Many years ago Cakewalk had a percent parameter that affected all tempos in a MIDI file. It was a great feature for someone who played along with accompaniment files and liked to gradually increase song tempo.

I guess the replacement for this feature is the new "Stretch MIDI clips" feature. The doc says there are three methods for this, but only the Timing tool method works for me. (With the Smart tool method, Sonar thinks I want to copy.)

According to the doc,"With the Timing tool, position the pointer over the clip’s first half and drag to stretch the beginning, or position the pointer over the clip’s second half and drag to stretch the end."

Each track has a single clip, and I've set the edit filters to Clips. Even though I've selected all three tracks, the operation applies to only one at a time. I stretch each track out to 120%, but the result is that the "120%" isn't precise enough and it leaves the tracks out of sync.

Any suggestions?

Mitch I.

Sonar Platinum Gloucester running on 64-bit Windows 7

Personally, I find the new MIDI clip stretching facility useless because it only works well if the existing clip fits exactly to measure boundaries. eg. If I have a drum clip that is 4 measures long, and the last hit is on beat 4 of the 4th measure - so if I stretch that clip out to 8 measures, the last hit will be roughly on the first beat of the 9th measure and everything else is out of place proportionately.
 
If you are just playing along to pure MIDI then what you need to do is simple - just change the project tempo. Everything else will Just Work. (If you're playing along to audio too, you will have to stretch that - and again, you'll want to make sure everything already starts and ends on measure boundaries before you stretch.)

Kylotan,
 
Thanks for the input.
 
This file has several tempo changes. Changing the initial tempo only applies until the first tempo change. I could do some arithmetic and change the tempo proportionally at each change. But I'll probably need to change the tempo of the whole song several times until I settle on one.
 
Mitch I.

Probably the quickest route to testing the different tempo options would be to open up tempo view and draw in the different tempos you want, at the positions you want them.
 
Alternatively, maybe Project > Insert Series of Tempos will work for you. It's intended for gradual increases (or decreases) of tempo, so if you're using this to practice your playing by ramping up the speed while the song progresses, it might be what you want.

Mitch_I
Many years ago Cakewalk had a percent parameter that affected all tempos in a MIDI file. It was a great feature for someone who played along with accompaniment files and liked to gradually increase song tempo.

I guess the replacement for this feature is the new "Stretch MIDI clips" feature. The doc says there are three methods for this, but only the Timing tool method works for me. (With the Smart tool method, Sonar thinks I want to copy.)

According to the doc,"With the Timing tool, position the pointer over the clip’s first half and drag to stretch the beginning, or position the pointer over the clip’s second half and drag to stretch the end."

Each track has a single clip, and I've set the edit filters to Clips. Even though I've selected all three tracks, the operation applies to only one at a time. I stretch each track out to 120%, but the result is that the "120%" isn't precise enough and it leaves the tracks out of sync.

Any suggestions?

 
Mitch,
  The Process > Length... menu option will stretch or shrink clips by percent and will process all selected clips at the same time.  If you are looking for a specific target effective tempo, then you will need to calculate the percent by dividing the current tempo by the new tempo.  For example, current tempo is 100 and I want an effective tempo of 110, then 100/110 = 0.909 which translates to 91%.   I tried it with a project that had multiple tempo changes and all tracks remained in sync.
 
-- Ron

Ron,
 
Thanks for the suggestion. That more or less solves my problem, since it slows down the song so I can play along with it.
 
The disadvantage is that using staff view after that operation is confusing. Sonar's tempo is unchanged, but the notes are distributed in the measures differently. So the measure numbers in the sheet music no longer match the numbers in staff view.
 
If I understand it right, I'm up against a couple of basic usability problems with the Stretch MIDI Clips feature: (1) it only applies to one track at a time, and (2) it's not precise enough to use with multiple tracks.
 
Mitch I.

If the clips are already in sync with the timeline, and the project has tempo changes, stretching clips is just going to foul things up. The Tempo Offset buttons went away because they were only compatible with pure MIDI projects using direct-monitored hardware synths. Having any audio in the project, including the audio metronome would disable them.
 
SONAR does not have a built-in function for scaling a tempo map. Below is a workaround I've posted before. It's awkward because you have to work in SMPTE time. Also you should avoid trying to scale only part of the project; IIRC, there are issues with the way SONAR handles that.
 
1. Enable autostretch (a.k.a. Clip Follows Project) on any audio clips.
2. Select a MIDI or audio clip that runs the length of the project.  
3. Go to Process > Fit to Time.  
4. Convert the current Thru time to total frames.  
5. Divide that by the desired factor (e.g. 1.10 to get a 10% increase, 0.90 for a 10% decease).  
6. Round and convert that new value to minutes:seconds:frames.  
7. Enter that as the new Thru, and select Modify by Changing: Tempo Map.  
8. Click OK. 
 
 

Brundlefly,
 
Thanks for your suggestion. I used a slightly different version of your procedure, since I don't need to stretch by an exact amount.
 
1. Select a MIDI or audio clip that runs the length of the project.  
2. Go to Process > Fit to Time. 
3. Enter the new Thru time (end of song).
4. For Modify by Changing, select Tempo Map.
 
From an original version that was 22 minutes, I created a 28-minute version and a 30-minute version. My tempo map and staff view are intact. So I'm in business.
 
Mitch I.