Hi,
 
I've used the Fit to Improvisation feature many times over the years, and suddenly come across a problem that I don't how best to approach. On this occasion I've recorded a song with a singer, so my piano part was recorded as MIDI while she is of course audio.
 
Minor issue 1: would it be best to do Fit to Improv on a separate MIDI only version, then import the audio again onto that, or does Fit to Improv work fine while the audio is present in the file? I can experiment with this, but thought someone might know.
 
Main issue 2: In the midst of the track, and completely unintentionally we used a 7/8 bar instead of 4/4. It sounds perfectly natural (even more of a surprise!) and neither of us noticed it until much later. It means that when inserting the metronome part, if keeping a steady beat you're suddenly hitting on all the off-beats from there to the end of the song. So far I have placed the metronome steadily through the bar, then hit on the beginning of the next bar, and I know that the Fit to Improv will interpret this as a 4th beat that is 2x faster than the rest of the bar:
 

 
Ultimately I want to have the 7/8 bar inserted correctly, but would this best be done by working on the MIDI for Fit To Improvisation (as Minor issue 1), then importing the audio?
 
Thanks in advance
 
ReTracer
 

Fit Improv will work with audio in the project, but if the audio recording doesn't start at time 1:01:000, I think you'll need to set the timebase of the clip to Absolute to keep it from moving relative to the MIDI.
 
As you know Fit Improvisation uses a sacrificial MIDI guide track that has to have exactly one event for every quarter-note beat. Unless your piano part has 8th notes on every half-beat after the 7/8 measure, you're not going to be able to accurately generate the guide track with events every quarter. And, of course, your tempo changes will be at odd intervals after the 7/8 measure.
 
Even if the 7/8 bar were not a problem, I would recommend using Set Measure/Beat At Now anyway. It's not as limiting as Fit Improv; you can set as many or as few points as needed to align the timeline tot he performance, and and they can be at any fraction of a beat that happens to be handy. It's especially easy with MIDI because you can tab to notes events and set the tempo changes precisely needed. Also, it will handle the 7/8 measure with no problem; just set the time signature for that measure after you set the first beat, then find and set the down beat for the next measure, and change the time signature back at that beat.
 
 

Hi Brundlefly, thanks for this response and apologies it's taken me a while to get back. I haven't come across Set Measure/Beat At Now so far, and will find out if my current version has it (I'm using 8.5 on this machine, have got X3 on another computer - and haven't upgraded to Platinum yet. Thanks for the pointers, that's really helpful!
 
Edit: thanks so much - I've never seen this Set Measure/Beat At Now feature before! Brilliant!
 
 

8.5 has it, but actually it got a little broken in the last revision, 8.5.3, so you'll want to use X3:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1953451
 
The one time I really freaked about a regression. 
 
 

Hi Brundlefly, well, I thought it wasn't working well, in the end I fell back on Fit to Improv, inserted the 7/8 bar, halved the tempo for that last (originally quarter note) beat, then slide the data 480 ticks from the right of that, to the left. It all worked OK! A slight drift in the audio which was fixed manually by a subtle tempo change in two places.
 
I've been enjoying reading your posts - I'll look forward to trying out set at beat/measure another time!
 
In the meantime I have another question about exporting tempo changes as a text file, I don't think it can be done, but I'll post it in a new thread.
 
Cheers,

Hi again Brundlefly,
I'm experiencing continued issues with set measure/beat at now in X3 (patch e) Producer, and wondered if there is something I'm overlooking.
 
1. - Short small orchestral score, two instruments play throughout, other instruments interspersed.
2. - when using set measure/beat at now on these two parts the other parts become messed up - most of them disappearing.
 
Do I need to lock those parts before starting? I want them to line up as well.
Should every part have a clip that starts at 1:1:000? (as per Fit to Improv)
Does every part need to be selected while using set measure/beat at now?
 
I'm not sure what else might be causing it. Very strange behaviour - often the clips appear to be there, but when moving the mouse over the tracks pane they disappear. I do remember you said it worked in X3 though.
 
Best wishes,
ReTracer

Set Measure/Beat just alters tempos to fit the timeline to existing audio and/or MIDI; it shouldn't alter playback sync or otherwise affect existing material in any way. But since  the musical M:B:T timeline is the fixed visual scale in SONAR, clips may appear to change position and length, and the waveforms in audio clips get redrawn.  In some cases, this redrawing can make audio waveforms disappear when zoomed out, but the clips themselves should not disappear. And the disappearing waveform thing usually only happens when you have a lot of tempo changes very close together, like 16ths.
 
If that's not what you're seeing,  I might need to see some screenshots or a sample project before an after.
 
 
 
 

Hi again, thanks for your answer,
 
So I had a look again at it - there was a YouTube video which was very similar in behaviour, this time with X2:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uffgoP86fAs
 
On looking at that video, and taking in your description - which is how I had thought it worked in the first place, as a hunch I decided to extend every clip edge back to the beginning, and make sure each clip was continuous - with each track bounced to its own single clip. You can see a before example here:
 

 
This doesn't show the outcome I was seeing - the YouTube video hints at that, in short I was using Set Measure/Beat at now using the Piano track (second track from top), and on completion, almost all the other tracks would have disappeared - including not playing.
 
By moving the clip boundary to the far left for every track, it seems to have worked perfectly both graphically and in sound. The example below shows the track pane after completing Measure/Beat at Now. So, problem solved I think. Must say each time every track disappeared it 'Freaked the crap out of me!' to quote the guy in the video.