to the original file, played it to make sure I had a good un-modified baseline. I did.
Selected ALL
Un selected all the midi tracks.
Went to the inspector set the Timebase to absolute (As apposed to musical) - new sonar nomenclature?
Spot checked a few analog clips to ensure they were indeed set to absolute.
Checked midi drum clip - it was still set to musical as desired.
Dragged Acoustic strum reference track to time line to create tempo map from it.
Tempo map created looks nice and human.
Played Song.
Drums start out ok but soon are playing out of sync (as if) they are not obeying the new tempo map.
 
This leads me to think that:
A. I don't know what I'm doing with respect to the tempo map and midi. - never did this before at all.
B. Previous thoughts that the drums were locked before may have been a placebo effect.
 
But I have a CD and there is no doubt that in places where if felt as if there was a lag the music now cruises right through. - This CD is from where the midi was set to musical timebase before when the piano went nuts. 
 
 

I don't think it's possible to have MIDI and Audio tracks stay in sync when using the drag-to-timeline feature. You can get the start times of clips to stay in sync by adjusting the timebase, but the absolute timing and duration of events inside MIDI clips are going to follow the tempo changes while the audio will not.
 
Audiosnap's Set Project from Clip, and Set Measure/Beat At Now functions are programmed to change tempos around MIDI, adjusting the numeric durations accordingly to maintain the absolute playback timing, but drag-to timeline doesn't do this.
 
The bottom line is that drag-to-timeline is only applicable to pure audio projects. It would require a feature request to have it accommodate projects that already include MIDI.

brundlefly
I don't think it's possible to have MIDI and Audio tracks stay in sync when using the drag-to-timeline feature. You can get the start times of clips to stay in sync by adjusting the timebase, but the absolute timing and duration of events inside MIDI clips are going to follow the tempo changes while the audio will not.
 
Audiosnap's Set Project from Clip, and Set Measure/Beat At Now functions are programmed to change tempos around MIDI, adjusting the numeric durations accordingly to maintain the absolute playback timing, but drag-to timeline doesn't do this.
 
The bottom line is that drag-to-timeline is only applicable to pure audio projects. It would require a feature request to have it accommodate projects that already include MIDI.

Thanks brundlefly, But that leaves me more confused.
 
Lets say I have a file with only a midi track driving a synth. If I go in a hand change the tempo map inserting new tempos, isn't the midi to faithfully track that tempo map?
 
It is often said to those who tried to change the tempo with audio tracks and were unsuccessful told over and over only midi will track a tempo change barring the use of AudioSnap?

I re-read your original post and I gather you're just trying to get the timing feel of the acoustic guitar track transferred to the MIDI tracks by using it to generate a tempo map that's only slightly variable. Is that right?
 
If that's the case, it shouldn't have been necessary to re-quantize anything. Both the MIDI drum and piano parts (with timebase left at Musical) should have followed the tempo changes and gotten more closely in sync with the guitar track than they were before, along with the timeline. If the sync got worse, then I think the problem is just that the tempo extraction wasn't accurate or wasn't at a high enough resolution (measures?) to get the intermediate beats within measures in sync.
 
If you play back the project with the metronome running and the guitar track muted immediately after extracting its tempo without re-quantizing anything, you should hear the drums and piano still in sync with each other and with the click. If you then unmute the guitar track, and it sounds out of sync with all three, that would confirm the tempo map is wrong.
 
Beyond that, I think I'd have to see the project (or at least the three tracks in question) to fully understand what's going wrong.

I can be in the Springs with my DAW in ~3 hours.
 
(just kidding).

I have concluded that this isn't going to go well with this already "done" tune for whatever reason.
I will just have to wait for the next inspiration as starting fresh with this melo4 tempo detection worked real well.

I had exactly the same issues with EXISTING MIDI tracks within a project I later applied a tempo map to

What made my issue even more frustrating is that I set the tempo map from the rendered audio of my piano MIDI track - so was convinced the MIDI should be in perfect time with the tempo map (because the tempo map was created from it)

This can get a bit confusing so I hope you follow - it may take a few reads until the penny drops but I think I can explain what is going on...

I wanted to try another piano sound but when I played the MIDI it was all out of sync (even though the tempo map was created from the rendered audio, which was created from the piano MIDI)

I therefore wanted the MIDI piano to "ignore" the tempo map and play exactly as it did before

However, as pointed out when I posted this question in the forum, the MIDI needs to follow the project tempo - if it ignores it how will know when to play the notes!!

It is as if a "paradox" has been created

The original MIDI file was created following a tempo - even if the piano was played completely ignoring "the grid" - there is always a tempo set in Sonar (even without a click) so the MIDI is still recorded relative to this tempo (even if it is not being used by the performer and they are playing completely free form)

When a tempo map is then applied the MIDI has to follow this new tempo map (since MIDI only contains info about when to play a note relative to the tempo of the project, how long to hold the note, the velocity of the note etc.)

Therefore since the project tempo has changed (via the tempo map extracted from the audio) any MIDI tracks have no option but to follow this new tempo map - which is different to the tempo at which they were originally recorded - which is why they now play out of sync!

Phew! It has taken me ages to get my head around this but this is what I think is happening


As a "workaround" for this project my advice would therefore be to create a NEW project at the exact tempo of your existing project BEFORE the tempo map was applied and your MIDI played in sync with the audio

Import your original MIDI file of the piano into this new project

Tweak anything you want to tweak (in my case it was changing the piano VST but you can tweak any MIDI data as well)

Bounce or export this as audio

Put the audio version back in your original project and it should play nicely with everything else

You can insert NEW MIDI tracks and they will happily follow the tempo map (as the the notes will be recorded relative to the tempo map) - so in future if you will be using MIDI make sure the tempo map is set first using the audio you want to play along to - then quantizing etc. will work

I hope this makes sense and helps you and others get over the confusion of how exiting MIDI recordings appear to go "out of sync" when a tempo map has been applied AFTER they have been recorded

This is not an issue with Sonar or Melodyne - it is simply a case that the MIDI file has no option other than to follow the project tempo

If the MIDI was originally recorded at one tempo (I've before the tempo map was applied) it is completely logical (if I have explained it correctly) that the MIDI will now follow the new tempo map if it is applied - therefore it will NOT play as before (as it is now following a different tempo than it was recorded to) so will play out of sync with any audio recorded at the original tempo